For all the different days of the
year, I had weeks for each stored in my memory. I relived every moment that
ever meant a thing to me. I am reliving a moment right now. Tomorrow will feel
like today. Tomorrow will feel like last week. All of my cigarettes are gone.
I could hear the synthetic chirping
of some kind of machine next to me. First a chirp, then a screech. My eyes shot
open. I couldn’t work out where the light was coming from, but it was too
bright. I got angry. Who put me here? I began to panic. I needed a cigarette. All
of my cigarettes were gone. I turned over in my bed. My cell was high in some
compound, the walls reeked of torpidity. Someone died here. Many have died
here. This place was mathematical.
I jolted my body off of the bed. I
wasn’t restrained, but I was drugged.
I felt something dislodge from my nose followed by the familiar scent of a
bloody nose. I had an interesting childhood. I was tough. I will get the fuck out of here, I told myself.
A familiar voice interrupted my
mental thrashing. I rose from the ground in the arms of an angel of some sort.
Brightly colored blue attire, a wedding ring, a very familiar perfume. I could
not make out her face. I couldn’t speak to her. My words were seeds for some
other season.
As I began to calm, her voice began
to stand out amongst the bustle of beeps and alarms and shrieking and sighs.
Mister
Vanda, You’ve just woken from a coma. You need to relax and try to focus on
what I’m saying.
The illusion was much more amusing.
It took many minutes for me to become fully aware of my insignificance. I was
paralyzed, unable to speak, and I couldn’t breathe. Perhaps the latter few of
those problems were related. In the mess of these thoughts, I feel back into
sleep.
I woke to cigarette smoke, the sun
no longer an offender of my eyes, not a soul but the woman beside me. She was
clearly different from the nurse, her silhouette was lithe and her hair was
neat. It was too dark to speak confidently about what she looked like, but the
second-hand smoke was beautiful. I could smell it through the tubes of plastic. I began to tilt my head and speak, but as soon as I stuttered out a greeting, another
bath of blinding hospital fluorescence ripped through my will. I muscled
through. I adjusted. It was my wife, definitely. The last memories I could
speak for in my waking life were with her. Wanting to leave her. I can’t
remember if I told her. It was an interesting conundrum… but I could not, with
any measure of effort, remember much before or after those few days. They
seemed only moments away, easily accessible, but lonely in my mind like a few
books resting against each other on an otherwise empty bookshelf.
//To re-frame, re-cut, and re-post later. This is merely an outline.
