Hope

For Mia and Jack

And finding the memories stolen from us

;

She waited…

She waited for a moment that she knew would come.

The nurses spoke to her sometimes, hushed tones and bent knees. She assured them that she was fine, would wait as long as it took. She could hear them, not quite out of earshot, saying she should go home. They whispered to each other that he may never see her. When they said that in their ignorant earnestness, she would smile. He would see her. Eventually.

So, she waited.

1

He woke in the hospital room. He always woke in the hospital room. He had for eternity, at least it seemed to him. Ostensibly he was in the hospital for the physical trauma inflicted to his body, here to mend the damage he had done to himself. Though this was undoubtedly true, he was currently less worried with the state of his body then his mind. He didn’t want to live.

There was just nothing inside of him. Everything that had filled him with life and meaning was gone. Every second that passed, every breath he took, he celebrated as one less. He had no desire to look at the replacement phone brought to him, or turn on the t.v. or read a book or exist.

The thought of actually killing himself was still a foreign one to him. He couldn’t quite grasp going about it. He just kept hoping each time he closed his eyes that it would be the last. He knew he had people to care for, that cared for him. He was utterly convinced that they would be better off without him in the long run. Once his memory began to fade, they would carry on their lives, happier without him.

He would have wallowed endlessly in his nihilism had it not gotten quiet in the hospital, his world now completely devoid of sound. This anomaly was enough to pique even his tepid interest. What happened next almost made him forget about the silence completely. Even though his feet had not so much as grazed the cold tile floor below him since he regained consciousness, he now rose smoothly to his feet and stepped towards his window.

His shattered body walking well and of its own volition was disconcerting. His discomfort was souring to fear the closer his body brought him to the window. He started to think that he did not want to see what lay revealed outside of his room. He couldn’t explain where this knowledge came from, just that he had it. The moment felt surreal to him, as if time were not quite normal, as if anything could happen. He could no longer trust what he would see beyond those panes. The sudden walking, the dread was starting to overwhelm him.

He arrived at the window, his body his own again once it stopped moving. The brief and consuming fear that had risen in him just moments ago subsided to a deep sense of unease. Standing before it, he decided to look out the window. Nothing was leering at him from just outside the glass as he had half feared. His view seemed normal, roofs of lower floors of the hospital crowded around a wedge of sky he could see at a certain angle. The moon hung framed by the buildings, bare tops of trees like fingers reaching towards its light. A haze in the sky caused a halo around the moon, the lunar surface casting an all-white rainbow towards the earth. It was pretty and a little strange but hardly ominous.

Now that he was up, he wasn’t quite sure what to do. The moon thing was weird, and he still didn’t hear any noises from the hospital that spread out from his door. He was starting to believe this may very well be a lucid dream. He usually never remembered more then one detail, or faint snatches of impressions of his dreams. No saying what the painkillers and other various medicinal fluids were doing to his brain though. Or all the severe concussions he had recently sustained. They may certainly be a culprit in this off-putting night.

Having decided to see this through for a bit, he made his way slowly into the hallway. He was diagonal to the front of the nurses’ station when he stepped out of his room, just outside the main hub of activity on this floor. A long desk curved away from him, unbroken as it waved into the other half of the floor.

Standing in the middle of this space was a woman. And she looked pissed.

“What the fuck took you so long?” She seethed, seemingly incensed with him.