Blue

Eyes

The usual. Play the video above. 

The light of the moon shines tauntingly inside the house. The familiar colors once again come out to play. I look down at my hands covered in the red blood, but I don’t feel any pain. Maybe that hasn’t come back to me yet. I can see the outline of human silhouettes, but their faces remain unrecognizable. Looking down once again to observe the brown rug with the fuzzy black letters, things become clearer and the letters begin to form a word. Welcome to Our Home. I read the rug and a shot of familiarity runs through my veins. Can I move? Without control of my body, I seem to already be moving towards the steps. A small torn white piece of paper sits crumpled on the second to last stair. Picking it up, I can now read its message. “I’m sorry.”

The comforting sound of Jen’s voice and the feel of her smooth hands moving across my arm as she unwraps blood stained gauze from my arm wakes me from the dream. The sight of her warming smile pulls me to reality as my mind wakes.

I frantically try to remember the dream before it slips from my memory grasp. I now realize why it was familiar; the rug is the welcome mat that sits at my house. I was dreaming about my home. And the note, I wrote it. Why did I write it? I could read it; can I read everything else now?

“Morning Micah, how was your nap?” She asks as I watch her press a needle into my arm followed by a slight pain as it punctures my skin.

“I feel refreshed and ready to heal!” I joke, earning an even bigger smile from Jen.

I once again admire her blue earrings placed in her ears. They glimmer like I remember my eyes doing. But they didn’t glimmer like that in the picture of me in the newspaper. They were cold and colorless.

“I brought something for you,” Jen says as she secures the new bandage on my cut arm.

In the corner of the room is a single balloon with a silver string hanging from its base. The balloon is all sorts of different colors.

“You brought me a balloon?” I ask as she grabs the string and pulls it towards my bed.

“I did, I hope you like it,” Jen says as she places the string in my reaching distance. “It says ‘Get-“

“Get well soon,” I finish it for her.

Her eyes widen when I read the balloon for a second time.

“It says ‘Get Well Soon’, doesn’t it?” I ask for her confirmation.

“You can read it?” Jen asks in a voice similar to an amused child.

I nod my head, a little too hard as a pain creeps over me. I squeeze my eyes shut in response to the unfamiliar pain. The painkillers Jen fed me earlier have clearly run out of kick.

“It hurts,” I complain as the sound of a rattle rings through my ears.

Jen empties two tablets in her hand and drops them into mine. She fills me a plastic cup of water and brings it to me without a word. My eyes follow her as I down the drugs.

“Jen?” I ask like I have many times before.

“Yes?” Her usual response.

“What happened to me?” I ask her, hoping her answer would be less secretive and discreet.

Without hesitation like she’s had in the past, she has no trouble explaining to me what caused my injuries. But Jen is trained to do that.

“You were in a pretty bad car accident. You ran right into a tree in Francis Park. You weren’t wearing your seatbelt, so you crashed through the windshield and hit your head against the same tree. Luckily for you, many witnesses called an ambulance right away. Paramedics got there just in time to save you from dying, although they couldn’t save all of your memories,” Jen effortlessly explains next to my bedside.