Burning Bones

Chapter 2

After two hundred and eighty-seven days, as I counted, I developed a sense of sound. At first, it was just the beeping coming from behind and above my head. Later, it was the buzzing of tens of little wires surrounding my motionless body and then I started hearing people's words. Words that, in another world and another life, would've held meaning, I'm sure. But to me, they were just strange sounds, used for communication.

I don't know if I ever spoke that language.

But in a world where you can barely see your surroundings and not understand the tongue spoken, body language becomes an important way of comprehension. I learned that when the woman held my hand, even though she obviously thought I couldn't feel hers, she was looking for connection with my. I saw that happen with other people, too.

The man in white often held the woman's hand, possibly to offer her comfort. Maybe it was another way of communication. I saw that the man and woman who came to visit sometimes held hands.

Most of the time they didn't.

Perhaps we were friends, in another life. Maybe that's why she kept coming to visit me. When she stroked my hair, or tied a thin, yet beautiful looking and heavy string around my wrist, I felt adored. And when she left out the door, I swear I had a small urge to get up and look at her. I wanted to tell her not to go. Yell out so she would stay with me forever.

All those feelings, and I didn't even know her name. She was a complete stranger. On my end, at least. She acted as if she knew me, but I identified her as another human in this chaotic world of mine.

And though I wanted to get up from that binding bed, I couldn't. Something inside of me just couldn't gather all the broken pieces of my body strenght to get my legs moving and my vocal chords shouting.

Day two hundread and ninety, the boy came again. I hadn't seen him for a very long time and the touch of his skin and the look in his eyes was melancholic, but comforting. That day, the woman didn't come. Perhaps she knew the boy came and that he wanted to be alone with me. He talked to me about things which I didn't understand. But his voice was silky smooth and it was like hearing an old lullaby your mother used to sing you. Because though my bones felt broken and my skin felt unreal, he made me feel like I was somewhere completely different. Free, happy, and...

Alive.

Was I alive? That question was what kept me up all the time, so I could count days and nights. I wasn't quite sure. I could be dead, staring at all those people from my grave. Maybe that's why their words didn't mean anything to me. Because I had found peace and nothing else could bother me.

But I sure felt alive. I could feel my body and my mind was still working. My heart was probably still beating. I know I was still breathing.

After a few hours of talking, the boy kissed me on the forhead. The warmth of his lips filled my body as he walked through the door. Soon, a lady in pink came. She checked the wires on my arms and wrote something on a clip board. After that, she left.

Everyone was leaving me. I didn't like it one bit.

I remember that once, I had achieved a small movement with my right hand. It was new territory, motion of the physical essence instead of the constant mental one. I was proud of the small extention of a muscle in my body, but to my dismay, I was completely alone, lying in the dark.

No one saw what I had done.

After that moment, my body fell asleep again and I was unable to move once again. So this was just another secret I had to unwillingly keep. Like the one of the woman and the man viciously and angrily arguing in front of me.

The woman was definetly sad, that much I had gathered in my time at the limbo, as I decided to call it. Tears were streaming down her face, but she tried to compose herself so she could scream at the man, like he did at her. He was sad, too. But he let the anger get the best of him. I remember he almost slapped the woman across the face. I was terrified he would hurt her, but he stopped himself before he did any physical harm.

It was too late to stop the emotional damage. Then he sat down on a chair, and let tears flow out of his narrow brown eyes. This man, however he tried to hide it, was weak. So was the woman. The world was full of weak people, and what I needed was strong ones like the boy. Strong people who could make me move again. Who could make me understand the world again.

The woman tried to help the man, but he shook his head from left to right, like a fly was running around his head, and got up. He turned to the door and was just about to leave. But before he did, he placed a small, box like bag on the table and opened it. He took a few papers out and handed them to the woman. She read a couple words and started crying even harder. The man closed the bag and picked it up again. He took a lingering look at me, said another word or two, and walked out the door.

The woman sat down on the chair next to me. She cried for a long while. I knew it was a long time because when she had come, the windows were very bright. Now, the outside was dark. Like all the light of the world had been blown out by a strong wind. Like the sky was expressing exactly what my dear friend was experiencing.

But the room was still light and the woman was still crying. Heavy, fast flowing tears. They landed on her clothes, and on the floor, and on the chair. Also on my bed, if she leaned over. She was making hysterical sounds. She read the papers over and over again, carefully not to miss a single word on them. I think she may have expected the words to change their meaning as time passed by and she read them repeatedly.

And even though in my own state of life, I knew very little stuff, I knew one thing. The paper was important. It was heart-breaking to the woman and it was life-changing to the man. Something that the woman had still not realized as she fell asleep next to me was that the words weren't ever going to change. It was set it stone.

When the windows turned bright again, a lady in pink came to wake the woman up. The pink lady said something, and the woman nodded. After that, they both left.

They must have had a talk in the hallway, because the woman had returned once again. She placed the papers in her purse and put on the jacket she left hanging on the edge of her chair. Then she reached for the door knob, but something stopped her. I know, because she looked at me and her eyes started to sparkle from the waterdrops gathering in them again.

Stop crying, I wanted to say to her. I didn't know why she was so sad, but it had to stop. She had to be strong and happy enough for the both of us as I was unable to experience any kind of true emotion.

She stepped to my bed, and took me by the hand. She said two words, the only words in the past two hundread and ninety-eight days, that had made any kind of sense to me. That had any meaning to them at all.

Two words that, as soon as my brain understood them, crashed through a strong glass barrier I had built up in my brain and landed right down on my heart. The sharp shattered pieces cut holes into my very essence as I broke on the inside.

"He's gone."