All I can see are lights. Blinding, white, flashing in the background. A man, or more I can’t tell, slowly lift me off of the cold and wet cement. I can’t quite recall the accident, only vaguely, for a second or two before it slips out of focus to be lost somewhere in my reeling mind.
Shock.
That’s what they’ll call it. Have you ever noticed how the doctors are so quick to write something down calling it shock and move on? Key pieces of your life missing, things you’ll never understand and no one will understand because you were simply in shock and your brain will never recall what it’s lost. I wish I could remember it. The accident. I wish I could remember the pain that caused the scars etched across my previously smooth skin.
I can feel it now.
The angry, red, pulse.
But I cannot recall the cause. My body experienced it but my mind didn’t is what my shrink tries to tell me.
It’s fucking scary. The way the mind detaches at moments. Your body and head separating differently as if two living organisms that are forced to connect, trapped together.
They carried me into the hospital tapped down on top of a white stretcher, I couldn’t have moved even if I’d wanted to.
The lights were back. Only brighter this time.
As they pushed the morphine into my system my body became even more numbed then it had been before. I was still conscious. Still aware of what was happening around me. Only all the nerves had been effectively cut off. Cut cut from my brain.
I was still watching, still present as they began to cut into my skin, trying to save what little life I had left stored inside.
Outside the sky was rolling. The clouds pierced into and sliced across the horizon shattering it into a thousand tiny fragments. Seconds later you could see the rain begin to appear. It blossomed across the lines cut by the clouds and slowly, as more and more accumulated started to slide down their edges falling away into the blackness below. It kept falling and falling, the ground slowly becoming layered in it. The falling rain.
I could feel no pain. Only watch as slowly the knife went in and out.
Debris was removed piece by piece from my chest. All I could think was how in hell could I have let this happen to me.
Why did I have to be so stupid, so dumb. I was fine before. It was all my fault and I have no way to explain it to anyone, to have them understand.
There is nothing to understand.
The nurses in recovery keep asking how I’m doing. They’re polite, respectful, all things nurses should be. But I cannot stand the look of pity and worry on their faces.
I’ll to sleep now but wake later. Wake up later to nightmares of the smooth, pearly skin cut by the clouds.