They Come Marching, Parts 1-3, complete story

They Come Marching, Part 3, Nathaniel

Nathaniel

My head feels damp and swollen with medicine, and I can't open my eyes. The light still pushes through them, blinding and fluorescent, always bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz all around me. I try to orient myself inwardly. How long have I been here? Everything swims, including my thoughts, and I feel myself fade.

Swish scratch, swish scratch, shuffling shoes wake me again. The din of voices speaking medicalese has become white noise, almost inaudible, but the shuffling walk stands out, sandpaper against cheap plastic. The rhythm is syncopated by mindlessly violent writing on clipboards- scratch, scribble, scratch, rip, scratch, scribble, scratch, rip.

I listen for my own breathing under the sounds of the room, but I don't hear it. The only sense that rises above the prickling noises is the overwhelming tactile sensation.

The liquid in the IV masks much of what I should be feeling, but I feel the liquid itself pushing into my arm, ice cold and giving my veins too much thickness. From my chest I feel the same crushing ache, the same pulsating, radiating soreness. The only difference in this moment of wakefulness as compared to those I'd drifted in and out of before now is the vague smell of food in the air, something sweet, like jam or pie.

A tickle on my arm draws my attention suddenly and fully. I feel as though a series of hairs are standing on end in a trail up my side. Like so many times before now, I attempt to lift my arm or shift my body and find the movements futile.

As the hairs move to my armpit, I exhaust myself trying to move. I feel sweat form on my temples, matting my hair and running behind my ears, as I fight to summon energy. All I have goes into the one action I am able to accomplish, but the strain of the effort has my mind sharper and more present than it has been in what seems like days or weeks. I limply bob my head forward, tilting my face towards my chest and allowing me to look down at the sensation. I focus all my will to pull my eyes open for the first time since my arrival. If not for the sudden presence of mind this odd sensation has brought me, I doubt I'd be able to, but the lids stretch slowly, and after several long moments of painfully blinding light, shapes around me sharpen.

I look down and toward my left arm, where I first felt the pinching hairs. Tiny bits of dirt are crawling up the crook of my elbow and side of my chest. My heart is beating faster now, panic clearing my head and sharpening my thoughts further. My eyes move to the bandages around my chest. Crawling, trickling, wriggling trails of brown flow under the gauze from every direction. I feel held down by the dozens of moving strands, delicate as hairs but as restraining as garroting wire.

I never think call out with words, but I can hear an animal whine come from somewhere deep inside my throat. A twitch draws my attention to a lump on a spot of skin just above the border of the bandage. I refuse to believe, refuse to think, as the twitching lump moves, underneath the hair and skin of my chest, like a burrowing mole. Before my vision darkens again, I watch more twitching lumps emerge from under the bandage, following the first in a studded line.

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