Echo Thomas Olde [ENGLISH]

MISERY

"Messages from Nick Grevers"

The pain was like the end of the world. He thought: There comes a point when the very discussion of pain becomes redundant. No one knows there is pain the size of this in the world. no one. It is like being possessed by demons.
– Stephen King"

1.

"WhatsApp Message, Aug 18, 2018, 08:13

" Yes, I'm fine. Don't worry. amc in total chaos. They think about terrorism. Spooky shit everyone!"

2.

"Subject: More spooky shit From: nick_grevers91@gmail.com To: samalloveryou@icloud.com Date: 2018-8-18 14:10 Dear Sam, You must be shocked. Unbelievable, so it was even on CNN. It is incomprehensible. The hospital staff walk around here with the dazed looks in their eyes that anyone who is present at the scene of a major disaster will have, but otherwise you are really in the eye of the hurricane. The news is all past me. Nobody tells us anything. I get what I know from my iPad or the TV above the bed: there is such a marathon broadcast on every channel (think MH17, think Charlie Hebdo) and every time I read the headline on the blue strip under the images: 32 DEAD IN AMC, POSSIBLE BIOTERRORISM. I once looked out the window and down in the parking lot outside the barriers are Gerri Eickhof and the NOS news crew. I saw my window on TV. Wondered if I should wave. With my head, haha."

"There are also crowds of people in front of the hospital. Disaster tourists. Relatives of the deceased who want information. Relatives of patients who want to enter. I believe my parents are also among them, but I texted them that they better go home. There have been riots. Anyway, I didn't get it when it happened. I slept right through it. But the aftermath was no fun. I've been monitored in the ICU all morning, Sam, as I would have had 'suspicious symptoms'. No worries; if there were they are gone now, because I am back in my room and left to my fate again. There are rumors that we will all be transferred to other hospitals, but that is not yet clear. Well – what can you say sensibly about it? Nothing, because nothing is known yet. So let me focus on what I actually wanted to write to you.

"I honestly had to laugh when I saw your Facebook post yesterday. I immediately knew it was okay to DM you. A selfie in the middle of the crosswalk of 5th Avenue... in the exact same place where we took our selfie last year, which is enlarged in the kitchen, only now you are not there with me, but with Julia! Same pose, leaning back slightly; same grin, same sunglasses; you even thought of the Starbucks cup in your right hand (because of course you did.) The yellow cabs and the sea of ​​crossing New Yorkers complete the resemblance. And then that caption: #livingthelife. An inimitable Sam Avery joke, way over the line in a situation that's completely screwed up, but I've known you long enough to know that it must have been your only way to get closer. It can never be without a sharp edge on you, huh? That's one of the things I love about you."

"That seems like a long time ago, we together in New York. In love and inseparable, Julia always joins us to your favorite clubs – your sister missed you so much too! It all came back to me when I saw your post. Life seemed so simple back then. Crazy how one photo can trigger such a whole stream of memories and feelings. It is precisely for that reason that I still haven't dared to upload the photos from my GoPro to the iPad. The photos of that last ascent with Augustin... the photos of that place where it went wrong. I know I'm still missing some of the events. Not as much as I'd like, but enough to be relieved. Sometimes life unintentionally mercifully obscures the worst things, like a sheet spread over human remains after a terrorist attack or plane crash. But the curse of the ghost is that it wants to remember... and I'm terrified of what it will unleash in me when the sheet has descended and the contours beneath it become visible.
Or if it is pulled away. Everything before August 8 seems a long time ago now. They seem to be someone else's memories. And only ten days have passed. Ten days! Can you believe that? It feels like an eternity, in which everything has been reduced to a kind of mental confusion, drugged and disoriented and sure of nothing but that horrible pressure behind my face. No pain, there's too much junk in my body for that, but a pressure, ever increasing, as if a balloon swelled up inside that was about to burst. That pushes everything else back, even that disgusting smell from the ointment they're smearing under the bandage, or the tube from the feeding tube that runs up my nose. (So, I kid you not, I hallucinated that it had fused with me, like a plastic umbilical cord on a fetus. Ahhh, the morphine! It's going to make you trip.)"