Never safe from Death

Prologue

The house was eerily silent, quite an unsettling change from the hour beforehand. My father, distraught and downhearted, added yet another cigarette end to the bed of ashes. His blue eyes yearned for harmony and contentment, although he knew they were unreachable. His head, only being supported upwards by his hands, seemed dense and raw. All of his destructive emotions weighing him down. The mental conflict within him was rapidly becoming a physical battle too.

His hands started to tremble viciously, and his pores started to release a heavy sweat. This was his breaking point, my father, gradually fading away into the darkness within him. His loss was too great to overcome, the pain too much to handle. I saw the fear that his eyes betrayed, it was excruciating to watch. His calm mask crumbling before my eyes, his composure being sucked into the vortex of misery and depression. My father was no longer strong, compassionate or even somewhat human. He was distraught, distressed and no longer recognisable not even within his barely breathing corpse. I followed his gaze and to my despair, I realised it was my body which was laying limp there.

The realisation suddenly hit me. He was suffering because of me. My failure had cost him his entire being, all because of the battle to which I had lost and fled.

I had to do something, to get back. But how? I saw a dim silvery line, I grasped onto the sparkling thread and propelled myself up. With every haul it wounded my translucent bones, every movement I made contorted my limbless figure. But I had to prevail. I battled with the iron door, and with one last tug it opened, I saw my body lying limp in the sanitised hospital bed. It's now or never.

As I leaped forward, I started to writhe in pain, but still I pushed forward towards my lifeless figure. It lay on the hospital bed, untouched. I weakly raised my hand towards my body and instantly I felt a burning sensation. I started to see crimson flames before my eyes, then all turned black.

As my eyes opened, I saw my father, ever so different. The fear and pain on his face had been replaced with relief and awe. His blue eyes teary and hopeful. I had pulled through. He took my limp hand and held it tightly, as if I would slip away at any moment. He may have lost my mother to cancer, but not me, I was the ultimate fighter. His little warrior.

Knowing I had re-joined him, I gave him a fragile smile and drifted off to sleep in a sea of hope and relief. The next battle could wait until tomorrow, because right now, I was safe at last.

***

The room felt cold and clinical as I awoke, monitors everywhere. BEEP, BEEP, BEEP. A constant repetition in my eardrums. Yet even in this chaos I could feel see the underlining pleasure that builds within me, knowing that I am alive. Every cannula that is inserted into my veins, every painkiller that's inserted into my system via the drip, every spike on the monitor signalling my heart is beating shows that I am alive and pulling through.

I gazed around; I'm almost sure I'm not in the same place that I was in before. The room is for a singular hospital bed, not multiple beds like the ward. It has lots of machines, more than I used to have, almost too many. It's dark in the room, but I can make out two nurses. I ask for my buzzer in case I need them, but they tell me I don't need it because they're here. But what if they leave? What if I end up being in too much pain or struggle breathing? They yet again tell me they are going to stay with me. I start to panic, I don't believe them, I'm on a ward and there's lots of people who are crying and so much beeping. I start to feel sleepy again, I try to fight it but I can't. My eyelids feel heavy, my body weak. I drift off back into the darkness of my mind.

I awake again in the same room, cold and clinical, yet not as dark. I see different nurses this time, and my father sitting around me. My throat feels sore and my body weak.

I vaguely recalled having a dream where everything was blurry, I am trapped in this room, unable to speak. Something clogging my throat, my mouth parched, lips swollen and cracking. Skin dry and peeling, splitting in cracks, sometimes even bleeding. The doctors surrounded me, told my dad I wouldn't make it, that I was too weak to fight the infections. My dad started to cry; my grandma cradling his head in her dainty arms. Reassuring him, it seemed. Then she broke out into tears. It must have been a dream because she never cries, and that's how I know it wasn't real. But how could a dream feel so real and make a shiver run down my spine? It felt as if it should be real, but it cannot be.

The nurse saw that I had awakened. "Hello, I'm Pauline, I will be your nurse today. Are you in any pain?" she had a lovely voice.

I opened my mouth to say no, but then I realised the stabbing pains in my abdomen, as if I had been slit from chest to waist. It felt as if knives were repeatedly slicing it open, again and again and again. I nodded, just as the pain caused me to writhe in agony. Tears flooded out of my eyes.

She needn't ask how much pain I was in again, it was written across my face and showed with the rigid contortions of my body, the palpitations showing up on the heart rate monitor. It was an indefinite answer that the agony was unmoving, these excruciating pains spelt death. She walked out of the room, and rushed back with a high dosage of morphine. I felt the tingle as it went through the cannula into my veins. Soon the pain started to fade as the room became dim and blurry.

 A dark blanket swept over me, armouring me against the pain that had previously surged through my body. My heart beat began to slow down. My lungs shrivelled up with each forced breath. My brain, starved of oxygen, slowly deteriorating

. I breathed my last breath, painlessly my soul drifted out of my body into the sky and beyond. An endless journey to the other side.

-to be continued-