100% triggers - combat, hospitals, injuries
Moved over here from Survivors of Abuse Forum ...

I don't know if I can repeat this here. I was just typing a PM to a friend, and this memory just popped out of my finger tips. It isn't about sexual abuse or rape, but somehow it is tangled with all the stuff that happened in my childhood.

In our PM exchange, my friend mentioned the harassment soldiers sometimes get when returning from war. I told her that I didn't encounter too much of that since I spent so much time in hospitals recovering from wounds. But there was an incident that occurred even in the hospital ...

In telling her, I even started to add an "lol", seeing the irony in the fact that the antiwar feeling permeated even the hospitals. But then I started typing, and you'll see the effect the telling had on me. Afterward, I just felt I had to post this no matter how hard it was or how scary because people need to know what goes on...this is not about today's wars but a time in the past.

***
After I was wounded and spent a long time in the hospital while they tried to stabilize me for the life saving surgery I needed, the day came for us to try it. If I didn't have the surgery right away, there would be another empty bed on the ward and another playing of taps in the cemetery.

I was on a gurney being pushed down a long, long hallway. Just the two of us in this brightly lit hallway.

Along the way I was awake and I responded to some remark of his with the word "friend" in my comment. Something like "It's ok friend, I know I might not make it through the surgery."

Whoa.... the guy went ballistic. He slammed the gurney against the wall. I almost fell off the bed. He jammed it against the wall again just to make his point. He yelled at me, "YOU'RE NO FRIEND OF MINE. DON'T YOU EVER SAY THAT AGAIN. YOU STUPID F*. YOU GOT YOURSELF SHOT AND YOU COME IN HERE WANTING ME TO BE YOUR FRIEND. SHUT THE F* UP." And he slammed the gurney on the wall again.

And we went in silence down that long hall with me holding onto the sides of the gurney because I didn't know if he would shove me against the wall again. No sound other than the squeeking of his boots on the polished tile floor. To the operating room where I saw all the saws and hatchets and tools hanging on the walls.

And people in white gowns and masks. Walking around with their hands in the air like zombies while others laid out sheets and tools. And a masked man came close to my head and whispered about anesthesia. And asked if I was right with God. And echoing in my mind was "YOU'RE NO FRIEND OF MINE!"

I said, "let's go" and that is all I knew until waking up later, alone in a room, sobbing, wondering if life would ever be the same. And holding onto the sides of the gurney so I wouldn't fall off.

*tears *panic *choking ... ... I can't believe the effect telling this has on me. I didn't even remember it until I was typing. It just kind of came out my finger tips. And now tears are running down my cheeks and down my neck.

I am sorry.