True Fear

Today I cooped up in the room all day long. Not that I didn't wanna go out, but I recently developed an intestinal intoxication last night (as I always did in the past few years). Although the pain wasn't as intense as it should have been, it left me devasted in the bed.

I lay on my side, shifting position every minute. Once the pain attacks the abdomen, you can be sure that you will never rest peacefully that night. It was annoying but not striking this time. I kept telling myself that it would all be over soon. Suddenly, I felt a piercing cold claiming its territory over every inch of my body. My legs and arms started shaking like mad, then my jaws and the whole body. It was penetrating as if the temperature had suddenly dropped to zero. After tolerating such chilling pain for five minutes, I decidedly stumbled to the wardrobe to get two thick blanket and sweaters to put on. Every effort that I spent on this task seemed impossible with my legs and arms trembling, making me unable to hold on to anything.

Despite of a great quantity of clothes and blankets, I didn't feel any warmer. My whole body kept shaking, disobeying my attempt to stop this crazy physical rebellion. My muscles tensed and the urge of flexing my limbs came over me. I tried to fold and stretch my legs but then they shook harder than before so that I had to get back into the position that I had been. The fever must have been high. I felt desperate and, more startling, the first true fear of death in my life.

Never before in my life I felt such tremendous fear. I thought of my family and friends in Thailand, my Patto who would be working on a night shift in a restaurant in San Francisco. I thought of my beloved friends who had been here for me in Africa. Only if they had been there with me, I would have called them to take me to the hospital. Nothing is scarrier than having no one beside you while suffering that kind of pain.

As the thought of calling for help stroke me, I tried to sit up and reach the phone unsuccessfully. I fell on the bed one more time, curled up like a baby, telling myself to rest for a few minutes in order to gather the last effort to reach the phone; and that was when the tiredness and dream victoriously overcame me.

I fell asleep until the golden shining ray of sunlight slipped through the iron curtain of my room. Alone, tired, suffered and desperate, I woke up and fell back to sleep for five or six time. In one of these phase-in-phase-out progress, I remembered trying to vomit in the basin but nothing came out. Torturing it was I can say. My head ached, my teeth gritted while a variety of unrealistic events came into my slumber.

At 4 p.m. I woke up refreshed. The agonizing pain lessened and body vibration had stopped. I gathered myself to remember what had happened last night. It was a nightmare but real. I was glad to be there again, concious and bettter.

The worst gone. Fear repelled. And I...relieved.

However, the horror of that night had already been imprinted on my memory and... forgotten it won't be.