Hot Blooded, Cold Hearted! by Carolyn Barber (reading a book .txt) 📕

She took my vitals, and as she was finishing the doctor came in, I heard him shuffling around. "Penny, I'm Dr. Shaffer, I'm the one who originally triage'd you in the emergency room, with me is Dr. Jacobs" someone touched my hand, and again I recoiled feeling annoyed. "You must be Morris right" he asked. "Yes, thank you so much for calling, have you found anything out yet?" he asked wanting immediate answers. "Penny, I have good news and I have bad news" Dr. Shaffer said to me. "Just tell me what's going on please!" I said anxiously. "The good news is your blindness is temporary. It can be easily remedied with surgery. Now comes the bad news and that's where Dr. Jacobs fits in.

The voice changed, not as deep but just as calm.  "Penny, we discovered a tumor in your brain, the fall caused the tumor to hit a nerve in the optical wall which is the cause of your blindness. At the risk of sounding pompous, I want you to know I'm a damn good neuro-surgeon. I can remove the tumor that's resting on the nerve , run a biopsy on it, if it's benign you'll heal and be back on your feet in no time. If it turns out to be malignant we'll offer you radiation treatment and try to rid any rouge cancerous cells" Dr. Jacobs said trying to be as positive about it as possible. "I have a tumor in my brain? Are you sure? I haven't had any headaches, or any symptoms, wouldn't I have known something was wrong with me?" I asked him perplexed. "Not necessarily, fortunately we're getting to it early on. Think of your accident as a blessing in disguise, had this gone undetected your chances of survival would have diminished significantly" he said. "My chances of survival?" I said, the thought of my mortality coming to an end scared me. "We don't have the facts yet, I would suggest we operate immediately and get that tumor out of there regardless. You would get you your sight back, and we'll get a biopsy so we know what we're dealing with. Any reservation?" He asked. "No, do what it is you need to do Dr. Jacobs. I don't need this distraction in my life, what I need is to get back to the office as soon as possible" I said with urgency. "I'll go ahead and make the necessary preparations, we'll operate immediately. Penny, this is brain surgery, please understand that I am very confident this will go well, however, with any surgery there are risks involved" he said. "I don't care about the risk, really what choice do I have? Seems to me I don't have any, so just get it out, please" I said with vigor. "Very well then, we'll get you prepped immediately" Dr. Jacobs replied. They left the room, leaving Morris and I by ourselves.

"I'm going to hold your hand, so don't jump" he said assertively. I pulled my hands back, "No Morris, don't baby me. I don't need someone to hold my hand, wipe my tears or kiss my ass!" I said angrily. "Actually Penny what you don't need right now is to be a bitch" he said sternly. "Morris, I'd like to be alone if you don't mind. I appreciate you coming here, but I don't need you here, go back to work!" I said trying to get him to leave before he abandoned me anyways. The last thing I needed was to feel dependent on someone for comfort just to be let down in the end. The only person I could depend on was myself.

"Here's the thing Penny. I probably know you better than anyone, we've worked together five years now. I know you have no one and this is not something you need to go through by yourself. You're scared, hell anyone would be. You can be a bitch and try to throw me out on my ear, but I'll just keep coming back for more. I'm not going anywhere. Besides, you can't see right now, you wouldn't even know if I was standing a foot away from you sticking my tongue out, mooning you or flipping you the bird!" he said sarcastically. "No, but I'd smell you! How much cologne can one man wear for God's sake?" I retorted. Morris laughed. I let out a heavy sigh, "Okay fine, stay. Suit yourself, I wouldn't want to spoil your one chance to take advantage of my vulnerability!" I said conceding. The nurses came in and ushered Morris out so they could prep me for surgery. Before he left, he told me he would see me after surgery. I told him I would see him too, and I really hoped I would.

In the operating room, they wasted no time in anesthetizing me. "Okay, can you count backwards from one hundred for me Penny?" Then anesthesiologist said. One minute I was awake, counting backwards by the time I got to ninety-seven I was out.

I felt myself becoming conscientiously aware. "I'm going to hold your hand so don't be a bitch about it!" I heard Morris say. I was still groggy and felt I had no strength. I heard footsteps, "She's coming around" Morris said to someone. "Good, I'm anxious to see our results!" the voice of Dr. Jacobs said. "Penny, can you hear me?" he asked. "Morris are you holding my hand?" I asked. "Yes Penny, I'm holding your hand" he replied. "You're here! you stayed just like you said you would" I said overly enthusiasticly, sounding as though I was drunk. Morris looked at Dr. Jacobs, "she's still heavily sedated" he said looking at Morris with a smile.

"Penny can you open your eyes and tell me what you see?" the doctor asked. I tried, they were so heavy, I had to concentrate intensely, but finally as I opened them, I saw blurriness. Two outlines, I focused as they came into view. "Morris you really need to shave, you're starting to look like Jesus, for a second I thought I had died and gone to heaven, but then I realized it was just you" I said as the two men began to laugh. "Yep, that's our girl! Always the smart-ass! Looks like it worked huh doc?" Morris said with enthusiasm. "How do things look Penny, blurry or focused?" Dr. Jacobs asked. "I can see clearly, but I just want to sleep, I'm really tired is that normal?" I asked curiously. "Yes, and you need some rest, so we'll be monitoring you throughout the rest of the night. Morris, she's going to be out of it for the next twelve hours or so, we've got her hooked up to a morphine drip. You're welcome to come back then, in the meantime I want her to rest" Dr. Jacobs kindly said. "Go Morris, I need my beauty sleep" I mumbled. He leaned over and kissed my head. "I felt that Morris!" I jokingly reprimanded him. "I'll be back to make sure you're not causing hell down here in ICU, good-bye for now" he said as he turned and left. "Get some rest, don't worry about a thing, I'll be checking in on you throughout" the doctor said leaving me alone to sleep. Relieved, I quickly drifted off and the nightmares took over. 

The nightmare was always the same, Aunt Sophie yelling at me, "You need to earn your keep!" as she slammed my bedroom door. "How old are you?" the man asked me. I was huddled up on the bed, terrified as the tears began to fall like rain down my face. "Twelve" I mumbled. "Don't be afraid, I won't hurt you" he lied. I screamed, but no sound came out. I fought, but my efforts were in vain. I bled, my innocence was gone. Turning away from him, I curled up in the fetal position and closed my eyes. He said nothing as he opened the door and left, shutting it behind him. Again, I cried. The nightmare was always the same, but the man's face was always different. 

From that point on, I would earn my keep. With each twenty-dollar bill that went into Aunt Sophie's pocket, so did a little piece of my soul. I knew I had to get out of there or eventually she would own it. I began stealing from the men's wallets as they were distracted. I hid wads of money in a hole of the mattress that lay witness to the unwilling debauchery that took place on it. By the time I was sixteen, I had over two thousand dollars tucked away that she knew nothing about. I had enough to runaway, but I didn't want to quit school. That was the one thing I was very good at, maintaining a 4.0 throughout. I had a journalism class, and headed the school paper as a sophomore. The youngest to do so in the school's history. Media became the focus of my life and at age eighteen, I was hired to write my own news colonm for the local paper. Having a stock pile of money and a sound job, I packed my things and walked out, saying nothing to Aunt Sophie.

She died two years later after choking to death on a piece of meat as she sat on her couch alone watching her soap operas. I did not attend her funeral, I did ,however, two weeks later go to her grave site and spit on it. I did not shed one tear for her and if I could have it would have been tears of joy that she was dead. I showed no emotion whatsoever as the attorney informed me she had left me everything in her will which included eighteen-hundred dollars in her account, her rickety house and though it was not written in her will, she had left me a curse of reoccurring nightmares. I thought about bull-dozing the house down, but figured I had earned the money I would get from selling it with my own blood. 

I had woken up several times throughout the night just long enough to open my eyes and make sure I could still see.