The Procedure [antikvár]

PrologueI had to watch the one with the needle. No matter that I heard the psychiatrist step up to the side of my stretcher and coolly begin to explain what they were about to do with me, nor that I felt the tug of the nurse's hands as she secured the IV in my left arm with adhesive tape. I kept my eye on the silent anesthetist who was standing behind my head. His syringe lay capped on a nearby table." thirty seconds after the succinylcholine is injected, you will feel your muscles twitching, and then the paralysis will occur. The transmission of neuroelectrical impulses through the nerve ends to striated muscle will be blocked, and all movement, including respiration, will be stopped. It is the extreme unpleasantness of mounting air-hunger that will, in the end, condition your response, and so you will be allowed to endure it for eighty seconds. At that point the anesthetist will start to ventilate you and will carry on making you breathe until the drug wears off, in about four minutes. Your heart will continue to beat, and the drug won't affect your sphincters, so you won't soil. . ."I knew that the psychiatrist's matter-of-fact tone was a lie others who'd gone before had warned, "It feels like death." I ignored the droning words and strained my eyes farther back to keep the anesthetist in view. All I managed to see now were his hands as he deftly snapped the blade of a laryngoscope open to make sure the light worked. Then he glided his gloved fingers over an assortment of rubber tubes and black curved1