experience

Untitled Part 1

Lights flickered. There was almost no sound – just the quiet, deep breathing of sleep and the harsh beeping of a machine. A breeze ruffled the curtains, and danced its way over and across my face. I breathed in, and tasted salt.

Everything seemed... blissful. If it weren't for the heavy numbness in my torso, I might've believed I was in heaven. But the numbness was there, and wires protruded uncomfortably from my chest, connecting me to reality, to the slow beep-beep-beep of life.

I lay for a few minutes more in pretend bliss, and then slowly turned my head. She was there, hair falling across her shoulder like a dark waterfall. Her hands lay limp on her lap, one on top of the other, and her eyelids fluttered in sleep. I shifted my weight on the bed, almost hoping the rustle of sheets would wake her up.

It was then that the bliss changed, as if a dark shadow had drawn itself across the sun. The numbness got heavier. I blinked, and when I opened my eyes, the soft quality to the room had become a blur. The steady beeping changed pace. I blinked again, as though to remove whatever was shrouding my vision, but it looked even worse. I could feel my breathing slow, I could hear the beeping become more and more urgent, and somewhere in the back of my mind, panic loomed, but a feeling of numbness was flooding my senses. I was noticing these things through a bubble around my head, like I was underwater or in the middle of space, and nothing above or below me mattered.

And then I stopped feeling it all completely. I stopped noticing the world around me, the way my mother had awoken and was shouting herself hoarse, the way the machine had stopped putting pauses between noise to create one long, incessant note. Sound was blocked out. I could barely even make out shapes anymore. I blinked.

And then I was floating. My hearing hadn't returned to me, but my vision had – although the scene below me was in strange, ethereal shades of grey. My mother had been pushed aside by people in long coats, who crowded around my lifeless body, hands pushing towards the bed, the wires, the machine. I watched the chaos with a strange detachment, like I was observing through a glass wall.

My eyes felt itchy, tight, dry. I wanted to close them. I wanted to close them and never open them again. My head hurt, my chest hurt, and my limbs felt too heavy. I was tired. I wanted to sleep. My gaze drifted over to my mother, standing stock still a few feet away from the confusion, one hand over her mouth, another clutching her side, as though she was trying to hold herself together. Sympathy swelled and then fell. There was nothing more I could do for her. I was too tired.

Zzzzzzzzp! The sound came to me through a long tunnel, and suddenly my whole body jolted, not just on the bed, but me as well. I grabbed at my chest, but it wasn't there. But I could feel my body moving, feel the electricity running through my muscles, my heart... how was that happening?

Another jolt, this one with a little pain too. My heart mustered the strength to pump another load of blood through my veins. I thought about swallowing some air, but I couldn't open my mouth to do it – did I even have a mouth?

The third jolt, and this one shook me more violently than the others, shot pain through my chest and left my fingers tingling. I could feel my heart struggling to beat once again, and I found myself willing it to. Maybe then they would stop shocking me like that and I could be left in peace.

One last jolt, and I breathed in. Well, it was more of a gasp. Sighs of relief escaped from the surrounding specialists, and my mother sobbed. I blinked, and I was in my body again. The weight in my chest was back. My limbs were mine to control once more. I could breathe.

The machine persisted in its beeping. Someone, probably a doctor, patted me on the shoulder. Sheets creased beneath me. Cold air blew in from the open window, and the smell of salt rose up through my nose once again.