Circles

"Moving of th' earth brings harms and fears;" - John Donne

Moving of th’ earth brings harms and fears;

Men reckon what it did, and meant;

Dad sat, hunched over holding my hand and crying, he’d grown a beard, shaggy and unkempt; purple marks the skin under his eyes and his clothes dirty and fraying. He hadn’t been there with me the whole time I don’t think, nor had he been home that I had seen. Leaning over him was Mum, she was crying to; her face was an angry contortion.

“Why did you have to go that fast? It wasn’t safe.” Her voice came out harsh and uneven, rising in pitch as she attempted to maintain control of… frustration or animosity.

“I didn’t mean… I thought she could handle it. She was having fun. I wish…” Words poured out of Dad’s mouth, a futile attempt at explaining. He was never really good with emotion; he always built up this impenetrable wall. This time though it was as if he’d just given up.

“You wish? What? You wish you could go back and change it? Well you CAN’T! It was never your choice to decide what she could handle!” She was like a viper, picking away at his conscience, snapping it into twigs. “It’s your fault my girl is like this.” She was too calm.

If emotions conveyed themselves physically every bone in his body would have broken instantly. “You think I don’t already blame myself? I don’t know I shouldn’t have sped up? I should have… done something; know straight away. She was – no, is my girl too. It’s not just you who’s suffering. At least you weren’t on the boat, couldn’t have gotten to her faster. It was never your fault!”

“I – I think you should stay at Reilly’s tonight.” It wasn’t a suggestion she was making. I couldn’t believe she had said that to him. It’s not his fault, not anyone’s.

“If that’s what you want.” He sighed in resignation.

Maybe it was just my naivety but they’d always seemed so perfect, fighting only over little things which always ended in an eruption of laughter; lightening the serious atmosphere.

My fingers felt cold and damp, but in my incorporeal state I wasn’t near anything. I realised why only when I caught one of Dad’s tears falling onto my hand. I’d begun to gain control of my ability to at least touch things but I had no idea until then that my body and mind still had some kind of connection.

Anger, rather than frustration rose up then. Not at anyone else – at myself; my body and mind for not staying as one, for making me watch my family in pieces. I was so self-pitying, self-revolving endulging in my own frustrations.

 “I’m the one who should be better, should be there telling you ‘it’ll all be okay.’ But I’m not, I’m the hopeless case lying unconscious” I screamed “…in a hospital bed, whose mind has become detached from her body, watching the inevitable breakdown of my family and incapable of fixing any of it…”

My machine started beeping and nurses swarmed in. Checking my body’s ‘vitals’ attempting to stabilise me but looking absolutely baffled as the machine continued to beep, loud and high- pitched until they bought in a new one, plugging it into me in the same way you would a television, or microwave They brought in the ‘paddles’ too. Once of the doctors said “Charge to…” and placed them on my chest, jolting my body like a ragdoll. He did it again, this time a slow beeping pattern announced I was okay again.  I felt this rush; adrenaline… or euphoria. A tingle vibrating through me; weird since I can’t receive feel much more than barriers due to the whole floating-around-detached-from-life thing, and I just blacked out.

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Lines at beginning from "A Valedictation of Mourning" by John Donne