The test starts with page after page of questions. You work through every single one on the tablet, answering question after question. Some of the questions you expected (“do you have any allergies?”) but some seem odd (“do you have any pets?”). Sometimes, it asks you the same question twice. Regardless, you keep answering them.

You arrived at this facility almost 30 minutes ago. Over the last few weeks they’d called you, over and over, offering increasing amounts of money to participate in a “short-term medical trial.” The voice on the phone had assured you that it wouldn’t be painful, dangerous, or mentally taxing, but not much more than that. How did they get your name? Some insurance referral, maybe. Why did they want you in particular? They had a pool of candidates. How long would it take? Not long. You’d hung up on them twice, but eventually, the amount they offered was too good to say no, even though they were light on details.

When you eventually accepted, you’d been given an address nearby, and a date and time. They’d been clear that arriving on time, not earlier or late, was important. Maybe because of all these questions they need you to fill out. Half an hour is a long time to be answering questions in a waiting room.

When you arrived at the address, you’d found it was an unremarkable medical building; one story, with a parking lot half-full with a very generic, and the sign outside had a building number but no business name. The waiting room was abnormally small and spartan; with only a couple of chairs, no old magazines, and no other people. It smelled vaguely antiseptic, like all waiting rooms did. A pleasant receptionist had expected you in particular, and confirmed your name and date of birth. Maybe the times were setup so there’d aways be an empty waiting room.

“Can you tell me more about this trial?” You’d asked, but she’d deflected.

“After your initial exam and intake, the Doctor will answer all your questions,” was all she’d say.

Then she’d handed you an electronic tablet to fill out your medical history and endless questions, which you’ve been doing for quite a while now, page after page.

“When did you last eat?”

“Do you have a family history of high blood pressure?”

“What is the make and model of your car?”

“When did you last see your primary-care physician?”

“Do you often feel hopeless?”

“Do you have any roommates?”

There doesn’t seem to be any pattern to it.

Finally, the tablet says that you’re done, and bold text instructs you to return it to the receptionist. You hand it to her, and she thanks you. “I’ll download this data, and a nurse will be out for your initial exam. Please take a seat,” she instructs, her attention for you spent.

You find a chair and take out your phone to waste some time. There’s barely any signal here, but you play some game you’d downloaded previously. It’s taking a while, but when you look up, you can see the receptionist behind the window talking to someone else, maybe a nurse. Since there’s nobody else in the waiting room, you hope this is about you, and you can get this over with.

Sure enough, a minute later, a person you presume is a nurse appears in the waiting area and calls your name, as if there’s someone else she might be here for.

“Hello! I’m ready for you! Come on back and follow me, ” she says. She’s your age, and seems nice enough at first impression. Maybe she’s genuinely happy to see you. She’s got long blond hair and scrubs that are just slightly too tight, colored a classically medical pastel blue. You stand up and follow her out of the waiting room. “My name’s Jessica; I’ll be taking care of you today,” she tells you. Just a few steps beyond the waiting area, the hall turns a corner and she leads you immediately to a small room.

It’s a small exam room, with very basic trappings, as unremarkable as the waiting room. There’s an exam table that takes up most of the small space, covered in disposable paper. There’s a computer screen, a scale in the corner, a counter with a few items on it. Before you can ask any questions, she indicates a white linen gown folded on the exam table. You groan and she chuckles.

“As you’ve just guessed, I’ll need you to get changed out of your street clothes, including your underwear,” she explains. “Put on the gown; you’ll find snaps on each side, and a pair of socks underneath.”

She holds up a small plastic box. “You can put your personal effects in here; your wallet, keys, cell phone, and leave it In this room. You won’t need any of that, and someone will come collect it. I’ll give you some privacy, then come back and take your vitals.” She ducks outside of the exam room and closes the door behind her.

You expected to have an exam like this, so you do as instructed. You put your pocket’s contents into the plastic container, then pile all your clothes by the exam table, for lack of a better place to put them. The patient gown is covered with tiny flowers like every other one you’ve ever worn at a doctor’s office, but as an unexpected boon, closes with soft snaps up and down your sides, instead of being completely open in the back. You pull on the socks, too; they’re very tight and it takes you a minute or two.

With nothing else to do once that’s done, you sit up on the exam table and look around. There’s really not much interesting to see; maybe most notably the there’s a capped syringe on the counter, and what looks like the sort of eye mask you might wear to sleep on an airplane. You lean over to the computer screen, but there’s nothing on it other than your name and the notation “Room 3” at the top. Below is what looks like the answers to that hundreds of questions you answered in the waiting room.

There’s a knock on the door, and Jessica returns. She seems pleased that you’re clothed, and she’s changed slightly, too; her hair is tied up and covered now, with just a tuft of blonde hair escaping from the pastel blue cap. A stethoscope hangs around her neck, and she’s carrying a blood pressure cuff.

“I’m going to give you a basic physical exam.” She tells you, and that’s what happens. Pulling a pair of purple gloves from a wall-mounted box, she takes your blood pressure and pulse manually before entering it into the computer. She puts the stethoscope several places on your back, and has you take deep breaths, then moves the cold bell to your chest and listens to your heart. She enters some result in the computer after each step, but mentions no anomalies. She has you stand on the scale, then has you return to the exam table before shining a light in your eyes. She has you open your mouth and say “ahh”. She spends a while inspecting whatever it is that she can see that way, then lightly palates the lymph nodes in your chin and neck. Notes go in the computer.

“Can you tell me anything about what’s going to happen with this test?” You ask, as she has you lean back and pokes at your abdomen, uncomfortably. “Everyone’s been hopelessly vague.”

She smiles. It’s a bright and disarming smile. “Of course I can; once I finish this exam, if everything is alright, we’ll head down the hallway to the preparation room. There will be a bed there, and we’ll put you in it. There’ll be a lot of screens and equipment, and I’ll get you all setup.” You nod, although a second later, you realize the explanation is over and she hasn’t really explained anything at all. You guess you’ll have to wait to meet the Doctor, like the receptionist had told you. Jessica stands and discards her gloves into a trash receptacle.

“And we’re finished here. Good news; you seem healthy. Follow me, please.”

A little frustrated with the continued lack of clarity, but without much other choice, you follow her into the hallway, your feet a little slippery on the generic medical linoleum that lines the floor. You head past two other identical (and apparently empty) exam rooms, and around another corner. Here, the hallway is wider and longer, and has swinging double-doors every 50 feet or so, all on one side. None of the doors have windows, which you find frustrating. She leads you to the third set of doors, which already are open, and have a “3” printed on the wall nearby,

You raise your eyebrows as you step in. The room itself looks almost like a room in an emergency department. The stark white gurney, the bed that Jessica mentioned, sits in the middle of the room, with its foot facing the double doors you just entered. The opposite side of the room, behind a plump white pillow, has similar big doors, closed and windowless. The gurney itself is a fairly generic wheeled gurney, with plastic guards on each side and at the foot.

The rest of the equipment in the room is not as generic. To one side of the bed, a boxy white machine rests on a wheeled cart almost at standing height, with wires, tubes and a bag of fluids hanging off its various hooks, many coiled for storage. You’re not sure exactly what it is, but it seems to be built around the set of glossy touchscreens mounted on it’s top. You note one of the touchscreens has your name and the “Room 3” notation visible on it. At least you’re in the right place.

More equipment is positioned over the gurney, fixed to gleaming articulated steel arms, hanging from the ceiling like an industrial willow tree. One branch holds lights, another a magnifier. A couple of lower branches snake to positionable trays at bed-level, and one mounts a small ventilator. You can see a coiled tube coming from the the ventilator ending in a high-flow oxygen mask. The arms resemble those you’ve seen at your dentist’s office, but there’s way more of them. Thankfully, you note, none of them end in a dental drill.

You’re momentarily taken aback by this setup, but reasonably, this is more or less what Jessica described, and fits your mental model of what you might expect when you sign up for a vague medical test. Jessica leads you over the the gurney, and lowers one of the plastic side rails.

“Lie down on the bed, please,” she tells you. It’s an instruction, and you comply, looking up at the tree’s worth of metal arms overhead. Jessica raises the siderail again, and you’re starting to get nervous. At least the lights overhead, which also resemble the lights at a dentist office, aren’t shining in your face.

You watch her move to a sink, a wall-mounted feature in this room that has no counters or cabinets. She washes her hands again and pulls a pair of purple gloves from a box also affixed to a wall. They snap tightly over her hands. You decide to be straightforward about your increasing nervousness.

“Jessica, can you explain what you’re doing, please?” You can hear the stress in your own voice.

“Of course!” She smiles again at you, and it’s somewhat reassuring on its own. “I’ll explain everything I’m doing, as I do it."

“First, let’s get you hooked up to these computers,” Jessica starts. She partially unsnaps the right side of the gown to expose your arm, then wraps a blood pressure cuff around your bicep. From the big, square machine, she pulls a coil of wire which ends with a She attaches blue clip, a pulse oximeter, which she slips over your right index finger.

“Now, I’ve got 5 of these electrodes, which measure the activity of your heart,” Jessica grabs another coil of wire, and holds it up where you can see it. The free end terminates at a small white circle of sticky material. Without waiting for permission, she unsnaps the sides of your gown, and pulls it down slightly to expose your chest.

Jessica sticks it above your right breast. “Each electrode is a different color, and goes in a specific place,” she explains as, one by one, she sticks an electrode in all four corners of your chest and one near the middle. Jessica pulls the gown back up, over the electrodes, but doesn’t re-fasten it.

“We need to attach one more electrode, which goes on your forehead,” she explains. “So let’s get your hair out of your eyes.” She pulls a blue bouffant cap from one of the ceiling-mounted trays, and pulls the cap down over your head, gathering your hair into it.

Reaching back to the tray, she shows you the last electrode. It actually looks like a strip, a few inches long, with four little circular pads built into it. Jessica firmly presses it from one side of your forehead to the other, then unwinds another coil of wire from the boxy machine and clips it to the electrode’s side.

“This senses the electrical activity of your brain and summarizes it. They call it a bispectral index score,” she explains. “All these sensors connect to this computer, which monitors them all in one central place.”

You can see that indeed, all the electrodes and sensors are connected to the boxy white machine, and Jessica rolls it slightly your way, angling the screens downwards. You can see one of the screen on is now filled with numbers and graphs. Jessica touches the other screen a few times, and the blood pressure cuff inflates, and a soft audible beeping begins to track with your heartbeat. She examines both screens for a minute as you try to relax, but you’re getting pretty nervous.

“Let’s get you to breath some oxygen.” She moves over above your head, reaches up and moves the articulated arm holding the ventilator and one of the trays, both to a convent spot. You can see her press a few buttons, and the ventilator hisses to life. You looks up at the nurse as she lowers the clear oxygen mask over your nose and mouth, then pulls an elastic over your head to hold it in place. “Just breath normally. ”

The oxygen that flows from the mask is cool and odorless, and contrary to instructions you take a couple of deep breaths, hoping to calm down a little.

As you concentrate on your breathing, Jessica walks down towards your feet and pulls two small loops of padded blue vinyl from below the gurney somewhere. You watch her loop one around each of your ankles, right above the socks, before you really understand what they are. She closes each with a quiet snap of a plastic buckle. You realize they are light restraint cuffs, and connected to the side and bottom of the gurney.

Your heartbeat starts to speed up as you watch Jessica produce identical blue cuffs from each side of the gurney, near your wrists. Jessica hears the monitors beeping faster, and smiles again at you.

“Just relax and don’t worry. The sensors we just attached are really sensitive, and can be thrown off by movement. These are just a precaution. They’re nice and soft and it won’t be uncomfortable. And,” Jessica gives a little laugh as she takes your right wrist, “we don’t want you trying to leave the test, do we?” Is she joking? It sounded like a joke.

Jessica wraps the cuff around your right wrist, down by your waist, and snaps the cuff closed. You can still partially raise the arm to examine it. The cuff is just a thin bit of blue vinyl padding encircled with a nylon strap, which closed it on itself with a plastic squeeze-snap. The whole thing was connected to the gurney side via another short loop of nylon strap, allowing you to move your arm several inches in any direction. And it wasn’t like it was locked closed; you could simply unclip the cuff’s snap if you wanted to get out.

You let Jessica proceed to your left wrist, when the flaw in this line of thought becomes clear. As Jessica snaps the restraint closed around your left wrist in turn, there is not enough slack in either restraint to allow you to reach the simple release with the opposite hand. For a minute, you’re frightened again, but you decide that so far, Jessica has treated you alright. You should just try to relax and trust her. And even though you can’t simply unsnap the cuffs, she told the truth-they are not uncomfortable. They don’t seem like the heavy leather restraints you’ve seen in movies, and secretly, you think you could probably pull free if you really wanted to.

“There we go; that should let us get clear readings,” she says.

“Just one more thing, and I’m sorry about this one,” Jessica said. “I need to start an IV. You may not like this idea, but I’ve started hundreds of them, and know what I’m doing. It’ll just be a little pinch.” She doesn’t wait for any acknowledgement before pulling one of the small covered trays closer to your side. With a practiced twist, she ties a blue elastic around your left bicep. You don’t object. It’s not like you have very much choice at this point, you suppose, having signed up for this test in the first place, then allowing yourself to be restrained, however lightly.

“Make a fist,” Jessica orders, as she gently traces the veins in your forearm with her fingers, waiting for them to appear. She takes a minute to consider, and you’re surprised that it’s not completely unpleasant feeling her gloved finger run along your hand and arm. Selecting the cephalic vein in your inner elbow, she swabs the area with gauze that smells sharply of disinfectant. Return the gauze to the tray, she picks up a needle in one hand, while holding your restrained wrist perfectly still with the other.

“Just a little pinch,” she repeats, as she pushes the needle home. Jessica sees the splash of blood that shows she hit on her first try, and while you can feel the needle press through your skin, but it really is less than a pinch. She takes just a few more seconds, as she advances a cannula into your arm and withdraws the needle. She then tapes her newly placed IV port in place with a clear square of adhesive. You feel good about trusting her. This isn’t so bad.

As if seeing your relief, she smiles at you again. “See? Not so bad, is it?” She seems pleased as she connects the IV to a series of elaborate tubes, ports, and joints that you slowly trace with your eyes. They seem to run back to a bag of clear liquid, presumably saline, hanging above the same boxy white machine the sensors all connected to. The clear tubing runs into and out of the machine, which must manage the fluid’s flow in some way. You watch Jessica press some arrows on the touchscreen, and the IV bag begins a slow drip. After a second, you think you can feel a little cold as the fluid worked its way down into your vein.

“Well, I guess we’re done,” Jessica looks confused for a moment, then shrugs. “I left something back in the exam room, but it’s not that important.” Maybe she’s thinking of the syringe you saw on the counter, and whatever that eye mask was for.

“Just try to relax here, and I’ll let the Doctor know you’re ready, and she’ll take it from here.” She leaves her stethoscope on a nearby tray, and heads towards the open doors. You feel a little spike of nervousness; you’d thought Jessica would be with you for the whole test. A test which still, nobody has at all explained. Jessica pauses in the doorway, and looks back. “Good luck!” she offers somewhat ominously.

Then, leaving you alone in the bed, she disappears out the doors, which, on cue, slowly swing closed.

The room is quiet now, the only noise the soft hiss of the oxygen in your mask, the beeping from your heart monitor. Occasionally there’s a hum from the blood pressure cuff taking a periodic measurement. A few minutes pass uneventfully, then a few more. You’re starting to get bored. Is this part of the test, or are they just busy elsewhere?

You decide to take the time to examine your situation a bit more. You can move around the gurney a little bit, you discover. While your wrists and ankles are attached to the gurney sides, you can still sit up slightly, and can shift your chest and head around. You can see that Jessica wouldn’t want you to dislodge your IV or the oxygen mask, but you can still shimmy around the bed more than a little bit. It occurs to you that that doesn’t really square with what Jessica had said about needing to stay still for the heart and brain sensors.

Putting that thought aside, you move your attention elsewhere. The screens on the computer cart is still turned towards you, and you can watch your ECG line draw a familiar sawtooth pattern, which you does for a bit. Your blood pressure, oxygenation, and pulse rate are clearly there, along with other numbers you’re probably not sure of, probably relating to the brain electrode strip Jessica attached. After a few minutes, this, too, becomes boring to watch.

You look around the room for something else of interest. Taking advantage of your freedom of movement, you arch your back to see above and behind you. It’s an awkward position, with everything upside-down. With your wrists and ankles restrained, you can’t turn over. Even so, you can see the bottom of the ventilator delivering oxygen to your mask, and can see there are unused items on the tray next to it. You can see the edge of a metal tool and maybe the ends of plastic tubes lined up, as if waiting to be used. You’re just starting to examine them, when, with a grinding noise, the previously shut double-doors behind the ventilator swing open. Your eyes widen as you process what you’re seeing.

Behind the opening doors is a new person, not in street clothes or scrubs, but in a long, pale green surgical outfit, complete with matching gown, bouffant cap, white masked face and purple gloved hands. As they step forward into the room with you, behind them is, even viewed from your awkward perspective, a room that’s unmistakably an operating theater.

Instead of the unremarkable white walls and ceiling of the room you’re in, the room behind the doors has polished green tile on every surface that you can see. At least three more gowned figures move around what is obviously a large white operating table, flanked by trays and machines. They’re obviously busy. The empty table is illuminated by a bank of large lights already partially lit. As the doors slowly close behind the gowned figure that has joined you, you realize the only thing missing from the operating room is a patient. Your heart races in fear.

You look up at the new arrival. They do not initially introduce themselves, or even look back at you. They turn the touchscreens away from you and read your name aloud. It’s a female voice, maybe with a slight Indian accent. She looks down at you as you pull your wrists against the restraints, which suddenly make a sort of horrible sense. Her eyes are cold.

“Jessica neither premeditated nor blindfolded you?” It sounds like she’s complaining, and doesn’t sound like she’s looking for an answer. You don’t respond.

“The Doctor told her that she’d find herself where you are, if she missed steps again.” You can hear the capital D in ‘Doctor’ when she says it. “I guess we’ll deal with Jessica later; it’s your turn to go to the OR now, isn’t it?”

This is terrifying. Your eyes dart around the room, as you quickly decide no amount of money is worth, well, whatever is happening here.

“Please, stop. Please let me go….” you start to beg. “No OR! I don’t want surgery. This isn’t what I signed up for! Let me go!” You continue protesting for a few moments, but she’s clearly ignoring you now.

You can see she’s loading syringes of drugs into the boxy machine that’s tracking your vitals and managing your IV drip. They’re various sizes; some small, some very big, but they’re all full of substances you realize will soon be going into you.

You have no idea what might be in the multicolored tubes, but the nameless woman knows exactly what she’s doing. One after another, she first connects each syringe to a color-coded junction in your IV line, then snaps them into the computer-driven infusion pumps that this machine will drive. Anesthesia to make you sleep. Paralytics to help intubate you. Antibiotics and narcotics to prepare for what comes after that.

You try to thrash about, to kick against the bed, but what seemed like acceptably light restraints before seem plenty strong enough to prevent your legs from moving very far. Likewise, as you pull at your wrists as hard as you can, you achieve no real effect. If you could just get your hands close together, you could simply unsnap the cuffs, but you simply can’t move them that far. Your prediction that you could probably break the cuffs if you really wanted to is quickly falsified. They are unyielding.

The woman has stopped whatever she was doing, or is done with it. Now, she’s watching you try to get free. You can only see her eyes, but she seems amused. “I suppose Jessica’s oversight lets me enjoy such glorious helplessness, so there is at least that. Don’t fight. It’s far too late.” She tells you, turning back to the screens.

It’s a sinister thing to say, but for a moment, you think she’s going to say something else to reassure you. Maybe she’ll tell you this is all just a normal test of some kind, or a misunderstanding on your part. That this is all a prank. But she doesn’t.

“I’m going to put you under now,” is all she says. Coldly. Not asking if you’re ready. Just stating a fact.

A moment later, she begins to do exactly that, and it’s almost anti-climactic. The anesthetist (and you realize that is what she must be), simply presses more of the touchscreen’s controls, setting preprogrammed routines in motion. You feel the blood pressure cuff inflate and deflate one last time, as the computer correlates your vital signs with the last several seconds of EEG data, calculating the doses needed to bring you from wakefulness to the level of unconsciousness the anesthetist has selected.

You hear a barely perceptible whine as two separate infusion pumps activate in series to deliver you a bolus of propofol. She makes no additional comments as you watch the white fluid snake down your IV line. On TV, you’ve seen anesthesiologists tell patients to count backwards while they go to sleep, or seen big rubber anesthesia masks pressed over helpless faces. The anesthetist does neither of these things, but you know what is about to happen as the fluid vanishes into your arm. The rhythmic beeping of your heart is fast, panicked.

You roll your body back and forth as much as you can, as if trying to get away from the drugs. Of course, it’s ineffectual.

You feel the first effects as the barely-perceptible cold of saline flowing into your arm is replaced by an uncomfortable burn. It starts at the injection site, and within a few seconds the sensation travels up to your shoulder. Maybe you notice the whine from the machine gets slightly louder as other pumps activate, pushing further drugs into your line.

You start thinking that if you gather enough will and focus, maybe you can prevent the drugs from effecting you. Before you can decide how exactly to do that, there’s a funny taste in the back of your mouth, coppery. You stop struggling against the restraints and swallow a few times, trying to get rid of it. You notice that the beeping on your heart monitor immediately slows as your exertion lessens.

You watch the anesthetist moves to the ventilator above your head and as she moves, you have a moment of vertigo. You realize you’re becoming dizzy.

And your face is tingling. It’s an odd feeling.

And that’s your very last thought before there is only timeless oblivion. For you, the anesthesia induction is over.

When you wake again, there’ll be no memory of getting drowsy or drifting off to a peaceful sleep. Instead, you’ll remember your face feeling funny, and then waking up somewhere else. Assuming you’re allowed to wake up later, of course. Which doesn’t seem like a forgone conclusion, given the circumstances.

The heart monitor’s noises slow and become steady as your consciousness flees. The anesthetist watches as the BIS number on the touchscreen slowly ticks down from the 90s to the 80s, then the 70s, heading towards her target of 40. It’s barely even been a full minute since she started drugging you, but the machine tells her your lights are out. Your eyes are still partially open, but you’re seeing nothing.

She runs her finger over your drooping eyelids, and confirms that there is no eyelash reflex. She tapes your eyelids closed with special tape, then pulls the pillow from behind your limp head, firmly tilting your chin back as she waits for your breathing to stop.

Once it does, the anesthetist retrieves and unfolds a laryngoscope from the ventilator tray, and selects an ET tube to pair with it. Removing the oxygen mask from your face, she opens your unresisting mouth and guides the ET tube down past your vocal cords. In no particular hurry, she reconfigures the ventilator for mechanical ventilation, disconnects the oxygen mask and connects the ventilator to the ET tube. She absently pulls the patient gown the rest of the way off of your insensate body, balling it up on one side of the gurney. She takes up Jessica’s stethoscope, and listens for breath sounds to confirm she’s placed the tube in the right place.

Pleased with her intubation, the anesthetist slides a bite-block between your teeth, and then an ET tube holder over your mouth, placing a strap around your covered head to hold it firmly in place. For a few minutes, she simply waits; the ventilator clicks loudly as she watches your chest rise and fall. The infusion computer evens out your sedation level and the BIS score on the screen turns green.

Satisfied that you are both sufficient anesthetized and oxygenated, she hits a switch on the nearby wall with her elbow, and with a mechanical grinding noise, the double doors to the operating room open again. Previously busy with preparation, the gowned figures are now merely waiting for you. Two of them come and release the brakes on the gurney and IV computer. The anesthetist disconnects and deactivates the ventilator, and helps push you into the bright green room, carefully not to pull any of the sensors or you IV. They lock the gurney along side the operating table. Gloved hands unsnap the four-point restraints that previously held you, and smoothly lift you to the table. The gown is left behind; you have no modesty now, and can’t feel the cold of the room.

The anesthetist positions the IV infusion computer within her reach, then connects your breathing tube to a full anesthesia machine near the the head of the table, complete with tanks of gases and multiple vaporizers. She turns it on, and resumes breathing for you where the ventilator left off. Maybe if this machine had been in the previous room, you’d had guessed what you were in for. If Jessica had shown you an anesthesia mask, maybe you’d have resisted earlier. Or maybe not; maybe you’d have believed whatever lie she offered about that, too. Regardless, there’s no resisting now, and your naked chest rises and falls with the bellows of the machine.

Final preparations happen around you. A nurse unwraps a foley catheter, and begins preparations to siphon your urine to a bag attached to the bottom of the operating table. Another readies long compression socks, intended to prevent you from getting blood clots in your legs. They know you’re going to be asleep for long enough for both measures to be necessary.

Yet another nurse positions a tray full of gleaming instruments near you, and positions the array of overhead lights. Your arms are pulled straight out from your body and lightly velcroed to armboards, merely to allow easy access. Restraints are no longer at all necessary. For you, there is not even darkness or numbness; there’s simply nothing.

“We’re ready to begin,” the anesthetist reports to the surgical team, as someone wheels the empty gurney out another door, maybe to be cleaned for the next victim.

What other equipment is in the operating room might tell you exactly what’s going to happen to you next.

Maybe it’s something tame. Maybe there are cameras and scanners; maybe the anesthesia induction itself was the test, and just documentation is all they now need. Maybe that instrument tray by your chest holds just a few biopsy needles, painful but routine.

But maybe it’s something terrible. Maybe there are gynecological stirrups attached to the table. Maybe there’s an ECT machine charging by your head. Maybe the nearby tray has a chest-spreader, and there’s a table in the corner filled with empty transplant coolers waiting.

You’re really in no position to know.