Blue

My

As usual. Play the video above.

Looking through the window, the sky is dark—darker than the chair in the hospital room. It’s not light blue like my eyes. It’s black with a loud burst of light from the moon. Below me, the color brown resides in a rug with scrambled letters that read across. I can’t tell what they say. My hands: red. A dark red. I see colors everywhere, and I remember their names. Except white, I don’t see any white. 

Jerking awake as I am released from the dream, my mind is hazy—hazier than usual. Those colors seem familiar, the dark blue, the black, the brown, and the red. Not familiar from seeing them buried in a box of crayons, familiar like they are connected to a memory. 

“Good morning,” Jen says as her bright smile lights up with her green eyes. 

My breathing slows as I come to gather my surroundings. The colors I saw in my dream are harder to remember now that I’ve returned to my white room. Jen is in her usual white nurses clothes, but today she has on tiny light blue diamond earrings. They look like my eyes. 

“I like your earrings.” The compliment is the first thing to leave my lips as she places a tray of unappetizing food in front of me. 

“I knew you would. I wore them so you wouldn’t forget what the color of your eyes are,” Jen says in the midst of preparing my meal, if you can even call it that. 

Today seems brighter than yesterday in every way possible. Jen must have opened the blinds so I could see the sky outside too. With the window cracked open a bit, the sounds of the outside world makes a welcomed appearance in my contained room. Mixed with the sounds of birds, the noise of bustling visitors travels through the open door of my hospital room. 

Leaning forward over my tray set up in my bed, I get a glimpse of the moving guests in the hallway that walk past my door. Question settles in my mind as I observe the stoic police officer standing just outside the room, invisible to my eyes unless I lean forward. Why is he there? Is he here to see me? 

“Jen?” I ask as she sets a small cup of two painkillers on my tray as if they were the dessert following my five course meal. 

“Yes, Micah?” She says, her soft voice is always a pleasure to the ear. 

“Why is there an officer outside my room?” I lean forward a bit further but this seems to upset her. 

Without hesitation, Jen and her blue earrings go to close the door, cutting me off from further curiosity, but the question was already locked in my mind. 

“He’s just here for protection,” She answers me with busy eyes. “Take your pills.” Her head nudges towards the plastic cup. 

“Jen?” I call for a second time. 

“Yes, Micah?” She sighs, but stops her movement to turn her attention to me. 

“Those people out there. They are here for the other patients?” I ask, recalling the sight of different aged people walking past my door carrying various cards, flowers, and balloons. 

“Yes, they come to visit their loved ones or family members here at the hospital,” Jen politely answers. 

A brief silence punctures the air as Jen comes closer to me and starts to adjust the bandage wrapped around my head. The pain was almost unnoticeable before, maybe due to my curious mind, but it becomes violently present as she starts to put pressure on my skull.

“Has anyone come for me?” I ask, desperately trying to distract my mind from the pain. 

The pain stops for a split second, just after the question leaves my lips. Jen pauses to digest my words, her green eyes searching for an answer. 

“Not yet, Micah,” She says honestly, but the absence of further information makes it seem almost dishonest. 

As she finished rewrapping the bandage around my head, removing the previous one, I recognize the familiar red I saw in my dream drenched in the gauze from my head. The color came from my blood. I was bleeding in my dream; my hands were red with blood. 

“Why hasn’t my family come?” I ask and the question causes her to squirm. 

Her eyes are filled with less confidence as she replies. 

“They’ve been busy, they will come soon.” Jen says. 

It’s a lie, an honest lie. The lack of presence from my family concerns me although I don’t remember even having a family, but Jen’s answer confirms that I do. Why haven’t they come to visit me? Why haven’t they brought me flowers or balloons? 

My eyes search the room for a distraction, but its lack of contents makes the task difficult. Locating a grey newspaper on the table next to the navy blue chair, it seems like the only interesting thing for my mind to use as entertainment. 

“Jen, can you hand me that paper?” I ask and she places it on my lap without a word.

Looking down at the page before me, the letters are painfully scrambled and I can’t read a word. Luckily my mind didn’t forget how to see and the pictures throughout the paper catch my attention. A few pictures here and there of people holding up awards and I smile at the picture of a young girl holding a dog bigger than her. 

My eyes scan across and lock on one particular picture that stands out from the rest. A young woman with a cold face. She’s not smiling, but she’s not frowning. Her long brown hair perfectly shapes her small head and her skinny body stands straight up. She just stares straight ahead, right at the reader, right at me. This paper lacks any color, but if it had them, her eyes would be light blue. 

“This is me, isn’t it?” I hold the paper up for Jen to see and compare the picture to the image I briefly saw in her small mirror. 

She brutally snatches the paper from my hands, returning it to the table. Her nervous hands run through her hair as she closes the blinds, cutting out the source of light and the room becomes much darker.

“You should try to get some sleep, you need to heal,” she says as the machine next to my bed becomes the main focus of her attention. 

Without another word, Jen opens and closes the hospital room door and disappears into the thought provoking hallway.