Splendid Ignorance

2011

It had only been six months, and I had longed to go back. And now, it was twenty-six years later and the homesickness swelled up inside me and the hurt was still the same.

I sat in the hospital cafeteria. It was late. After a certain point, time matters not in a hospital. 'After hours' the hospital runs on a type of ethereal schedule for those that are free to roam from the rooms with beds and people that are bound to them by tubes and wires. I stood in the silent cafeteria and stared absent-mindedly at the overpriced vending machines. I dropped in my change and then sat in the quiet room at a cold booth and ate what was sold as a chicken salad sandwich. I should have just gotten a candy bar. I ended up getting one afterward anyway.

I was alone. I knew I had to deal with my thoughts, but I had not resolved how to do it in over a quarter of a century. I did not believe I would be able to miraculously find a solution before I threw out the wrappers to my meal, but I would try.

Flora was in another room in the hospital, tethered to tubes of liquids. She was not free to roam. She wasn't going anywhere. Before six months ago, I thought those old memories had been filed under 'FORGOTTEN'. However, all my alone time since the accident had provided me with some time to begin to rummage around those dusty files. They weren't forgotten.

Flora had been in a coma since the accident, six months ago. The prognosis was not good. Again, I was desperate. I carried guilt of having walked away from the accident with minor cuts and bruises. Now, I was in the hospital so much, I wondered if I was in the coma and this was all a prolonged dream deluding me into thinking I was fine. However, that was the delusion. I was fine, at least physically. Flora was not.

I glanced up at the clock. What it told me was meaningless. If I had ever wanted time to stand still, it was now. I wanted to go to sleep, but I knew I wouldn't. My mind would not let me. Could I make time stand still? If I could manipulate time, I wanted it to stop going forward. I wanted it to be back in the past. Not back to the accident. Further back. The hurt began to rise in me.

I remembered on the ski slopes twenty-six years ago feeling like a time traveler, with foreknowledge. With the feeling of power and control. Now with the curse of hindsight, I could see all those past events, some isolated and some strung together. I was on the wrong side of history to make any alteration. The past was past. No power or control. But was all the past lost? Could I steer the frozen current of the past into a different channel and get it to flow again by some action made in the present? Could I change the course of the past and give it a new chance for a future? Was it too late?