My Brain Made Me Do It ~.:One Shot:.~

Dancing through life. That was me in the car with the windows rolled down and my fingers snapping to a beat. That was also the name of the song I had blasting near maximum volume on the way to the doctors office. What was the occasion for the celebration, you might ask? Life. I needed no other reason to be joyous. Though if you tempted me, I would begin at once to write an enormous list of things that made me so.
Mom parked the car in front of a tiny, but neat office building, positioned right next door to the plastic surgeon's place. In fact, I believe my doctor is a plastic surgeon as well as a neurologist.

A neurologist. Right. The doctor who specializes in studying (and hopefully fixing) the issues of your nerves and nervous system. Why would I need one? Well, I'm not entirely sure that I did, but my hands had been giving me extreme problems lately, and my blood tests all came back normal. When you've got pain like carpal tunnel, you're something of a computer freak, and youre in no way vitamin deficient, a nerve problem seems like the best bet. So I followed the doctors' orders like every good girl who wants a solution to her problem does, and tried everything they suggested for my messed up hands. I stopped typing on the computer every day. I wore wrist braces to bed. I took a daily vitamin, reacquainted myself with sunshine and exercise, and started a symptom journal to try and ascertain what was making my hands better or worse.

Nothing made a difference. I could type all night or simply lie on my bed with my hands lying flat at my sides; either way the pins and needles would stab through my fingers and palms for hours on end. Wrist braces or no, my hands still felt sweaty one minute and ice cold the next. Pressure increased the pain, but refraining from opening a baggie of cheese did not stop my suffering. I had pills, but the side effects were more than a little freakish. I already exhibited extreme cases of mania just by drinking tall mochas from Starbucks. Why on earth would I take something that could double those effects? Alright, so the prescription medicine helped a lot. It still didn't explain the cause of my problem, though, so it was on to the next step towards discovery. Torture. Uh, I mean tests! Yes, tests. Helpful, sophisticated, necessary tests that doctors put a patient through for their own good, however distasteful they may seem. Remember that.

There was a short time for me to eat a couple mints and catch up on my Parenting magazines, and then we were cheerfully called back to the other doom. Room! Called back to the other room. My favorite little skeleton man was not there, and that alone was enough to make me gloomy. But the worst was yet to come.

In came the doctor with a laptop on a rolling table which she slid to the other end of the room. She said the test was designed to check my nerve function, reflexes, and something to do with brain activity, maybe, but paying attention would have required using up a lot of that brain activity, and I wanted the results to be good. Next, le docteur put small, cold round things with colorful wires attached to them on certain parts of my hand, and held up a funny looking device with two metal prongs on the end. I could sense the danger already, and it didnt take hyperactive Spidey sense to see. The thing was like an oversized tazer!

"This wont really hurt," my doctor said. "It might be a little uncomfortable, but its no worse than shocking your hand on a doorknob."
Oh, bad choice of words. Needles, I'm fine with. Getting smashed into the wall by colliding into my large, impatient brother is no problem. Taking a bad turn on a bike and scraping my knee to shreds might produce a wince, but static shock of any kind is the number one worst feeling I can possibly imagine. I've cried in the store just from touching the grocery cart in the wrong place. This test was looking more medieval by the minute.

The prongs were placed on my arm, and I braced myself, thinking that if I expected an immensely terrible pain, the real thing would only seem half as bad as I thought. I've been wrong before. It was very much like getting shocked by a doorknob or grocery cart, only the pain was duller, somehow more intense at the same time, and shot directly through my nerve, making my whole arm twitch and the rest of me jump.

I assumed the test wouldn't last long. A few shocks on the right side, a few on the left, and I'd be back in the car, dancing through life before I knew it. I should really stop assuming things. Eight times I got shocked on one side, and each time was just as bad as the first. I clenched my teeth to hold back tears. This was just a silly test and I wasn't going to cry like a toddler getting a shot.

Stop! Please stop! I screamed in my mind, but I never spoke a word out loud. My doctor moved the mouse to her computer and I relaxed a bit. She turned back to me and said something about minor nerves, or more sensitive nerves, or just different nerves.

Oh Lord, no, not again!

I would have done anything to make it all stop, but every way I thought to complain sounded stupid to me.

"Whoa" I pressed a hand over half of my face. "I'm getting dizzy."

It was the truth. Part of me was escaping. Like a dream you try hard to remember from the night before, but its gone just as soon as you realize you had one. I thought maybe I would lose all feeling and finally be rid of the pain.
"Okay, why don't you lay down?"
Lay down. Sounded nice. I coughed twice, though I have no memory of ever doing so, rolled my eyes, and slumped back against the wall. I was what they call, 'unconscious.'

There was a black nothingness at first, and then came bright flashes of the past. They were my past; flashes of my life, starting from infancy to the present day. I experienced so many memories and feelings in those flashes that whole pages couldn't contain them. Each was beautiful, poignant, vivid, and fleeting. Each was accurate, save for one thing; they all had musical themes within them.

I don't remember enough to go into great detail. I was out for only a few seconds, though it felt like a lifetime. I do recall one vision that merged a memory of my childhood with the song, 'Red and Black,' incorporating my building blocks in an odd way, but the rest were too fast for me to catch.

The last thing I saw was not a memory at all, but a flash of me doing something I loved; dancing. I was in a dome room with no visible walls. The room was empty, except for me and my partner. The floor was dark and polished. Everything was dim, yet I was warm and safe. Safe from feelings, probes, and pain. Safe from mysterious hand problems. Safe from life. The strangest things about it were my partner and skin color. I was dancing with Fiyero, and I was green.

My eyes opened to an ugly, beige ceiling. First, I wondered why the room was moving, and next I wondered where Fiyero had gone. Then I remembered where I was, and I wanted to cry again. I wanted to be dancing, but instead I was lying on an exam table, feeling like my stomach was about to reject my breakfast. Fiyero wasnt with me anymore, and I had truly loved being green.
"How are you feeling?"
Frustrated, angry, annoyed, upset, disappointed... "Tired and nauseated," I said. I was instructed to rest for a while, and I obeyed.

Fainting wasn't supposed to be like that, you know. I'm supposed to be able to do it on demand, and slip into a graceful heap on the floor while my pleated dress falls out in folds all around my limp figure. But at least I had fainted, I had done it gracefully, and I knew I was capable of it. I felt like I had real princess potential, now. My title as storybook heroine could not be rejected with a fainting story to back me up.

After letting me recover some of my strength and having a nurse take my vitals, the doctor informed me that in all her twenty years of giving that test, no one, not even toddlers, had fainted from it.
"I can't stand getting shocked," I told her.

"Your brain must have told you you'd had enough and it made you black out."

Smart brain. But then, without my brain, I wouldn't have been getting the pain signals in the first place, and I wouldn't have needed to pass out.

Are you looking for a moral? Here's one for you: Life really is more painless for the brainless.

Short, but real.
I'm hungry.