YES

Linoleum. Or is it tile? Marble? Definitely not marble. Anyone who has spent as much time in Italy as I have, can tell real marble from its imitators.

Mmm the smell of baking bread! I am looking at cheap tile and smelling baking bread... and there is a strange pressure.... Grandma! Oh, I can’t believe you remembered! Thank you for the punching bag! This is the best 7th birthday a little girl could have! Ugh, there is that pressure again.

Blue booties... beeping noises.... soft conversations; business-like, methodical, yet urgent. The clanking of metal on metal...
That pressure again, from the back of my head.... What is...?....... SHIT!

SHIT! Is that my brain you are sticking your fingers into?!!

SHIT.... WHO is operating on me?! I gotta get outta here!

“Doctor she is awake.”

“Excellent, now we will have a chance of getting her through this without brain damage. Nikita, can you hear me?”

I want to answer (enemy or not, I am prepared to ‘make nice’ with anyone who has their fingers in my brain). I think I am saying something, but I must not be, because they ask me again.

“Nikita, can you hear me? Please blink if you can.”

I try again to answer, wondering who the fuck is going to see me blink, as I am facing down at the floor, but then I notice the camera and so I blink with conviction.

“Excellent. Nikita, listen closely: You are among friends, but Sergio really did a number on you and we are trying to save you. Your leg will heal, but we are trying to get his knife out of the back of your head. Can you stay awake for us? We will need to ask you questions during this procedure in order to make sure we are not damaging important areas of your brain further.”

blink blink blink blink blink. Shouldn’t we make a ‘one for yes, two for no’ kind of agreement? And just for the record: There is no such thing as a ‘non-important part’ of my brain.

I am wracking the still intact part of my brain, trying to figure out who these ‘friends’ are that they say I am among. I am confused. NIKITA THINK. YOU CAN DO THIS. STAY CLEAR.

“Nurse, page Sergio and let him know Nikita is out of her coma.”

Sergio. A tremor of pain runs through me. I have this strange feeling regarding Sergio... conflicted... I can hear myself whispering that I love him.... Confused. Maybe it has something to do with what the doctor just said about it being his knife that is in the back of my head.

“Why? I heard she’s with Konrad now...” I heard the nurse say sarcastically. There were a couple unprofessional chuckles.

Konrad. Another tremor... like a series of electric shocks. I have this strange feeling regarding Konrad.. conflicted... There is a rage inside me, yet I can hear myself screaming that I love him... Confused... Maybe it has something to do with what the nurse just said about us ‘being together’.

“Doctor... her blood pressure is spiking and her heart is racing”

“She cannot have any more morphine and we cannot afford to slow her heart rate. I am going as fast as I can. We will have to let her struggle through this. Tighten the restraints, especially the one around her head... I can’t have her bumping me around while I’m in here.”

More pressure... A flood of memories and facts are racing through my mind as I think about Sergio and Konrad (and as the surgeon pokes around in there). The confusion is overwhelming. I wish they could find the place in my brain where those names are stored and just rip it out completely. My body hurts everywhere. My mind is racing. I think I prefer the coma to this. Pieces of gauze soaked with blood are now dropping into my field of vision on the cheap tiles. My blood.

I can’t believe I am here. More memories flood in... I am suddenly that innocent little girl on her 7th birthday again. ‘Grandma, Don’t give her that punching bag’ I say to the memory... ‘give her a sweet doll and teach her how to cook... keep her close at home... Help her to be a lover and not a fighter’. I now see a trickle of blood, a little stream, searching its way around the grout, making ninety degree turns around each tile. For a moment, I think it makes the creamy colored tiles look nicer than with their former dull, grey outline.

“Doctor, the wound in her leg is bleeding.”

“The increased blood pressure must have blown out the stitches and reopened the graft in her femoral artery. Open up the leg and re-suture it. Nurse.....”

The trickle of blood becomes more than the grout paths can hold and soon it is forming a smooth layer over the tiles, advancing steadily across the floor towards the head of the table. This can’t be good.... (But at least my blood pressure is lowering now). The pairs of blue booties are moving, shifting positions, more restless, urgent.... Sergio, Konrad... the names are vibrating in my head (bouncing off the walls of my skull is more like it). It is more than I can take. In the coma at least everything felt good. Things were clear. I was free. There was no thinking, only being.

One last, slow blink before I gratefully fade into that comfortable oblivion again. Sometimes when it is difficult to figure something out. The best thing you can do is to step away from it, go for a walk.

The smell of baking bread. The electricity of fear.... Sergio, Konrad....

My subconscious must figure this out now. There is no more that conscious thinking can accomplish. The process is too painful. I hope that doctor knows what he is doing.
I am.... going...... for........ that....... proverbial...... walk, now.......

“Doctor. Are you almost finished? We are losing her!”


I feel myself wake up. What a strange sensation it is to be conscious of one’s own consciousness.... after so long being ‘away’. The room is dark and along with the reassuring, regular beeps of the heart monitor, there are voices. Two people are talking and walking around the room. I am impressed at their ability to negotiate around a room full of equipment, tubes and wires in the pitch dark, but then realize that my eyes are closed. Best to stay this way for a moment. These are obviously not nurses or they would have noticed the slight quickening in the tempo of the heart-beeps. I want to hear what they are saying.

“Hey, I always thought Sergio was a real ‘by the book’ kind of agent, and Nikita was some kind of elusive, unstoppable, super hero... I can’t believe she is just laying here dying... and I can’t believe Sergio is on suspension as the one that did it to her.”

“Yeah, man, they say Sergio just blew her leg out. It was close range, too. Then when she was down he stuck a knife in the back of her head and started digging around. He had to be pulled off of her.”

Oh great, a couple of fledgling agents are watching over me... Probably a couple of 20 year olds who watched too many James Bond movies. It reminded me that I am still a spy and am most likely still in the middle of a big mess.

I have just spent the last who-knows-how-long floating around in Dreamland with a doctor poking around in the back of my skull. I saw images, smelled smells, tasted things, relived memories... Amazing what kind of dreams you can have when someone is stimulating different parts of your brain for you. I just observed. I am done with thinking. Nothing makes sense. All logic is off. I’ve decided to just let my unconscious send me the answers I needed in order to re-enter my life. If my best instincts don’t live in my primal little lizard brain, I don’t know where they do. I have told and lived way too many lies and now I can’t sort it all out. I am almost dead, for God-sake! What else is going to need to happen for me to get the message? What better time to make a fresh start? Enough with strategies, lies and plots... It is time to remember who I really am and figure out what my truth is.

Some people say those instincts live in the gut. ‘Trust your gut instincts’ they will say. I’m not so sure, For me it is always those ‘thoughts in the back of my mind’, the ‘little voices in my head’ that were always right in the end. I just think the guts have a strong opinion about things sometimes, but puking never gave me very clear, useful information about anything (except perhaps how many is one too many shots of Jack Daniels). Others say the truth lives in the heart, and I would love to think that is true, but I must not know the language, because everything my heart has told me in the past has led to more pain, so I stopped listening long ago. The heart lives outside reality and doesn’t always take logistical concerns into consideration. The heart may have ideas that seem appealing, but it gets me into situations that are difficult. Then when I look to it for answers, my heart is just there shrugging its shoulders and saying: ‘oh well, it seemed like a great idea at the time!’

What I do know, is that as I wandered in my subconscious, comatose state, the name Sergio always came along with a smell of baking bread...The name Konrad always came along with the smell of dog shit. And I kept seeing the Wicked Witch of the West’s message in smoke: ‘Surrender Dorothy’. So I give up. And since I’m apparently not supposed to surrender to death right now, I am ready to surrender to life.

They say that smell is one of the most primitive senses, that it is closely tied to the most primitive part of our brain... that it is the last sense we lose before we die, that it is often connected with our deepest subconscious and the strongest of our base emotions. Some say that through certain smells, one can even achieve immortality. Perhaps, then, these olfactory messages are my subconscious trying to tell me something. I can’t think of any positive things about dog shit or negative things about baking bread, so I am going to suppose that is my message: My lizard brain likes Sergio. Somehow Sergio and I are connected in ‘the great unknown’ and I’d better just give it up and get used to it. The little voices have spoken.

Of course hearing this guy in the room confirm the whole ‘Sergio put a knife in the back of my skull thing’ wasn’t exactly giving me a warm, fuzzy feeling about him. But I also know that I am re-entering life in the midst of a highly complicated and dangerous situation that I am sure is not yet resolved. Perhaps there is some intelligent maneuvering that must be done in order to get myself safely out of this place. Get in touch with my true self? Yes. Have a full fledged personal awakening retreat in the middle of highly sensitive spy operation? Maybe not so wise. So, Sergio... I will be following your lead. Get me out of here. I will trust you completely.

Sigh. A certain kind of peace washes over me. Like the feeling I got the first time I jumped out of a plane. The moment of going out the door needed to be my decision. There is no way I was going to let someone push me out. Once you decide there is nothing left to worry about. But you must decide first, and in that deciding, the trust will appear... but it is possible to trust in theory and still not decide to take action. This just creates more agony. The only way to do it is to just jump, then simply enjoy the ride.

I just lie there in the bed, taking stock of myself for a moment. I feel different. I... uch, what is that odor? Pastrami with dijon mustard, old spice deodorant, 3 day old scalp grease and 5 month old odor-eaters (which smelled more like the odor than the eater). Oh, God, I realize I can smell EVERYTHING. Fortunately one of those guys has some spearmint gum in his pocket. (I think I’ll focus on that and see if I can forget about the scalp grease). I can smell the bleach on the floor and the new mildew forming in the corner of the shower stall. I’m figuring this is some strange side effect of having a knife stuck in the back of my brain.

The men were quietly talking to each other, then I could here one of them come closer, laughing, and say:

“...I don’t know, why don’t we ask her: Hey Nikita, is Sergio as great a lover as he would like everyone to believe?”

(Still pretending to be unconscious, I think: well that is rude and inappropriate... just stay still and breathe.... I won’t.....)

“YES!” I hear myself saying as my eyes fly wide open.

“Shit, get Heinrich, looks like our beauty isn’t sleeping anymore.”

I’ll just pretend to slip back into unconsciousness... a few more deep breaths and I should be able to get the ol’ heart rate monitor back down to anesthetized-like levels).

“Hang on, I’m not sure... she seems to be back out again... I mean, I’m no nurse, but if we can just wait a few minutes... Uh... at 1 o’clock she gets her sponge bath, you know. If she’s really awake we can tell Heinrich after that.”

“Oh yeah, right. I guess Heinrich doesn’t have to be alerted to every twitch she makes. Hey Nikita, can I give you you’re sponge bath today?” He chortled.

“YES!”
FUCK! What am I doing? Why did I say that?!

The man jumped back, stumbled over his own feet and fell back against the other man.

We all are still and silent. Then I try to say a few more things to them, but nothing comes out. What I am starting to realize is that there is still plenty of swelling in my brain, and although I now can smell everything (not exactly a skill I am happy to have), I am not actually able to communicate fully. The only thing I am able to outwardly respond to is a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ question... and my answer is always going to be, uncontrollably: ‘YES’.

Just then the door opened. The two guys and compose themselves into an awkward ‘at attention’ kind of stance. In walks Sergio, carrying a red, ripe juicy tomato, some garlic and a large loaf of rosemary bread... hot out of the oven.