Unsuspecting Blessing.

v

 v

Silence crowded the room after the doctor retired to her office, and let Brian to sit and fascinate himself with made up anecdotes and day-dreaming for the remainder of the night alone in the room. The one other presence in the room had not counted just then, for she merely slept, but that gave Brian's mind ample time to spread its wings to the fullness of his imagination. He first wondered the things he assumed most people thought about in times like he found himself stranded in; about when the next time she would wake up would be, about what she was like and who she was, and most importantly what she would think of him.

His mind grew fervid in her silent favor. Brian knew that his thoughts were presumptuous, and perhaps unruly hopeful, because he could not truly know the girl laying on the hospital bed without the consciousness of her being in the room. But his ungovernable imagination thought ceaselessly about her in the hours of the night. Sometimes he would stand up, and observe her sleeping before thinking himself some sort of creep-show and sit back down—but the feeling of observing the senseless made him like an insect on the wall or an alien race, watching unprovoked, for mere curiosity's sake. Brian stood up again, and looked at her pale skin, which had grown a shade darker since the IV in her arm started pumping fluids into her body. She was a complete mystery to him so far, and he only longed to open the closed book and uncover the secret to her ambiguity. He recalled a murmur of near incoherent words that had a tone of disgust and gall that she spoke when he faced her during the short period of awareness she had whilst he spoke to the doctor.

"Did she hear us talking about her, and her family?" He asked out loud, "Or lack of?"

Brian's thoughts continued as he stood up and looked at her fair skin again. Cliches came to his head as the moonlight put a lightly dark sheen on her cheeks, and he thought of how the moon was a staple or token in any given romance novel. Brian chuckled to himself, and sat back down. The chair he sat in was uncomfortable, and the fabric felt old and gritty to his skin, but nevertheless he threw his head back and closed his eyes hoping for an equal sleep as the girl on the hospital bed.

Brian was not typically a vivid dreamer, and that night was no exception. Most of what he dreamt had nothing to do with reality in itself, and the majority of the dreams he did experience were pitch black—not even an ode to the accident, but that was because he did not actually see it occur, he supposed when he woke up. Though one dream stuck with him, and it felt more like looking at a still image than dreaming. The dream was of a hair clip, the same hair clip that had been found in the girl's hand after she had been hospitalized; her body did not want to let go of the piece of metal and plastic. Brian knew he had woken up—because light started to shine rays through his eyelids—and opened his eyes. The sounds of the hospital, he presumed, woke him up, because there was a myriad of footsteps, hollering, beeping, and plastic wheels rolling along the floor. People who worked for the public had some of the most stressful jobs, Brian thought to himself before deciding to stand up. His body felt stiff and rigid, and his mouth had a potent taste of bacteria along his cheeks and roof of his mouth, his teeth also had a thin film of plaque lining them due to his lack of hygiene so far in the hospital.

He looked out the window for a short while at the scenic front yard the hospital took such well care of. He looked at the pond, where ducks swam and people (who were not supposed to feed the ducks) fed the ducks, he looked at the giant ancient pine trees that fill the well kept grass with thousands of brown needles. And, oddly enough, he looked farther than the pond which was the furthest from the hospital itself, and saw a chain link fence with two alpacas living a captive life as attractions at the hospital. One white one, one black one; the pine needles had infiltrated their living space like a shag carpet along the overgrown grass. A serviceman stood outside the cage wearing a gray hospital uniform, holding a giant broom, looking like he was picking up the defecation of the animals, but Brian could not tell from where he stood.

Brian stretched his back out by pressing his hands into his lower back and leaning onto them, letting out a sign and groan combo that sounded like a dad of the year. He turned around to face the bed and see if his mystery person had woken up, only to find that the bed was completely empty. Utter shock filled his chest. How did she disappear? He could have sworn he had seen her this morning—but he didn't. Brian had not looked at the bed until then, he had not seen the girl at all since before he fell asleep the night previous.

"She couldn't have walked," he said to himself in an obvious tone, "what the hell..."

Footsteps padded outside the room, Brian rushed to the door and got the attention of the passing nurse. She stopped, looking hurried and thankful for the reason to catch her breath.

"Where did the girl that was in this room go?" Brian asked.

"Are you a relative?" The nurse asked.

Brian shook his head.

"Boyfriend?"

Another shake.

"How do you know the patient, sir?"

"I came here with her on the ambulance, but I have to relation to—"

An announcement sounded on the PA system, and the nurse snapped the most likely place where the girl would have been. The operating room. The nurse scurried away.

Brian exhaled heavily, and ran down the halls of the hospital like a deer escaping a wolf, except he was a person escaping the fact he did not know who this girl really was. Halfway through his run, he rationalized that getting to the operating room fast enough would not allow him to interrogate the girl and find out every detail he ruminated on the night before. Let alone, they would not pause the start of an operation on those grounds anyhow.

Brian decided it would be best to fuel himself, and headed down stairs to the cafeteria where he grabbed himself an apple sauce and milk carton. He then thought that the girl would want to eat too, so he grabbed her the same out of the fairness of his heart. When Brian walked back up to the room, he felt like a tourist in an amusement park, because he had never really been in the hospital for any amount of time over an hour. He and his Mom were lucky to be short on injuries and sickness, given the fact that she worked with the homeless over in the shelter. He saw many different types of ethnic people in their rooms as he walked on by—probably looking like a creeper, he thought. He did however, see a woman that was smoking in her room on the same floor that the girl's hospital room was and decided to shrug it off since her window was open, but she looked to be at least one hundred years old by her wrinkled complexion that resembled a hairless mole rat. Though the old lady had a full head of shining steel-colored hair.

By the time Brian had come back to the hospital room, the girl was back in her bed, with her leg being held stiffly in the air covered in wrap-around bandages. The girl's face dawned dismay as he made eye contact with her.