Past, Present, and Future; Mostly Present

Don't rip on me here. I warned you I would be a nobody and this would be nothing: beginning to end. Unlike me? You should've seen this coming.

I hate to leave you, but I'm tired and ink makes me dizzy. Everything must come to an end. Don't flip through the pages trying to figure out why it stopped. Don't underestimate the past tense, but don't overestimate it either. Logic doesn't exist. I don't want to find any discussions on psycho-fan sites of people trying to figure out what happened.

Life isn't fair. Get over it.

I have.

If you ignore me, maybe you'll understand everything that you've considered confusing. Me and my problems. Why my memory jumped ship, why the only thing I can remember are the most dramatic conversations known to man, why my personality made such abrupt changes that make me seem fictional.

Am I fictional?

I hope so.

Light invaded my eyes, I saw black spots. Shapes of people came into focus. One person. Her clothes were white enough to belong on a cartoon character's face. Something brushed the rim of my forehead.

"Ben?"  Her mouth was open and mumbled sounds climbed into the world of making sense in bits and pieces. "...again...seizure...tumor...history..."

I blinked.

She opened her mouth again. "Worry...noncancerous...no. Hospital. Medication."

I watched her move from the room and pick up a small device with buttons. The buttons had numbers.

"Family history. Baby. Recurring. Hang drugged fountains. Don't sleep. Antidepressants. No wonder... Long your head hurt?" she asked.

I held up three fingers.

"Weeks? Months?"

I nodded.

That's when I heard the ringing again. The nurse's clothes became a cloud of fog. My head roared and shot through my body like...some sort of analogy or something. I don't know. It hurt. Last thing I saw was the cloud's frantic movements like I was at my wits end.

What had she said? 

Whatever, I'll figure this out in the afterlife.

I wanted to pass out, stop feeling this. My head...Tiny Person, pulling and shoving it until it would give out, stop working entirely. It numbed out like a popsicle, and I was left in nothing but black.

Black. Black. Black.

The periods coin-tossed between long nothing and short spurts of gunshot wounds. They were color coded: white for bored and red for pain. Consciousness back again, the light entered my vision. I heard voices. They were clearer this time.

"Holy crap."

When the image had lines, my legs begged me to run away and go to Canada, or anywhere. Japan? Africa? Jupiter? It all sounded appealing to me.

"Ben?"

Kyle's forehead was tomato-red, but his cheeks were the same color as a white-powdered donut. Upon meeting my eyes, his head relaxed. He wasn't angry. The lines of his eyebrows were upside down.

Relieved.

Then I saw four other faces. My parents were there. I guess that makes sense. I hoped they knew what was really going on, that I didn't want to be here...that I didn't know I ended up here...where...

Oh, I was in a hospital room. Grey walls, the depressing atmosphere. I appreciated it. It was like they were trying to numb out my head. 

Here's where I didn't quite understand life.

I have three brothers, and as every part of the image came into view, I realized something. I was looking at all of them. 

The copper hair caught my attention, and I knew that the vacant face belonged to none other than Nick. Nicholas Wood, the kid who makes me look like a selfless Saint. I couldn't remember the last time I'd actually seen him, let alone on account of me (maybe).

Next to my parents? The oldest, Micah Wood Jr. He looked like a blonde version of my dad, but he'd grown a mustache to go with his beard. His wife and kids weren't there. What a relief.

I hate kids.

Only Kyle had noticed my consciousness. The rest were yelling at another doctor.

Micah looked like King George the Third. "...Well, excuse me, I don't know what you call yourself, but I am a doctor. I see no reason why we can't just get it out. It's grade one for Pete's sake. It shouldn't be doing the damage it already is."

"It's in a complicated position, affecting the frontal and temporal lobes. It's too big of a risk for something this insignificant. It's benign. Antibiotics should take care of it, and we'd keep monitoring him," the other doctor guy answered calmly.

"You said that the first time. And here we are!"

"It shouldn't be affecting him like this."

I wanted to snort. If Micah was convinced of something, no one was going to change his mind. But what was he convinced of? That's the real question.

"I'd say it's affecting him plenty," Nick mumbled. He looked at his nails like a teenage girl in a chick flick.

Kyle swallowed, "Guys..."

"Son, calm down." Was there a reason they talking in this room? Is that normal? Dad looked at the doctor. "We've been discussing options for the past three hours, and we haven't made any progress here. Are there any neurosurgeons we could talk to? I'd like to hear what they have to say about the risks."

"Mr. Wood, unless we have a reason to do so, it would just waste time."

Nick wiped a smudge off his sleeve. "This whole thing is a waste of time."

"Nick!"

"Dad."

"Guys..."

The doctor scratched his nose. "The first time?"

"Newborn."

"Is cancer a biological risk?"

"Very."

Micah the Doctor threw his hands in the air. "Helicopter! I'll do it."

"Idea of the century," Nick grumbled.

"NO. Having a doctor..." The doctor bit his lip. "No matter how experienced, with a personal relationship to the patient... You would only increase the risks, which are already great. Now, if we look at possible influencers-"

"Are you questioning my integrity? Do you think I would put my brother at risk?"

"I...um..."

"Somebody do something. I have a photoshoot in Rio tonight."

"Of course, Honey. We'll fly you out there."

"Guys..."

"Besides, emotional attachment only makes the outcome more essential and important."

"Guys..."

"Micah, think about it. If something happened...to have to live with that..."

"GUYS!" Kyle snapped. 

Every eye in the room found him...then me. I swallowed. My head pounded with it. When I opened my mouth, I was interrupted by a giant wire taking up my nose. I tried to lift my head, a gargle that couldn't have come out of my own mouth...came out of my own mouth. What were they all...what was I...

The doctor came over by the monitor hooked to my arm. 

Everyone remained frozen, fidgeting with either a finger or object they shouldn't have been touching. Except my youngest older brother. Kyle studied my face. I watched something in his expression change.

"Get him on something, and get him on it now," he said.

I'm pretty sure Micah questioned him on it, but I didn't hear it. I wanted to scream. The pain in my head melted the rest of my body and everything became black again. If this was what life was going to be, I wanted no part of it. 

I woke up three more times, when I wrote some of this down. Each time worse than the last. The last thing I remember hearing before entering the coma entirely was the word "surgery."

They are so lucky I'm a minor.

I don't know how long I was there. The pain stopped, yet I was still stuck inside of nothing. A blank slate. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. And!

Nothing.

Where was I? What was the point of all this? Who...

Something soft caressed my forehead. Then the feeling shifted. To my cheek. Then a peck at my lips, pushing momentum through my mouth. Cherries. The feeling was so raw and real, it had to be a manifestation. My fingers twitched around the warm flesh inside them. 

It stopped. 

I needed to understand why.

My eyelids poked open. An angel, a girl, the first thing light let inside. Her hair was long and dark, its thick strands sprawled over the side of my bed. Her face was wet underneath her eyes. Red cheeks with a pale forehead.

I turned my hand—it held hers—and found a bracelet: blue, grey, and black beads. Familiar. I squinted towards the light above, found a tag on her clothes with letters. I put them together into a word. Her name.

Julia.

My face flattened as I stared back at the girl, realizing the inevitable fact I had to face.

I had no idea who she was.

~~~

To the Not-Fat, Semi-Angry Man,

If it was January, I'd tell you this is from Nobody, from Nowhere, doing Nothing. I was Nobody when I did something I shouldn't have. I know now that what I did made you feel angry inside. I'm sorry. But know that I didn't tell anyone the full story. Just the water bottle that I wanted but couldn't have.

It's funny, what words can do to a person. We act like we have no power because we can't fly. But every interaction we have makes someone feel a certain way. If you stay around people who make you feel small, I guess that's who you are. A dwarf can live with shorter people and feel tall. People told me I was a broken piece of machinery that needed to be fixed, so I believed them.

But it's more complicated than that. Maybe I am broken. Maybe we're all broken. We're never going to get anywhere if we sit around accepting that. We have to dethrone our tiny people and take charge.

It's May now. I'm writing this because I made another mistake. There are things out of my control. There will always be something we can't control. Life is about controlling what we can and accepting what we can't. We need to be the best people we can be, which will always be more than we are.

I hope this covers it. I wasn't thirsty.

Sincerely,

~Someone, from Somewhere, Doing the Best I Can