Two Truths and a Liar

IV • How to forget

Leon

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I was alive.

It came as a surprise at first, finding light flooding my eyes and veins and feeling the breath flow through my lungs, after that night, after what had happened.

"Leon?"

Voices miles away. The first thing I felt was something soft, maybe, softer at least than the roughness of my hands that ached and snagged against it. My hands had never been so coarse.

I tried to open my eyes, but my lids held shut like glue. The light behind was blurred and foggy, distorted through a wall of lashes, like seeing life through sheer, rippling water.

There was life in me, but I couldn't feel myself. My fingertips felt sheets, my eyes felt the light, and my ears heard the murmur of voices fading in and out of reality. But my body was numb.

Gradually my eyes fell open, and my head began to clear.

"He's awake!"

images blurred and distorted began to fuzz and fade away into something clearer. I saw two lights gently vibrating until they made a decision to converge and focus into one. I blinked once, twice, and tried to lean forward to see the voices wandering off at the edge of my vision. something caught, a tug at my arm, and the sudden pounding in my head and swirling vision sent me falling backwards and hitting the soft cushion of a pillow. They came closer, and a face leaned over to peer at me. a face I didn't recognize.

their mouth moved, but no sound registered in my ears. I listened through them instead of to them and the words echoing through the caverns of my skull bounced around a bit without my notice before dancing off the way they came. A medical mask was tucked under their chin. I lowered my gaze. A needle in my arm.

As my heart rate sped with surprise I felt myself flinch. something cleared. I felt the stabbing, with it a pain that covered my whole body, aching deep and low, hundreds of them, masses, on my hands, on my arms, covering my chest and scattered down my back. the pain on my face stung, sharper than the needle now held in a pair of gloved hands. the sound cleared along with the rest, biting my already bleeding mind.

"Please, calm down," the mouth above the mask sighed speaking through a glinting set of wax white teeth. "I just need to take some blood,"

They gave me pain killers and I could finally think straight. My family was there, taking up residence in a set of musty waiting room chairs at the edge of the room. Kylie hid her face in a comic book, blue legging clad legs swinging under the chair. Mom was chewing at her claw-like fuchsia fingernails--usually pristine, eyes flicking between the hospital bed I was entrapped in and the fingerprint worn window on the other wall. Dad walked in and out of the room. There was a flower vase on the bedside table.

The nurse came back and talked to Dad who rolled from heel to toe and rubbed his hands together. They looked at me. Everyone looked at me. I closed my eyes.

A few hours later I could finally open my mouth and put a few coherent words together.

"what happened?"

"We were hoping you could tell us that, Leon."

Dad spoke my name like he was sending an arrow through it, burying it into the shrouded deep of what meaning was left in their praised son's name. I couldn't tell them, could it? Was any of it real at all? I was swimming in oceans of puzzled thought, mind buzzing with the comically loud, overwhelming hum of the room around me. Everything hitting me all at once and melting through the stress in my mind as beads of sweat down my forehead. The sticky cold feeling sunk deep into my eyes, weighing them down and flushing out in buckets as I closed them, tears running down my cheeks. I never cried.