We Are Both Mammals

We Are Both Mammals

Published by G. Wulfing at Smashwords

Copyright 2015 G. Wulfing

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Table of contents:

We Are Both
Mammals

About G.
Wulfing

We Are Both Mammals

Waking was a haze: I cannot say when I first woke or
what happened or what I felt. At some point I opened my eyes; I can
remember doing that, and seeing light from the window of the
clinic, and realising that I was in a hospital bed. It may have
been morning or afternoon; I cannot tell. There were people in the
room with me: the nurses, I believe, and perhaps the surgeon who
had operated on me.

On us.

I know that they spoke to me, but I have no
recollection of what they said. Everything is blurred and vague in
these memories. At some point, I woke up more coherent, and found
that there were no tubes in my mouth nor an oxygen mask on my face.
Presumably this means that I was conscious of those things being
there at some earlier point, but I don’t remember them.

“
Oh, you’re waking up,”
remarked a kindly female voice. My whole body ached dully. I think
I asked where I was and what had happened. The nurse – she of
the kindly voice – informed me that I had undergone surgery. I
remember nothing further.

The next memory is more vivid: of waking
again, and asking where I was and what had happened. A nurse
– possibly the same one, I have no idea – informed me
that I had undergone surgery. I processed this, and asked again,
somewhat dazedly, what had happened. The nurse told me that I had
been in an accident. Slowly, she explained that I had sustained
severe injuries to my internal organs, and that I had undergone
life-saving surgery.

The third time I remember waking up, I felt
fear. Previously I had been too dazed and bewildered to feel much
of anything except some anxiety, but the nurses had sounded so
reassuring that my dozy brain had subsided back into
unconsciousness without experiencing much arousal; this time, my
body seemed to feel that something was wrong. The dull aching in my
body also felt more intense: I was aware of what felt like bruising
and swelling, seemingly throughout my body, and vague pains that
seemed like they were screened off, or coming from underwater,
somehow; not immediate, but still very present in my body. I could
only breathe shallowly, and I was not sure why.

“
What happened?” I
demanded, feebly, of the nurse in the room. I could now see the
room more clearly: it had light blue walls, a couple of doorways
leading off into more brightly-lit areas, and a couple of white
things that might have been boxy machines, or furniture like chests
of drawers, positioned about the room. The lighting was somewhat
dim.

“
You’ve had surgery,” the
nurse replied, approaching the bed. He was dark-skinned, and wore a
pale blue uniform.

“
Why?” I asked anxiously,
not remembering the previous explanation I had received.

“
You were in an accident,”
he said simply.

“
Why?” I croaked stupidly,
suddenly feeling that my throat was rasping and dry.

“
Would you like a drink of
water?” the nurse offered.

I whispered, “Yes”, and there was a faint
humming as he made part of the hospital bed tilt upwards so that my
head and torso were raised slightly and I could drink. As the bed
moved, I registered that my ribs and midriff, from beneath the
pectorals, seemed to be covered in bandages and dressings. My fuzzy
mind reasoned that maybe that bandaging was the reason why I could
not seem to breathe properly.

I could only manage a mouthful from the
disposable cup that he held to my mouth. The effort required seemed
enormous, and exhausting. I felt weak and drained; weaker than I
had ever felt in my life. I seemed to doze after that.

I woke several times in the next twenty-four
hours: I know this because there was an analogue clock on the light
blue wall in front of me, above one of the doorways, and each time
I woke I had the feeling that I had not slept long. The wakings all
blur, however. At some point I discovered that there was a drip
inserted into the back of my left hand. A nurse told me that there
was a pad near my right hand, with electrical cords leading off it,
which I could press if I needed anything, and a couple of times I
pressed it to ask for water. My throat was so dry. I was thirsty,
but I was glad of that, in a way; it was somehow good to feel
something definite, something other than vague pains and
bewilderment and grogginess. My thirst reassured me that I was
alive. Sometimes, half awake, I would hear calm, quiet voices in
the room, but they didn’t seem to be talking to me.

The next thing I remember with any degree of
clarity is that the clock on the wall read five o’clock, and I
could tell by the gloom that it was early in the morning. I
blinked, feeling more awake than before, and pressed the pad under
my hand.

In a moment a pair of nurses arrived, both
female, wearing pale blue uniforms, and they seemed vaguely
familiar somehow. They put on a dim light, raised the upper part of
the bed a little, and helped me to drink. There was a cabinet at my
left that held the disposable cup from which I had been
drinking.

As one of the nurses, standing at my left,
helped me to drink, I realised that the other was on the other side
of the large bed, on my right, doing something. As my brain cleared
a little more, I looked sluggishly in that direction, and realised
that there was another patient in the bed with me: a thurga.

For an instant my drug-addled brain thought
it was an animal, as thurga-a do resemble brushtail possums in many
ways, though they have longer limbs and are the size of a large
domestic cat; and it was mostly covered by the bedclothes, as I
was, as it lay on its back over a metre away from me. Its furry,
dark brown arms, with their hands like a rat’s forepaws, lay on the
sheets that reached to its chest. As the creature’s bright dark
eyes looked back at me from its dark-furred face, I recognised it
as a thurga: a native of the planet on which I was living and
working.

“
Daniel,” said the nurse
on my left, very gently, “have you met Toro-a-Ba?”

In that instant, a curious and terrifying
thing happened. It was as though my brain realised long before I
did that something was horribly wrong. Whether it was the nurse’s
tones or the puzzling sight of the thurga sharing my hospital bed
or something else, I do not know; but a sick chill gripped my
heart. I stared stupidly at the thurga, which held my gaze.

“
No,” I murmured, not
understanding why I felt such trepidation.

“
Daniel, you and Toro-a-Ba
have undergone the same surgery.”

“
Oh,” I mumbled, wondering
vaguely why the thurga’s surgery was relevant to mine.

“
Hello, Daniel,” the
thurga said to me softly, in English, and there was what seemed
like great tenderness in its voice, almost as though it knew me
well. Something about this seemed very wrong to me, but I could not
understand what. Perhaps I was supposed to know this thurga. To a
human, many thurga-a look very similar, so perhaps I did know this
one and simply didn’t recognise it, or something … My head felt so
muzzy and bewildered …

“
Hello,” I mumbled blankly
in reply, still regarding the thurga.

But I was weary already, just from being
awake, so I rolled my head back to its normal position of looking
straight ahead, and my eyes closed almost without my command, and
drowsiness subsumed me. I barely felt the hospital bed being
lowered gently back into its almost-horizontal position beneath
me.

And even as I drifted to welcome sleep,
something in the back of my mind squirmed uneasily.

When I woke again, it was full
daylight. A large window on the left side of the room had its
curtains drawn back to let light into the room, and someone in a
white coat was present with two nurses in their pale blue uniforms.
As I was lucid enough to speak and be spoken to, my bed was raised
slightly, and the new person stood at the left of my bed and
introduced herself: Sarah Fong, who informed me that she was one of
the primary surgeons who had worked on me, and a specialist in
synthetic organs, transplants, and the human digestive system. She
was petite, dark haired, and seemed to be of Asian descent. She
wore casual business clothes underneath her white coat.


“We
were working on you for a good twenty-five hours,” she told me
pleasantly. “I’ve been checking you over every day since then, and
everything seems to be going smoothly. You’re stable, and that’s
excellent. At this stage, that’s all we ask.”

I had so many questions that I did not know
where to begin. So once again I repeated, “What happened?”

“
You were in an
accident.”

Yes, I knew that, but: “What kind of
accident?”

“
There was a malfunction
in the laboratory where you work, and you fell under some machinery
that crushed your abdomen. I’m not sure exactly what happened, but
no doubt your colleagues and the other people who were present can
explain it to you later.” Surgeon Fong paused for a moment,
regarding my abdomen. I was watching her face, and I saw her eyes
flick to the thurga that lay beyond arm’s reach beside me. “You
suffered massive trauma to both intestines, your liver, kidneys,
gall bladder, and stomach – pretty much your whole digestive
system,” she told me frankly. “You also had five broken ribs. Your
major systems were all failing as a result of the trauma, and you
would not have survived if we had not performed this surgery.
Thankfully your spleen was intact, otherwise we wouldn’t have been
able to save you.”

I tried to take all this in. My breathing
was still shallow and awkward, and it was difficult to concentrate.
The surgeon paused again, and turned to the two nurses in the room.
In a low voice I heard her ask them, “Has he realised?”, to which
both of them shook their heads.

Surgeon Fong consulted a clipboard for a
moment. Then she turned to me again. “Have you met Toro-a-Ba?” she
asked, almost offhandedly; a little awkwardly, even, without quite
making eye contact.

I nodded gingerly, not sure why that should
be important. I still did not know why a thurga was in the hospital
bed with me, but it was hardly the most pressing of my
concerns.

“
He underwent
– similar surgery to yours,” Surgeon Fong said. She cleared
her throat, glanced at the nurses, and gestured toward the
bedclothes, leaning over me a little. “Perhaps now would be … er
…?” she murmured.

The nurses nodded, and moved forward. The
bedclothes were peeled back, and I saw that it was not just my ribs
and midriff that were bandaged: my entire abdomen was covered in
various bandages, dressings and tubes. I gulped, and gave a slight
gasp of distress, feeling light-headed with the shock.

From my sternum to my thighs, the skin that
was not hidden under bandages was discoloured with bruising. The
flesh of my torso was swollen and puffy. A dozen or more slim,
transparent flexible hoses were embedded in my skin, leading off my
body, bearing assorted fluids – clear, bloody, yellowish red, and
even greenish brown; they were held in place by adhesive dressings
or visible black stitches. Many were looped around to make sure
they entered my body at the correct angle, and the loops were
bandaged in place. I was hideous. I gazed at the infestation of
dressings and hoses in dismay and dizzy bewilderment, feeling sick,
wishing that someone would explain why this had happened and
whether I would ever recover to full strength. Would I be all
right? Were my organs all still where they should be? What exactly
had been done to me?

“
Are you all right,
Daniel?”

I looked up groggily to see Surgeon Fong
studying my face, probably noting the fact that I was feeling
nauseated. I gave a couple of small nods, though ‘all right’ was
most definitely not what I felt.

“
It looks a bit of a mess,
doesn’t it,” one of the nurses supplied sympathetically.