THE COLOUR OF LOVE (Wattpadprize14)Completed

Chapter 1 - Power Surge

Lying fidgeting with the wires and being reprimanded by the staff to lie still, his thoughts drifted to her.

Of course she was obviously seeking help, much like him. Just then the oddest thought spiralled through his mind, like a dotted line; so quickly he didn’t have a chance to erase it before the message seemed to draw itself in capital letters in his head. HELP HER.

He tried to shrug the thought away whilst concentrating on trying to sleep in this uncomfortable situation with all these wires attached to him.  Who was he to think that he could help her, when he hadn’t been able to help his wife, even when the signs were so clearly visible that she needed him?  What could he possibly do to help this woman that he briefly saw in the waiting room?

He drifted into a restless sleep, a sleep which he dreaded more than anything else, knowing that his wife would come to him again.  As he closed his eyes and sleep took hold of him, he silently prayed that the doctors would be able to help him.

~~~

Cherrie listened intently to the doctor’s instructions, lying still and closing her eyes; going through the hopeless sleep motions, knowing full well, she would never fall asleep.  She felt agitated and restless and could feel the muscles in her legs cramping. Cherrie strained to keep her eyes closed as the muscles in her neck and shoulders tightened, bringing on the tension headache she was now accustomed to. She could feel the pulse in her temples throbbing, and knew without doubt that a scorching headache was imminent. Somehow she had to stop concentrating on the sticky pads irritating her skin, knowing they were a necessary evil. Throwing caution to the wind and ignoring all the wires, she rolled over onto her tummy and tried desperately to sleep.

Her thoughts drifted to the stranger in the waiting room.  He looked so strong and sure of himself, why did he need sleep therapy?  But like him, she argued with herself. He must have some trauma in his life that prevented him from sleeping.

Whilst these thoughts buzzed around in her head, she heard the gentle hum of the machines as they kicked into action. The lights went out in her room and darkness descended over every square inch of the white, clinical room she’d found herself in. She strained to keep her eyes closed and clear her mind of every thought, but unexpectedly, the waiting room stranger seemed to glide right back into her head uninvited.

~~~

Cole stared into the total blackness of his room, fighting the need to close his eyes, he feared the visions that would come to him.  He heard the calm voice of the nurse coming over the speaker in the corner of the room.

“Mr Steele, please relax and close your eyes. You are being monitored all the time and we promise to make sure no harm comes to you.”

This assurance did nothing to quell the emotions rising in his stomach as he closed his eyes and waited for his wife to appear.

As he drifted into an unsettled sleep, it was not his wife he saw, but the eyes of the woman from the waiting room.  Just her eyes, that’s all he saw, so dark and tired.

~~~

As Cherrie strummed her fingers softly on the hard mattress beneath her, she was conscious of the slight pressure of all the pads stuck to her forehead, wrists and chest. She noticed a numb sensation in her finger tips followed almost immediately by irritating pins and needles, almost like the electric shock she’d received the time she pulled out the toaster’s plug with wet fingers. It was then that she became aware of a flickering light behind her closed eyelids.

Feeling anxious she opened her eyes quickly to see what was happening, and was shocked to find herself in a completely different environment. Ahead of her, stretched a long and winding road, but strangely, it just seemed to hang in mid-air.  Feeling confused yet oddly at peace with the world, a serene calmness enveloped every part of her body as she took her first steps onto the suspended road and appeared to glide rather than walk its distance.

~~~

Cole suddenly felt a strange, tingling sensation on his skin from all the little pressure pads attached to the wires, and in his semi-sleep state he heard a muffled voice saying something about a power surge.

He opened his eyes to find, not the white clinical room he had gone to sleep in, nor were there any machines or monitors, but a beautiful field of lush, green grass scattered with hundreds of tiny daisies and buttercups. The smell of the grass was so fresh and the sky so blue with not a cloud in sight, and the field just seemed to stretch on for miles into the distance.

He shook his head and blinked several times, trying to make sense of where he was. 

The grass was so green, he couldn’t resist the temptation to bend down and touch it to see if it was real.  It tickled his palm and was so lush and thick that he couldn’t help lying down on his back and waving his arms up and down in the grass, as though he was making snow angels but in the grass. Remembering the way he did this with his wife, after the first snowfall, he waited for the pain to invade his heart, which happened every time he thought of her, but he felt nothing but peace. Where was the pain? Where had the heartache gone?  He felt strangely numb, not experiencing any pain, a pain he had now learned to live with.

He lay there for a few minutes looking up at the deep blue sky, trying to come to terms with this strange new feeling, when he heard the sound of tinkling bells.  Sitting up, he looked around to see where it came from, and not seeing anything or anyone that could have made the sound that drifted on the still air, he decided to follow the direction from which he thought it had come.

~~~

Cherrie seemed to glide along the road for miles but she never for one moment felt tired or afraid.  A sense of peace had surrounded her.  There was nothing, absolutely nothing around her, just an empty space of which there seemed to be no depth or colour. She reached her hand into the air to try and touch the emptiness around her and it felt strangely warm and soft, like a cuddly rug that was wrapped around you to keep off the chill of a winter’s evening.

Sniffing the air she couldn’t smell anything. Stopping for a moment, she took deep breaths and still smelt nothing. Sticking her tongue out, she tried to taste the air, then quickly put her tongue back, realising how silly she must look trying to taste the air with her tongue, like she was licking a lollipop.

Unaware of how long she had been gliding along this road, she stopped occasionally to survey her surroundings, and sniffed the air to find a trace of any kind of smell. But still nothing. Then she noticed a small patch of green far into the distance and decided that that must be where this road was taking her.

~~~

As Cole followed the tinkling sound he turned around to see how far he’d come and was surprised to see that the field of daisies and buttercups was so very far behind him.  How had he come so far without noticing the distance? 

The tinkling sound called him onwards.  As he came over a small rise, he noticed a small patch of grey far ahead of him in what seemed to be an empty space. As the sound continued to encourage him to move forward, he noticed that there was no colour of any description surrounding this grey matter. The closer he approached the more he saw of the grey and it seemed to spiral into the distance like a thread of paint that had been dropped onto a white canvas.

As he drew nearer to the grey thread …. To his amazement, he realised that it was just hanging in the air.