Futile Trials

Oatmeal

You begin.

You begin with smell: It's chemical and mixing with the aging scent of confections, all dolloped neatly on top of the musty scent of bodies.

You begin to taste: A dryness on your tongue tinged with something bitter and yet familiar... Likely antibiotics.

You begin to hear: Almost certainly it is a pair of feet scuffing across the floor under the gasp of the ventilator bellow and the painfully incessant quip of the heart monitor. 

You begin to feel: curling your toes and fingers; sensing the thick comforter wrapped around you; the tingling sense that someone is nearby.

But it is here you end, as you do not see.

You can not see the drugs on the cart, the leftover bread on its plate, or the bodies surely within your room.

You can not see the person walking by in the hall, the odd accordion like workings of the ventilator, or the data spouting heart monitor. 

You can not even tell if there is light or if it is night.

The heart monitor's pitch ascends as your arteries and veins throb. Panic breathes in and out of the ventilator for you. Voices suddenly flood, pouring in from all angles, but they can't drown out the scratching as you set off to rub your fingers raw on the bandages across your eyes. It's rough under the pads of your digits, but a variety of hands come to pull your own away from your eyes. You can smell the white chemical from the torn bandaging. You can taste the little pieces of debris that landed in your mouth.. But you can not see this lowly fiend. 

You can not see.

Do you...

Scream?

Skip to "Moaning Myrtle"

Ask about what happened?

Skip to "Last night?"