Unsuspecting Blessing.

xi

 xi

The day of leaving the hospital ended its somewhat overbearing encroachment, and finally arrived. The air in the room felt less stale and more uplifting, or easy to breathe in. Funny now the body adapts and finds comfort in unnatural places, Julia thought, especially just after you start to leave. She did not know whether she was going to miss staying at the hospital, or having constant contact with other people; her mind adapted to the other creatures just the same as the environment. The time reminded her of barely treading water, the feeling of the saltiness seeping into her mouth through the gasps for air while trying to keep her head above the ever-changing and unforgiving torrents and undertows. Though, there was an ease that turned treading water into actually swimming. She tried to help Brian—they had accumulated quite the inventory of food items since the first day of acquaintance—moving all of the boxes and cans, but her leg felt like a knife had been tossed into the stoked fire.

Julia had never actually been swimming, but that is how she would imagine attempting to navigate deep waters; with grand difficulty and poor support, especially since the accident. What moving, in true memory not unreality, really reminded her of was picking up a draw-string bag and a tote that seemed to grow a few pounds heavier every year as she moved from government housing to foster housing and vice-versa. The hospital bed was reclined, and the Sun broke through the window onto Julia's face, heating her skin and piercing her eyes with the hot, bright powers that the Sun radiated. Her head started to ache the more she tried to squint out the vexing sensation.

Julia closed her eyes, listening to the soft shuffling of Brian's feet on the tile floor as he packed all of their gained baggage. A restrained pulsing in her leg crept up to her stomach, and Julia placed both her hands over her eyes, throwing her head back with a sigh. Not so soon after, she dozed off...

When she woke up, a certain falsehood washed over her, and she stared beyond at a room that was not the hospital room; but she felt positive, recalling explicitly that she had not moved from the bed to the wheelchair. That's when she heard an unknown voice, one that culled to her, but it sounded like she had heard it a thousand times before. A young woman walked into the indescribable, blurred room—one that shared features with her—one that Julia had undoubtedly seen in her past. The sore pain from her leg had ceased since she woke up and traveled deep into the chambers of her heart, and with every beat it hurt more and more. The woman, Julia knew, that she was staring at, was her Mother.

Her Mother spoke in a dialect unknown to Julia, and that troubled her to no end. Not being able to understand her Mother's words made Julia furious with dejection and a hard misery that beat in her chest surrounding the sharp pain in her heart. But, Julia knew, that her Mother was a person she only met in infancy and the woman standing before her was merely a reflection of a photograph that Julia had seen only a handful of times in her life. Her parents traveled from France, to the United States, as immigrants, due to an unknown conflict described poorly in a journal that laid underneath Julia's bed in her apartment; the author was her Father. A picture of her Mother, and foreign handwriting was all she knew of her parents. Months after Julia had been born in America, both of her parents were killed in a drunk driving accident while her infant, incapable self sat in a crib watched by a babysitter. Julia herself could not consciously recall the babysitter, or where she was during the accident, but while in a state of unconsciousness the mind's secrets come told like gibberish between two toddlers.

When Julia truly woke up, Brian stood over her, watching. She wiped her face and felt liquid on both of her cheeks, hoping she had not been drooling in front of him she stretched her arms and back to their furthest extent until the wind stoked the fire in her leg. What am I going to do without the pain medicine from the doctor available whenever the hurt is too much? She asked herself.