He couldn't shake the feeling this time was different.
Doctors have a strange disregard for their own bodies, he thought, as he went through his most painful urination ever. He had been used to ignoring headaches before, and burning infernos in his stomach from quaffing so much coffee. But this time he decided he would have it looked at later.
He finished his business in the bathroom and dressed up for surgery. He was out in the hall in no time, making his way to the OR, as four nurses accompanied him. During his 25 years as an anesthesiologist, he had taken this walk hundreds of times, but it never stopped feeling almost surreal. The doctor and his small entourage of nurses advancing towards the operating room, better pictured from the front in slow motion for effect.
Yet, those 25 years took their toll on his experience in another way. To overcome the monotony of many moments in his job, he would allocate them to some autopilot in his brain. That way, he could concern himself only with the novel and important, and get through the tedium. And in the nebulous interface between autopilot and his focus, he would lie. Passively observing the surrounding, or playing symphonies in his head. This time, he noted, wasn't typical. The light bulbs caught his eyes more. They seemed to be flashing brighter. Surely, bright enough to hurt his eyes and make him shift his gaze to the side. The nurses didn't appear to suffer the same. He looked at the halcyon blue and white colors of the walls instead, which he always liked.
The swinging door drew closer. He stretched a leg to push it like he used to, but it never reached, and a nurse beat him to it. He looked at her almost disapprovingly, then got inside and scrubbed up. Striding into the OR, he greeted the neurosurgeons with a nod. Stimuli seeped from the autopilot into the interface and mingled with his symphony: the smell of disinfectant; the clattering of scalpels, scissors, and retractors being grouped together; the shiny metal of those instruments, seducing one to wield them. This truly was his Sanctum Sanctorum.
The symphony intensified. His own duties and his own tools to wield awaited. Having calculated the dose, he then had to wait for the surgeon's signal to put the patient under. The light felt brighter there too, so he busied his eyes with monitoring the patient's vitals on the screen. The beeps of the monitor mingled with his symphony as well. But so did something else. An inexplicable heaviness of his scrubs, and his urethra still aching a little. Both registered as a screeching noise in the music. Irksome as it was, he never left the interface. Rather, he passively watched the surgeons, punctilious in their attention, go over the procedure.
Finally, one of them gave the signal. His hand went into action automatically, albeit a bit sluggishly, he noticed. He stretched his arm to grab the syringe, but it never reached, and a nurse beat him to it. The screech intensified. She grabbed his arm firmly and told him to keep still. He stared in misapprehension. The symphony stopped.
The next moment, a surfeit of new stimuli broke through his autopilot to obtrude upon his consciousness and snatch him from the interface.
The pressure against his back. The ceiling in front of him, punctuated by light bulbs and a few masked faces. The layers of sterile sheets drawn over his body. The catheter dangling from his urethra. He looked to the side and saw the anesthesiologist ready to inject, and telling him to count backwards from 10.
And he remembered why this time was going to be different.
His heart was racing and he felt anxious, so he couldn't count. His autopilot had blindfolded him, till it left him mired in this situation, which was too sudden to bear. Marooned on the operating table, he just wanted his symphony back.
He regarded the vitals on the screen one last time. The beeping had a strange lulling effect. Or was it the anesthetic? He felt closer to the nebulous interface. And he listened to the last beeps bid farewell, as his consciousness dimmed to a tired glow.