No title
by Nate
The dim light of the sun is just beginning to swallow the stars from the sky and I’m standing in the middle of an over-crowded waiting room in who-the-****-ever’s memorial hospital, screaming for help. The room is small, so small that it chokes me. Then it’s thousands of square feet large. And all I can see is blood and more blood. And all I can feel are eyes and eyes and eyes. And all I can do is scream. The receptionist is staring. Her jaw is dropped and her lip is quivering, but beside that, every muscle in her body is still. I say “I don’t think she’s breathing.” My voice is quaking and the receptionist is just staring. “She’s lost a lot of blood.” The panic is growing louder within me and the receptionist is still. I’m yelling. “She won’t stop shaking.” I want to curl into myself until I am no more. I want to be anywhere but here doing anything but this and the receptionist is “MOVE!” Just as the volume snaps the woman from her trance, a group of nurses, or technicians, or whatever, show up with a gurney. They ask me what happened. They ask me how long ago. They ask me if she’s taken any drugs. They ask me if I know of anything she’s allergic to. I barely get a chance to answer before they vanish within the maze of halls and tiles. I breathe. For a moment I just stand in place and watch the white on the wall go by. The world around me, the mother holding a red rag to her son’s open mouth, the middle-aged man who has a hand on his stomach while letting out grunts and various vulgarities, the stack of year old, month old, and day old magazines, the receptionist coming back to consciousness by feeling her desk, none of it is there. The girl who is now alone on a cold table surrounded by doctors, her blood on my shirt, and the glass in my arm is all a dream. If someone were to ask me my name, I’m not sure I’d give the right answer. I look down at my hands to make sure they’re still there before I take a seat. I look around the room to pull myself back into reality. Out of the corner of my eye I see the hands on the clock are spinning violently. I look straight at it and blink hard. The hands slow down a bit as though they’ve been caught doing something wrong, but they still aren’t moving anywhere near their average speed. I put my forehead into my palms and I’m trying to remember when the last time I slept was when it registers that the man next to me has said something. He’s a very dark man with a tired, empathetic look in his eyes. “Excuse me?” “She your wife?” His voice crackles as it makes its way out of some deep cavern inside of his chest. All at once I remember why I’m here. I remember the girl and the warmth and the allure. I remember a smile and a touch. I remember ecstasy. Then I remember pain. I’m staring at the white floor and I’m falling into it and I’m afraid. How I feel is helpless. The man puts a hand on my shoulder and says “It’ll be alright son; she isn’t ready to leave you yet.” I give the man a confused look and he chuckles and pulls his hat down to fall asleep. First it’s five fifty six A.M. Then it’s seven twenty-two. Then I feel a hand on my shoulder reel me back into the chair and the white and the ringing phones. I feel the burn of interrupted rest all over me. The woman in front of me is waiting patiently. This isn’t usually the setting when I wake up looking into the face of a girl I don’t recognize, but it’s got the same feel to it. It feels like the hemispheres of my brain are trying to move away from one another and they’re each pulling an eye in for the trip. My wrist feels light and I ask myself where my watch is. “Come again?” She asks. “What? Oh, nothing.” “You’re the one that brought in Sarah, right?”
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