The Wave and the Particle

“There it is. I see it now. Come here, you little.. Hold still, this is going to be tricky.”

Like I could disobey? My head and torso might as well be locked in vise grips, and the meds held me even more immobile. What muscle twitch? They might as well have used Botox. Maybe they did.

I also felt very detached from reality, and my mind was wandering in uncomfortable realms of philosophy.

“All right, that’s most of it. Want to see it?”

Like I can speak…

“Here, I’ll hold it in your line of sight. It’s a big one! That’s, what, three millimeters?”

I blinked.

Three millimeters. Is. Big. Well, if I’m a molecule, I guess so. Wasn’t there a theory, that solar systems are just atoms in someone else’s giant universe? What does that make me, some idiotic chunk of steel in some alien’s hammer head, about to hit their equivalent of a brick wall?

What if that tiny little tumor is a micro-universe that I just annihilated? How many billions of beings did I shoot into a corner bucket of a tissue-preserving black hole?

“Right, so now we’re going to give you a quick radiation treatment, while the area’s lit up by the stain. There are some sores nearby that I don’t like the look of, and I want to ensure we don’t have to do this surgery ever again.”

Yeah, sure. Make my body so sick that the cancer cells stand out, so they can be targeted and destroyed. Put the healthy cells on the brink of death, wipe out the abnormal ones, then bring the body back. Sure, that makes sense.

And the disease itself, which is technically an explosion of life. The DNA zipper gets stuck, and keeps unzipping, and unzipping, and unzipping. Nothing can stop the zipper, because that tiny piece at the end that says STOP is now making that protein chain forever, feeding off the cell’s nutrition, overwhelming, destroying its mother, breaking open and spreading its broken code like some twisted variation of Choose Life but Deny Other Life, or maybe Deny Death at All Costs…

Maybe that’s our planet? The piece of the zipper that broke off? Well, more likely the moon, and we’re the tumor instead. Does that make our sun the impending formaldehyde? Or maybe we’re the solder that will fuse the asteroid belt into a solid ring, and the sun is the torch, inching imperceptibly closer…

“How are you doing in there? Blink if you can hear me. I know, it feels like you’re separated from your body, between the anesthesia and the chemicals. It’ll be over soon, and we can get you into a comfy bed to recover.”

Hardly, Doctor. You and I both know I’ll be so nauseous after this that I’ll be lucky to make it to that so-called “soft bed” before I do something messy. How many universes have I flushed down the drain, while my hyper-sensitive skin chafes against the fabric that demonstrates a gravity well? Is my hip the result of a supernova collision, distorting and bending the threads into its own reality? If I roll over, do I take out the best civilizations that inhabit the quarks and leptons of my existence?

But I blink, slowly. He seems satisfied.

This would be so much easier if we still believed in vaccinations. Or had banished the advertising that made smoking look sooooo cool. Catch it before it advances, change our way of thinking so that asthma-inducing smoke doesn’t equal “cool” with application of fire to a small grass field. Money for me, over existence for thee. Thou don't count as important in my universe.

“All set! Let’s get the restraints off you, so you can relax.”

Shadows of nurses between me and the too-bright lights. The clank of a metal halo being removed, still cool to the touch. It never warmed to my body temp; instead, it stayed as icy as the operating room. I felt as fallen as an angel losing their ability to fly.

Science says we are both a wave and a particle. Part “solid” object, part pure energy, which makes oscillating waves that are so big no measuring device can find them. We glow, too, a little bit, into the ultraviolet spectrum. Faint, but perceptible. Too big, or too small, for this plane of existence. Why can’t I get the size of anything right?

“Doctor, his vitals, they’re tanking.”

“What? That shouldn’t happen! We’re done, he should be pulling out of it!”

Flip flip flip, light, dark, light, dark. Lights are too bright. Should I emit more photons, or snuff the glow?

“Come on, buddy, I know cancer sucks, but don’t check out on us now!”

Oscillation of this wave and particle, light dark light dark, jiggle jiggle of the bed and it’s not-soft sheets, chest compressions and the feel of gravitational fabric in one hundred percent inter-atomic cotton pulsing against the quantum particles of my spine…

“Come on, buddy, come on!”

Why won’t you let me travel on my wave? My particle’s got some quantum issues.

I could see it, floating above myself. The cancer galaxies glowing sullenly against the healthier flesh, surrounded by the ominous glow of the chemotherapy dust cloud, columns rising above Orion’s belt. “Therapy,” they call it, for a killing agent. That saves lives. For a disease that’s an unhealthy overabundance of life, so we must remove it to keep the rest healthy and functioning. How many layers of existence is that, that I’m trying to navigate through?

I don’t think I’m ready to move on. I’ve already lost count. I feel like numbers are important…

“Blood pressure steadying, heartbeat returning to normal…”

Yeah, like those numbers. Important numbers.

I opened my eyes.

Did I ever close them?

I saw the doc’s face, swimming in a sea of frantic worry. “Dude, don’t do that to me!” He sat back, letting the nurses clean me up. Life saving measures are messy on this plane of existence.

I tried to nod, but the particle was heavy. Not too heavy, though it had seemed that way, moments before.

The nurse glared at me from behind her mask. “Don’t scare us like that! Stick around for a while. If you promise to behave, I’ll take you back to the ICU. They’ll keep a better eye on you.”

Did I nod? Or blink? But this time, when they wheeled me down the hallway, I didn’t feel nauseous.

My wave went before me, behind me. Through the nurses, through the operating theater, through the poor concerned doctor. I sternly told my particle parts to get their nucleic act together, because I needed sleep.

I’ll unlock the secrets of the universe tomorrow.