The Day My Brain Exploded Read online

When my eyes opened, I realized there had been no naked bodies, no blood, no oral sex. Just another cruel, surreal mental fiction. That blood I had tasted was liquid food a nurse had been feeding me. I had simply been drinking my meal. The bizarre orgy was just another heightened fantasy to eroticize my internal bleeding, physical anguish, and relentless pain. But my lips felt bloodstained for days.

  I was granted three night nurses: Joanna, a tall and haggard white woman; Kiyanna, a sexy young black woman; and Becky, a frumpy redheaded white woman. Becky looked very young, maybe thirty. On one of her nights to watch me—one frightening night—my body changed multiple times.

  I broke and then I melted and then I burned.

  It started around ten in the evening. Becky had just dimmed my room’s lights and closed the door. The first thing I heard was music. Chiming bells, like those from music boxes. Then I looked at my hands. They had become hardened, smooth, and solid white. My light-blue hospital gown had become a light-blue dress. I saw a mirror in front of me. My cheeks were solid white, my lips red, and my eyes glassy and fringed with rigid black eyelashes.

  I had become a porcelain doll. Viewing my reflection, I saw my sickening kabuki mask, affixed to my once beautifully brown face. Seeing my newly white cheeks, chin, and nose, I screamed.

  My jaws began to tremble. The more I screamed, the more I felt my face being torn apart by the noise. The porcelain doll I had become was breaking, disintegrating. My head, arms, legs, torso, hands, and feet were all breaking into tiny shards. The only thing remaining was the dress.

  I screamed again. Without a face, body, or head, the sound emanated from the air itself. After what seemed like an hour, I saw my body materialize again and return to its usual mahogany-colored, fleshy self. Wanting to reassure myself that I was okay, I attempted to touch my face.

  But I couldn’t; my hands were tied to the bedposts.

  I simply shut my eyes and tried to sleep again. Within moments, I felt my body morph to porcelain hardness and then soften back to its normal skin. But then I felt my body soften even further, my flesh becoming looser, limper, thicker and gummier. Though I feared what was happening, I opened my eyes. Again, my body had changed. The skin color was no longer brown, but reddish, the color of wet earth. Terra-cotta. I had become a doll, again. This time made of clay. But before I could even open my mouth in terror, the clay began changing shape. I was melting, like the Wicked Witch of the West at the end of The Wizard of Oz.

  Please Lord, let this nightmare end, let me return to normal, I prayed. No such luck. From the melted mire, my figure transformed once more. This time I had become straw. Now I was Raggedy Andy. I suddenly saw small glints of light on my straw feet. Fire. It moved up my feet to my legs to my chest to my arms to my shoulders. It didn’t dare touch my head, which, fortunately, had retained its natural form.

  In just a few seconds my entire body was in flames, straw burning with unbearable heat. Just as I had never felt the porcelain break, or the clay melt, I never felt the burning of the straw. I thought of chaste Hindu wives who, once upon a time, would immolate themselves after their husbands died.

  While my body burned away, I shut my eyes again, only opening them after the sounds of crackling had died.

  Gone was the straw. My body had returned.

  The porcelain had broken. The clay had melted. The straw had burned. An hour after my shape-shifting hallucination ended, Becky entered the room to check on me. Wearing an unrehearsed smile, she approached my bed.

  “I came in because the room was so quiet,” she said. “You seemed so peaceful. I bet you must have been having a beautiful dream.”

  After the depraved sex and terrifying transformations, I underwent a spectacular religious revelation that would also remain with me forever. I saw death.

  No, that’s wrong. I saw the afterlife.

  Yet rather than seeing the proverbial white light, I entered glorious, deep blue water, and emerged fishlike, making my way through a liquid passage, a magnificent cosmic uterus. I was pushed through a thick wetness to emerge newly born. Dying, it seemed, was as difficult as being born.

  The work a newborn endures to leave the womb seemed akin to my struggle; I forced my way through the watery birth canal, to die and be reborn anew.

  I discovered the world after death. But just as I was pushing hardest through the heavy fluid, I was stopped—my nurse was slapping my face. It seemed my blood pressure had dropped dangerously low; there was fear for my life. As my death illusion revealed, my hallucinations revealed a new form of consciousness I had never known.

  The liquidity taught me that in death we return to being the fish we were in our mothers’ wombs. And we enter another, far more substantial womb. Whether this was, indeed, God—as mother, as woman—setting us free once more, or whether the world beyond was a liquid afterlife, I knew that our visions of the hereafter—simple constructs like heaven and hell—meant nothing.

  A joy, an exuberance, lay beyond. But it was neither light nor white. It was dark and blue.

  Temporal: Spraying Pee and Gagging Free

  For the three months preceding the drilling of my skull, a surgical pipe was shoved into the hole of my penis—a catheter to offset my loss of bladder control.

  I begged to have the catheter removed. It wasn’t. When it finally was, it was the worst pain I’d ever experienced. The nurse laughed. She told me that now I knew what having a baby felt like. She was wrong. Having your dickhole penetrated by a surgical pipe has to feel far worse. Otherwise, surely humankind would have disappeared years ago.

  Another horrible intrusion was made through my nose. After a month or so in the hospital, I had stopped eating, and had lost a mighty thirty pounds. The doctors were scared that I would not be strong enough to withstand the open brain surgery, so they inserted a feeding tube.

  This nightmarish, pliable tube contained liquid nutrients, which flowed through the nose and directly into the stomach. Another way to feed is to insert the tube directly into the stomach. I wish I had had that one, because then it wouldn’t have to pass down my throat.

  This method was horrendous. I gagged constantly, hoping to dislodge the plastic from my esophagus. I relentlessly fought the nurses, trying to pull it out.

  One time, it all went too far.

  It was far past midnight. As usual, I was all alone; I wasn’t allowed to have visitors during the night hours.

  My nurse that evening was a burly woman named Janet, an intimidating creature whose dark brown hands stood out against my pale hospital gown. I tried to remove the tube. I was choking, coughing, and spitting blood.

  “Stop it!” Janet shouted. “I’m warning you, stop it! You’re only making it worse for yourself!”

  Barely conscious, I kept trying to pull the wicked snake from my nasal passageway, from down inside my throat.

  “I warned you!” she screamed.

  Suddenly, she pounced, grabbing my arms and pulling them to the sides of my body. She placed a huge hand on my face, preventing me from moving my head at all. Then she punched me hard in the chest.

  “You like that? Now you know not to touch the damn tube!”

  I was trying to scream, but I couldn’t. My face bruised from the force of her grasp. I weighed only one hundred and ten pounds; Janet weighed at least two hundred. The next morning my face and chest were marked black and blue. I screamed to the doctors and my family that Janet had physically abused me. But they considered me delirious; not one person believed me.

  Two nights later, Janet was scheduled to be my night nurse again. When I found out, I shrieked and demanded someone else. My wish was finally granted. As for the hellish tube, I pleaded with the doctors to remove it, insisting that my mouth, tongue, and throat had been scraped raw. They told me that it could be removed if I promised to eat food on my own.

  From then on, I made sure to keep my mouth full of food whenever the doctors passed. Even the hospital Jell-O couldn’t be as bad as the alternative.

 
; Arachnoid: The Last Supper

  My craniotomy was scheduled for May 5, barely one week after my nurse had beaten me up.

  On the evening before, I was supposed to be relaxed and peaceful, since I would be facing the most grueling experience of my life. I had been in great spirits all day, laughing and joking with the doctors. What the hell, they must have been thinking, let’s make him laugh!

  One more head shave was necessary, and the man to do it was Dr. Khan. An Egyptian transplant, he always reassured me with a warm smile and kind words. As he shaved my head, he decided to try his hand at comedy.

  “Hey Ashok,” he said as the razor grazed my head, “you ever think about being a singer?”

  “What’s that question all about?”

  “I was just thinking that with the turban you’re going to wear, you could be a backup singer for Erykah Badu.”

  “Lame,” I responded, but I was silently pleased that he was even attempting to use Erykah Badu as a comic prop.

  Dad had promised to bring me dinner from TGI Friday’s. Meals from outside were usually against regulations, but he was given special permission, since my head would be carved the next day. I requested chicken fingers and French fries.

  At 7:30, Mom, Dad, Prakash, Karmen, and I were sitting in my hospital room, telling stories. The TGI Friday’s meal had just been placed on my lap. Damn, it looked good.

  Just then my personal terror walked in. It was Janet. On this night, before the big operation, she was my nurse.

  “Get her out!” I shrieked. “She tried to murder me! Get that demon out!”

  I continued screaming as Janet moved closer, causing my blood pressure to shoot up.

  Before, few had believed my story about Janet abusing me. However, Prakash trusted me. At no time during my entire stay had I claimed I had been thrashed by anyone else.

  Prakash quickly called one of the doctors working on the floor. Dr. Williams had never dealt with me, but she knew about my case. A white woman of about sixty, with inappropriate waist-length gray hair, she seemed exhausted when Prakash spoke to her.

  “Tomorrow’s Ashok’s craniotomy, Dr. Williams. But there’s one issue we haven’t dealt with?” he said.

  “Which one? He just has to stay calm,” Dr. Williams responded.

  “Right. But Janet’s his night nurse again; she mauled him before and now he’s freaking out.”

  “Impossible. She has an impeccable record. She wouldn’t do that.”

  Prakash remained calm. “I’m not going to argue with you about that now, doctor. All we know is that he is not in good shape, and needs to rest.”

  Dr. Williams finally agreed. “Okay, here’s what I’ll do. I’ll send over Dr. Babu to give him a sedative. And I’ll call the head nurse to tell her about this.”

  Prakash returned to the bed and recounted what Dr. Williams said. Dr. Babu was a fat, jovial Indian man. Originally from New Delhi, he had come to America just a year prior. He was charming and relaxed, and Tribe Rajamani dug him.

  The head nurse was Priscilla, a wonderfully kind woman. She was black, very short, very muscular, very dark, very beautiful. She had amazing bedside manners. She decided that she would take care of me that night.

  My family was relieved.

  Dr. Babu came in and gave me a powerful sedative. I didn’t know what that drug was, but oh my God, everyone should try it. It not only calmed me down, it made me feel as if I were on a sandy beach in the Bahamas.

  Janet began to leave the room. Prakash suddenly cornered her.

  “What exactly happened that night?”

  “I don’t know, I was just doing my job,” she said, looking away and speaking like a little child.

  “Ashok is adamant in claiming that you hurt him.”

  “I’m sorry if he was bothered, Mr. Rajamani,” she continued in her little girl voice. “I might have been a little forceful. Sometimes nurses have no other option.”

  “But he was so feeble! Plus he didn’t know what he was doing at all.”

  “Once again, I’m sorry.” She rushed out.

  I was relocated to a new room, under the care of Priscilla. Everything was right with the world. But there was a downside to the victory. My TGI Friday’s chicken fingers and fries had grown cold. I was forced to eat the evening specialty from the hospital cafeteria: chewy steak and canned peas. And the Holy Grail for the Last Supper? Not a pre–Da Vinci Code chalice of ornately decorated glass, but a large plastic mug of vanilla protein drink. Shortly after I ate my feast, the lovely pills submerged me into a guiltless sleep.

  Soon, very soon, my skull would be drilled wide open.

  Not the First Time in Jail: 1989–1992

  Yes, I’m a Dirty Dothead!

  The pain inflicted on me in the hospital wasn’t completely surprising. I had been Abu-Ghraib’d before.

  Grayslake Community High School was the first jail in which I had been imprisoned. I was thirteen when my sentence began, and as I entered GCHS for freshman year, panic struck me. I was puny when I first saw the dingy three-story building, just a few inches over five feet, and still wearing thick spectacles. My bushy black hair had grown past my chin, too straight to be considered an Indo-fro, but poufy and thick and dry enough to resemble brittle, licorice-flavored cotton candy. The summer sun had darkened my skin, and the only meat on my bony figure protruded from my stomach, causing a substantially distended gut.

  I could easily have been the poster child for a Sally Struthers “Save the Children” Fund.

  Wearing a blue Ocean Pacific tee and Lee corduroys that I had purchased specifically for the first day of school, I felt handsome, although the outfit only accentuated my emaciation.

  Once the sterile metal doors banged shut behind me, I had officially been incarcerated in a world that would make me long for the glory days of Ass-Hock and show-and-tell face-offs. This inferno was as obscenely white as Avon, but since it was filled with worldly teens instead of innocent kids, I was greeted with a barrage of sophisticated racism from the very first day.

  The summer before, I made the mistake of watching Grease and Grease 2 marathons on TV. Each movie depicted high-schoolers who looked old and used enough to be chain-smoking empty nesters. I discussed the problem with Prakash, who had already inhabited this academic universe for a whole three years before me.

  “Prakash, is it true that all the kids in high school look so old?”

  “Even older.”

  “What are you talking about? That Rizzo looks like she could be someone’s grandma!”

  “Sorry, Ashok, the kids look even older than Rizzo.”

  I was surprised to find out that he wasn’t exactly joking. The other students were freakishly tall and massive, featuring stubbled boys and beyond busty girls. I couldn’t believe these kids were only thirteen. Oh well, I thought, let them greet this kid who looks like a malnourished Ethiopian midget.

  For me, freshman life was a never-ending blur of slurs and name-calling. I was getting good grades, but nothing could compensate for the terrors that took place.

  In addition to occasionally speaking to me with an exaggerated Indian accent, many of my classmates, especially the “popular” or “jock” stars, flung me a lovely collection of monikers that first year, such as “Sandman” (Indians, they figured, were like Arabs, and hence came from deserts); “Camel Jockey” (same premise); “Dirty Gandhi” (self-explanatory); and “Dothead” (self-explanatory, squared).

  After one sweaty hour of knee football, which was like regular football except that we played it on our knees (sounds sexier than it was), I received a lovely keepsake in the locker room. Two of the jocks forcibly wrapped a wet towel on my head, saying that it’s what my family wore anyway.

  Prakash didn’t save me when we both shared time in the hellhole. I wondered why. I also wondered when at home he never spoke about the racism at school. I figured that perhaps because I was a lot smaller than his large frame, I was the only one attacked.

  One Frida
y, though, I witnessed tall, muscular Prakash opening his locker to find a magazine photo of a nameless turbaned Sikh covered with red crosses and the phrase, “Go Home.”

  So that’s why he never spoke about high school, I realized. He’s getting as much shit as me. The only difference was that he kept it to himself.

  The attacks continued the next year, although there were a few new additions. For example, the slave joke: If someone asked for a favor, like picking up a fallen pencil, the responder wouldn’t do it, instead replying, “What color does my skin look like? Ashok’s?”

  Bush One’s Persian Gulf War provided new fodder for the white teen masses hungry for South Asian blood.

  Sauntering to my chemistry class, I heard some of the jock boys speaking loudly in the gray-tiled hallway. Not paying close attention, instead thinking about the test I hadn’t studied for, I figured they were just high-fiving each other over some random ball game. Then I tripped. Burly blond Todd had stuck his leg in front of my right foot. When I stood up again, he spoke to me as loudly as possible.

  “Ashok, guess what? We found a new name for you: ‘Fucking Iraqi.’ ”

  There must have been laughter, but I didn’t give a damn at that moment. I was still concerned about memorizing the periodic table.

  But from that day on, I started paying attention. I was, indeed, now dubbed “Fucking Iraqi.”

  “Go back to Iraq and quit killing our soldiers” was a common phrase directed to me.

  One day after gym class, I couldn’t take it any longer. Terrence, a tiny white boy with a sandy-brown bowl cut, had been barking the Iraqi nickname. I finally let loose and punched his stomach. Suddenly, we two scrawny midget boys were fighting. Before we knew it, a substantial crowd of more than ten classmates had gathered. They sang. A sweet, brief, one verse sing-a-long:

  “A fight! A fight! Sand nigger and a white!”

  Unfortunately, before the melody could become an anthemic pop wonder, grouchy old Mrs. Baumgard from the nearby biology classroom came storming down the hallway. By the time she reached us, all of the kids had cleverly dispersed, and she found Terrence and me on the floor. After separating us and shooing him back to class, she spoke to me. Only to me.