Sunday's Story: A few visitors

It started off in a rush. Evin fainted in the boy’s locker room before gym class. He could almost remember coach Greyson trying to revive him. The other boys, in various states of dress, hovered over the beefy coach’s shoulders.
Then he was on a bed in a hospital room. Then his parents were following him as he rolled along on a bed to the operating room. His mother was holding his head, saying, “It’s going to be all right honey, its going to be all right.” His father followed along, holding her hand. They were a train of confusion, a medical engine pulling a paternal caboose.
Then the engineer in the form of a nurse disconnected the rear portion of the train, and he went into surgery.
“This won’t hurt a bit, just remember to breath,” said the Anesthetiziologist. He then cupped a plastic mask around Evin’s lips, “Breath deep.”
He did.
“One,” said the doctor.
The gas tasted like tangerines, tangerines and iodine, tangerines in his lungs.
“Two.”
Tangerines deep in his nostrils.
“Three.”
Tangerines clogging up his brain, wedging there like an unnoticed dress in a car door, catching mud and muck from the road that would never quite come out.
“Four! Keep breathing deep.”
His eyes closed. He was on a porch, that proverbial porch that old granddads are supposed to dispense wise advice to young children from.
“Five. That’s great.”
His brother, Curtis, sat there next to him. Curtis was young, not off in college, but still clean shaven.
“Six.”
He opened his eyes; the blue capped doctor was looking down at him. The clear plastic mask obscured some of Evin’s vision.
“Seven.”
He closed his eyes. His brother looked at him, and said, “Remember when you used to say you could fly.”
“Eight.”
“Yeah.”
“I told you you couldn’t. Or I’d ignore you. I was wrong. You can.”
“Nine.”
“I always told you I could.” Evin said. He tried to open his eyes, but couldn’t.
“Ten.”
And he flew, for a time. And then he opened his eyes, malformed blue doctors and red nurses floated around him. He couldn’t move.
He felt the pressure on his groin. It was a strange, outward, inward, upward, sensation, and then he felt the heat rumbling around in his chest, the heat right there in the pumping lifeblood, a mellow heat, increasing as the object stayed there, radiating, unnaturally, there. He could feel the IV too, butterfly needle tapped there against his knuckles.
It felt too much, all of it, and the world fled from him.
(to be continued)