Day 33 - David's side of the story

I opened my eyes and saw a white dazzling ceiling. At first it seemed too white and hurt my eyes. But after a while I got accustomed to it. Where was I?

There was some serious pain coming from somewhere on my chest and I winced in pain, when I tried to move.

I remained there trying to turn my head around the small room, which appeared to be some sort of stone-age or 18th century hospital. No equipment just bare metal hospital beds.

Where the hell was I?

Then it all came flooding back. Some crazy African man with large ears had shot me, shortly after I had heard Teresa's voice. Teresa’s voice crying out in terror.

What had become of my dear Teresa? Was she safe? Had the crazy guy killed her? Where could she be? Worry flooded into my mind even as the throbbing pain on my chest continued.

“How are you feeling now?”

I turned my head to see an African man standing by my bed. The white coat he was wearing implied that he was a doctor or some sort of medical person.

“My chest is hurting like hell…”

“Yes, you were very lucky the bullet went into the right side of your chest, far from your heart. But you’ve lost a lot of blood.”

“Please can you do something about the pain on my chest?”

“I am doing that.” I saw the syringe for the first time as he held it up to suck in the liquid from a tiny bottle.

The next minute I felt the needle penetrate the side of buttocks and I winced in pain.

“The pain should be under control in a few minutes. We had given up hope on you, that’s why you were not under any medication.”

This doctor sure gave a lot of details. Where I came from they just asked lots of questions and nodded in response. They never volunteered information unless you really asked for it. And many times they never gave any information to patients, even if they asked.

So they had assumed that I was going to die? But who had brought me to this place? How far was I from Teresa? Endless questions to ask. I didn’t know which one to start with first.

The pain had reduced but now I was feeling drowsy. I drifted back into a troubled sleep.

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Nancy Burpee is a world class paralympic swimmer, who has set world records in the 50 and 100 yards freestyle but was disqualified and thus effectively locked out from the 2004 Paralympic Games held in Athens, Greece on a procedural technicality. Law firm simmons jannace & stagg represented her in an effort to have the disqualification overturned and argued that the Australian referee showed bias against Ms. Burpee by making various comments indicating that the Australian referee did not want Ms. Burpee competing against an Australian paralympic swimmer at the games.