S2 Ep. 2: Sid loses count.
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The Man Who Woke up the Buddha is the story of a guy named Sid who wakes up from a stroke and realizes he's the Buddha, even though he knows almost nothing about Buddhism.
“Did you remember the abacus?” Sid asked Di as soon as he got in the car. “Yes, my darling,” she said patting him kindly on the leg. “Your abacus, your Charlie’s Angels slippers, Zoey’s toy stethoscope…which she reminded me is just on loan even though she’s outgrown it.”
“What about the 3-D model of the brain?”
“Yes, Sid, it’s all here. Now all you have to do is lie back and let them peel your scalp back again, unscrew the plate, and do a little nip and tuck.”
“Well, it’s not exactly brain surgery,” Sid said.
“It is exactly brain surgery, and you promised you’d never make that stupid joke again.”
“It’s not stupid, just overdone.”
Di slammed her hand on the steering wheel, not only blowing the horn but pushing the wheel itself down towards her. “F— you, Texas! Around here we use turn signals. You idiot!” she screamed, before turning her head towards Sid.
“And how many times do I have to tell you to lock the steering wheel when you adjust it?”
Sid knew it wasn’t the steering wheel she was mad at. Or the Texan. He sat quietly like a kid who tries to make himself really small to stay out of harm’s way when his mom or dad is upset. She continued glaring at the road as if daring it to put another car in her way.
Sid needed the abacus to level the playing field with Todd the anesthesiologist—a guy so handsome he made Sid wish he were gay. His oldest daughter Abbey, who had always prided herself on being immune to pretty boy charms, had bumped into Todd outside the cafeteria just after he’d spent six hours keeping her dad’s vitals turned on and his consciousness turned off. She knew she should ask him how it went, but all that came out of her mouth were incoherent mumbles, because she was busy thinking about what elective surgery she might need. Her hip had really been bothering her. Maybe time for a replacement. What would it be like to have him lean over and place a mask gently on her nose and mouth? Did they even use masks anymore for anesthesia? OK…then an IV in her arm. Be better if it was something where they used a local so she could stay awake and gaze at him during the procedure.
Sid was blissfully unaware of his oldest daughter’s surgical crush. He was focused on the fact that, at the beginning of the first surgery, he’d bet Todd he could count from ten to one and back to ten before losing consciousness. He made it to seven—counting backwards—but claimed it was just because he’d lost count. So he was bringing an abacus to make sure it didn’t happen again.
“Bizarr-o” Sid mumbled.
“Zorro?” Di asked quietly.
“‘Zarro!” He answered, frustrated that she didn’t understand.
She looked up at Abbey who was standing over her shoulder trying not to cry.
“I think he’s saying ‘Bizarro,’ mom,” her son Willy said.
Diane sniffled a laugh.
Seven of the abacus balls were to the left. Still only three on the right. Todd had won again.
“Pisss-aro,” Sid groaned, before drifting off again.
“He’s doing fine,” the nurse said reassuringly, as she checked the readouts on a panel that looked to Willy like it had been transplanted from the cockpit of a jet plane. He was nervous but kind of proud that he was able to be there. Sid had insisted to the nurses that 13 was plenty old enough to see a guy with a tube up his dick.
The nurse put her hand on Di’s shoulder and looked at Abbey who nodded, encouraging her to continue: “He’s really fine. This is totally normal.”
“It wasn’t like this the first time,” Di said flatly.
After the first surgery, Sid had been out one moment and then not out the next. One moment not there and the next asking when he could have a drink. This time he’d seemed agitated ever since he came out of surgery.
“He took to the anesthesia differently this time. That’s all. The surgery went fine.”
Took to the anesthesia differently? Abbey couldn’t believe that her beloved Todd the anesthesiologist—who had become a thing of legend in her own mind—was less than perfect.
The nurse backed away and turned to go out, smiling at Willy who had nervously pulled out his iPhone. “Is it OK if I sit on the edge of the bed?”
“No. Probably not a good idea,” she said, sympathetically.
“Yeah,” Willy agreed hesitantly. “All those tubes and stuff…”
“It’s OK to hold his hand,” the nurse said. “You just have to be really gentle.”
“Let it go Willy,” his mother said.
“I promised, mom.”
The nurse looked back and forth between them.
After another glance at Abbey, Willy looked apologetically at the nurse, “I promised Grandpa Sid I’d take a selfie. You know. The two of us. Just after his surgery. With the bandages on his head and everything…”
Like all fully enlightened fools, Sid reserved his serious thinking for the early hours of the morning.
“Who are you?” He grumbled.
“Your night nurse.”
He had the routine down: “Name? Buddha. Date of birth? 600 BC. What’s your name?”
“Stacey…with an ‘e’”
“I guess I should pee, Stacey with an ‘e’.”
“I’ll help you.”
“Even the Buddha needs to pee.”
She tittered.
Sid was impressed. The only time he’d ever heard tittering at 3 a.m. was during his brief fling with laughing gas when he lived in Hell’s Kitchen after college.
He cranked the bed up so he could simply roll his legs off and sit for a moment to steady himself. Then he stood up and sat right down again.
“You’re a nurse, Stacey with an ‘e’?” he asked pleasantly, as if it were now a joke they shared.
“A certified nurse’s assistant,” she said, “a CNA,” she added, acknowledging her low position in the alphabet soup of nursing hierarchy, but in a way that made her seem to rise above it.
“Well, I’m certifiably nursing a hangover.”
Stacey dutifully picked up his chart and studied it carefully. “It could be the fentanyl. Are you nauseous?”
“Todd gave me fentanyl?” Sid asked, clearly annoyed. “I asked for pure heroin. Tell him to stop cutting it. He’s probably selling the rest on the street.”
“That’s not funny,” Stacey said. She sounded serious.
So serious, Sid knew what was coming.
“A good friend of my cousin…” She said simply.
“Yes,” Sid said quietly. An apology seemed inadequate. All he could do was convey by his tone of voice that he understood that he couldn’t understand.
“Let me help you there.” Stacey said. No judgment. No emotion. She stood in the open door of the bathroom looking the other way as Sid stood in front of the toilet, holding on to the railing.
Bodhisattvas everywhere, the Buddha thought.
“Stacey, maybe turn on the water in the sink out there?” Sid asked, adding a silent “please.”
“Yup. That helps sometimes,” she said. He could tell she was still thinking of her cousin’s friend…on the floor. Eyes wide. Sid was kind of thinking about him too. But there was nothing he could do about that. All he could do now is figure out how to pee.
“I have an idea,” Stacey said.
Sid wasn’t sure he liked the idea of Stacey having an idea, but managed to keep the thought to himself.
“Here. Reach out. Take this and smell it.”
He reached his free hand out the door. She put a small square bottle in it…top already off. He smelled it, a faint mint, and handed it back to her. Whatever. But, to his surprise, he started peeing, slow at first, then a torrent.
“We use it in maternity all the time. Seems to work.” She tittered. He was relieved that she tittered again and too exhausted to do anything but let her help him back to bed. Then she looked at the chart again. “I think you can have some Tylenol again now and then we can try tramadol in an hour or so. I’ll check with the floor nurse.”
Sid looked up at her and said, “Thank you, Stacey.”
She gave a half smile and nodded. He was forgiven. Later he would find out who the person was who overdosed and send $100 to the assigned charity. Not in penance, just a simple acknowledgement of what he’d done.
He was now too awake to go to sleep and too sleepy to be constrained by rational thought.
Freeing all sentient beings from suffering? He thought, returning to his fundamental ontological question about what he’d said 2500 years ago. Did I come up with that?
There’s a time and place for everything, the Buddha thought. You answer a simple question and, next thing you know, the answer’s carved in stone.
Dogs? Carrots? Sid continued thinking. Why are they all suffering anyway? Who invented this nonsense? You’d think if you were going to go to all the trouble to create an entire universe—neutrons, protons, stars, planets, you could find a way to do it where everyone had fun 24/7. Why you could probably make it 48/14 if you felt like it. No reason the earth couldn’t rotate at half speed. And weeks? Who came up with that arbitrariness?
Was suffering some minor detail that got past the Creators? He reached over for his cell phone. Tapped the dictionary. Suffer. From “sofrir” … “bear, endure, resist; permit, tolerate, allow.” Sounds like Di.
Of course, if Di knew what she was like she probably wouldn’t be like that. Kinda like me, Sid thought.
That’s the true path, the Buddha agreed.
An hour later, Sid half woke in the middle of a nightmare. As if he were back in that MRI. A battlefield of fallen soldiers. Scorched earth. Vietnam? Civil War? No. He looked closer. Long time ago. Some kind of double-handed swords. Arrows. Spears or javelins. A wave of shields coming at him.
Sid rode his virtual reality edge. Instinctively leaning away from charging cavalry, trying not to breathe in the smell of blood and rot. All while fully aware he was just a guy…the Buddha to be precise…lying in a hospital bed at 3 a.m. watching a scorched-earth battle.
Then he saw the elephants bloodied and thrashing, strewn on the battlefield, their riders staggering away trying to fight on foot. Humans, well, they asked for it. Maybe the elephants did too. But they kept coming. The ones still standing began to rear up, throwing their riders off.
Now he saw the Buddha’s face, his own face as if in the mirror. Tears beginning to pour out of their eyes. Tears turning into rage. A hazy rage, edges blunted by painkillers. F-ck transcendence, F-ck dispassion. They spit the words.
This is war! they roared, rising slowly, shaking off lifetimes dreaming of peace, now lumberingly menacingly, striding along battlegrounds that stretched across countries and centuries. The images started streaming fast now, assaulting them from all sides. Warriors on foot, horseback, chariots, tanks, fighter jets. Battleships of every description: destroyers, frigates, man of war, ancient galleons their sails full blown to bursting, torpedo boats and submarines—their periscopes peering ominously, just above the surface of the roiling seas. Armies of faceless hordes of all races and colors, led by terrors incarnate from all time who urged them to do their homicidal, genocidal bidding. Sid heard a few names as their faces flew by: Alexander. Caligula. Hitler. Genghis Khan. So many. So many. African tribal chieftains. European explorers. Huns and Visigoths. Chinese emperors, Japanese Shoguns, and a mighty Indian king driving his men through the entire subcontinent, taking no prisoners. Death. Rape. Torture. Subjugation. Death. Rape. Torture. Domination. Death. Rape. Torture. Devastation. The words exploded in Sid’s head.
It was a kind of rage beyond any he could imagine imagining. His very feet were aflame with anger. The leaders of this idiocy were easy to spot, brighter lights and fiercer colors. He reached out to strangle each and every one, until the Buddha himself—the vengeful warrior of peace—emerged from the chaos, strode up calmly, and looked through and past Sid’s eyes, daring him to finish the job. You want to end it? Go ahead…end it. The Buddha chuckled. He chuckled. Sid reached for his neck, gasped and woke up. His own hand at his throat.
Acceptance isn’t hard, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy, the Buddha acknowledged.
An alarm went off and a few seconds later Stacey rushed in. “Nightmare?”
His eyes were clenched shut and his hands tightened into fists. He opened both and waved weakly. “No big deal, it’s OK, I’m OK.”
“Your blood pressure spiked. Set off the alarm. I’ll get you the Tramadol. It should help you sleep better.” She came over, straightened his covers, and pulled them up.
Sid stared straight ahead, waving his hand weakly in thanks.
Well, I’d call that a good night’s work, wouldn’t you? The Buddha said to no one in particular.
