Blinded by the Light: the Series

Blinded by the Light: Prequel

Take the entrance at the end of the lobby. Walk half through the hallway, and go to the right just around the corner. Take the flight upstairs to the third floor; once upstairs, go to the left, and immediately to the right again to enter the hallway to which the ward he was looking for was attached. Walk all along the hallway until the red folding doors that looked so out of place in the otherwise white and light greyish environment. It was like a rhythm, a habit, a tradition; Brian didn't even have to look at the signs that showed the route to the ward he had to be, or even think about how to get to the place anymore. He felt like he was born knowing the way to ophthalmology ward.

The door fell close behind him, and Brian exchanged the hallway for a rectangular room where the front desk of the ward was positioned. The woman behind the desk looked up at the sound of his footsteps filling the otherwise silent space, and she gave him a bit of a smile. Brian raised his right hand to wave at her, and she returned the gesture. With his other hand, he dug into the back pocket of his jeans to find the plastic visitor card, even though he knew there was no need for; everyone here knew exactly who he was by now, and who he was coming to see each time he walked through those doors.

'Hello, Brian. He's in the same room as yesterday. I don't suppose you're going to need my help to find it anymore?' the secretary asked with a bit of a smile on her face. It was a rhetorical question; Brian knew the place almost as good as the staff itself after having spent so much time on the ward.

'No, I'll manage. I've got an mental map of this ward in my head by now,' Brian said as he tapped against his temple with his index finger. 'Do you still need to see my...' he said as he somewhat awkwardly reached the visitor card out towards her, but she shook her head.

'No, I believe I know everything by heart now,' she said as she picked up her ballpoint pen with hospital logo on the button, and turned to the notepad lying in front of her on the oval shaped wooden desk. 'Brian Harold May, born... July nineteenth, nineteen forty-seven...' she mumbled as she wrote everything she said down simultaneously. 'Visitor card number 3132214, right?'

'Exactly,' Brian confirmed.

'And of course coming to visit Roger Taylor, brought into the ophthalmology ward on November fifth,' she added as she noted this information down also, before she looked up at Brian as to check if this was also correct.

'That's it. Thank you, Elouise,' Brian smiled back at her. He didn't know when the staff and him had stopped addressing each other by their last names and professions, but somewhere along the way it had become unnatural to call people you got to see multiple times a day by their formal titles.

With Elouise's permission, Brian walked past the front desk and entered the hallway with hospital bedrooms at either side. On his way to his destination, he came across multiple doctors and nurses, all of whom he knew by name – and who also knew exactly who he was. He greeted them politely, trailed his fingers along the crisp white wall, until he eventually halted his movements in front of room 1128. He took in a deep breath – even though he knew exactly what he was going to find inside the room, he always needed a moment to prepare himself. Even though he had been here every day for almost a month by now, it never seemed to be getting any easier. Maybe because he knew that with every time he entered this sterile hospital room to find his partner in the exact same condition as the day before, he knew the chances of progress were getting slimmer and slimmer, and just the thought of this was enough to make Brian feel like someone had torn his heart out of his ribcage and watch them tear it into a million pieces right before his eyes.

Calm down. There is still hope. Today might finally bring the good news you've been waiting for to hear all this time, Brian said to himself in an attempt to cheer himself up. It was hard to keep faith in progress, but what else than faith did he have to keep him doing, to drag himself all the way up to the third floor of the hospital thrice a day, and most of all, to comfort his desolated partner with?