RED.

2

*Red*

Time moved slowly.

So painstakingly slow that it felt like I was going through a part in a movie where everything moved in slow motion.

The days seemed to drag on as I lay broken on the hospital bed, wishing passionately for death to come as a relief and permanent escape from the demons inside my head.

You see, I could no longer live with myself, trapped within the confines of my own head as everyday I was reminded and tortured by the memories of my own stupidity.

Time shuffled by in a series of banal routines.

Thirteen paces to the bathroom each morning, five paces from there to the shower and one pace less to get to the toilet seat since they were almost directly opposite each other.

At some point during the day, my tutor would come in and guide me through the process of adjusting to my present predicament.

She (my tutor) thought it was best for me to start with my mobility (And I agree with her because it was quite stressful feeling my way around and stumbling over things I couldn't detect), so she introduced me to my white stick, mine was a guide cane as I needed my weight to be supported because my body was still in the process of healing.

We started off with me moving around my room and when I mastered that, we leveled up with me practicing my mobility outside.

Usually we'd stop by the lawn and the music of the birds would be a soft balm to my bleeding soul.

Once I had mastered the art of the white cane, we moved on to the literary and braille aspect which wasn't so easy(okay, okay, it was tough)but at the end I could recognize words and do a few of my own, nothing too complicated but I'm learning.

In the early stages of my recovery, I was escorted by a nurse whom for the love of God could not stop talking about how lovely the day was(even though sometimes I could clearly hear the soft beating of the raindrops against the window) and how my rapid rate of improvement is a surprise to them all("almost like you're a vampire or something!")

Lord knows that if they'd kept her with me for even a day more, her dead body would have been found directly outside my door with a crutch embedded in her throat.

I never bothered to learn her name.

I guess they sensed my contempt for little-miss-jolly because after a while a new nurse arrived at my door step-or more or less fell into my room, depending on how you look at things.

She was fun,lovely and always in for a bit of gossip.

Her name was Clare.

It still shocks me how she was able to flow with my unpredictably horrifying mood swings and well placed sharp-pointed insults.

She managed to turn them into something to laugh over.

I found I couldn't hate her even if I wanted to...and taking out my frustrations on her over something that was clearly out of my own stupidity, selfishness and greed just didn't seem fair.

So it isn't a surprise that we came to be almost-somewhat-but-not-quite-there-yet friends.

My parents were lonely people-okay let me rephrase that sentence.

My parents liked being alone,they lived a quiet personal life and I never saw my extended family so it was a huge surprise when my doctors told me that one of my mum's sisters had come to claim me when I was well enough to go home.

Or wherever the hell it was they were taking me.

A nurse led me down to the lobby, a warm hand on my shoulder and a smile in her voice as she told me how far I'd come and how happy she was that I was going home.