The Darkness Of Healing // Ruel // English

Chapter 12

By now my body has passed the peak of fatigue and is now living on adrenaline. It runs through my veins, it makes my heart race. And yet it feels so familiar. This feeling of alertness in the late evenings. Rather very early mornings, because it is now half past two. The doctor called around two o'clock. Lucky someone was still awake. Half the house was asleep. And still, Coco and Sylvie have no idea of ​​the current situation. They are also not going to be woken up until there is further news.

I try to keep my brain awake looking out the window at the lights along the road. It looks like streaks of speed as my eyes start to blur. I can't even see the details in my hands on my lap, hidden in the dark light of the night. I don't want to be able to say that I think the night is a beautiful phenomenon. I don't want to be able to say that I find hope in that anymore. Because all the while you're being chased by everything that can sink its teeth into you. Anything that can poison you. It's like a chemical dung that enters your body and turns it off, but then turns your brain on like it has a devilish side. The evil side that makes you suffer. Who will kill you if you're not strong enough. Because those are my last nights. Such are his parents' nights. Such are the nights of his friends, fans. Such are his nights. You are not paying attention and you are on the verge of dying. This is not deserved. The darkness should not have surrounded him in this way. To drown in something that seems to have no way out. You can yell and kick all you want but nothing will turn the sky orange sooner. Nothing will help you escape something that gets its full power from your own body. All the food is already prepared before you can see that it will give you food poisoning. I want to change the nights back to how they had felt all along. Peaceful, quiet and carefree. Not cold, rude and murderous.

I bet we'd be fined if there was a cop standing by the road now to keep up with our speed. It seems as if Ralph has stuck his foot to the accelerator and can't let go. The road is also barely filled with cars, trucks or other public transport. I never would have made it if I had gone with that. I wanted to go to the hospital and nobody would stop me, but it takes me way too long when I take the bus. Ralph was still wide awake and offered to drive. How I get back, I have no idea. Maybe he'll stay with me. I may fall asleep on the couch in the waiting room. My closed eyes tucked behind my arm against the bright white light in the hospital. My ears covered against all the footsteps that pass me by and drive me crazy because I will start counting every step. I'll get annoyed with the humming of the broken lamp until I fall asleep.

The parking lot seems deserted. It's as if the cars that are still here have been dusting for years. That soon the paint of the car will start to peel off. That very small cracks will appear. That the color begins to fade from all the sun that has shone. It will soon be a car that has been left behind at the place where Chernobyl took place. That's what the air feels like. Full of chemicals. Substances that will damage the DNA in my body cells, just like the radioactive radiation. Where it feels like my skin is being peeled off my bones.

I'm going crazy, my head is spinning. The world starts to dance around me for a moment. I can't join these so called fun games.

The moon is full, smiling at me. But I don't give her a smile back. It has the opposite effect. My eyes scolded her, just the way my mouth should have. I want to scream it, yell it. Making clear that she should have protected him. Protect with all her life before I let her die. Extinguish like a candle that can no longer get oxygen.

I should be relieved to hear the news that everything went well, but I'm scared. Very scared. All the hope and confidence I should have has no place in my body anymore. As if the glass tubes that it should be for have been used for a failed experiment, so that they are now broken into pieces somewhere on a laboratory table. The stock is gone.

I should be glad they were able to save Ruel.

What do I feel?

I feel regret. Debt. If he had died from this, it wouldn't have been my fault. He didn't have to fight anymore. I could forgive myself. But I don't want to lose him. I want him back. I want him back alive. Back so he can play with my feelings. In a good way. That he can look at me as if at any moment he could press his lips to mine but then smear a handful of flour on my face so that I run after him in anger surrounded by joy. As if marshmallows had been pinned to the spikes of emotion. That he startles me, on purpose, but then remembers how much of an impact it has on me when he sees the tears in my eyes and my hands tremble, so then he opens his heart for me to be able to hide in it safely.