Why does someone write a book? Why do they sit down and determinedly fill pages upon pages with words and sentences, and burn hours upon hours thinking on what to write and how to phrase it? The answer used to be to convey a message, to tell the world about something you wanted to share. That answer no longer applies. Who, I ask, will read this story of mine? Will the skeletons that float in the dark? Will the ghosts that haunt me forever?
No, I convey no message, for there is no one left to tell anything to. This is for me, to remind me, a story that I can never forget, even after the fits take me, even after my spine shudders and my mind throbs and my heart is in my throat. So that I don’t forget after the fog sets in and the silence takes its own voice and speaks to me and the darkness takes its own shape.
“It’s too late…” “…he’s not gonna make it is he?” “What happened to him?” “No one knows yet” “Bring him here, quick!” “Get him a bed!” “Oh my god! Oh my god! What happened to him?” “Sir, you’re not allowed to be here. Sir, please…” All while the metal trays clanged and clashed and the heart monitor was beeping and doors slammed and cabinets were ransacked in desperation. If I wasn’t in so much pain, it would have been horrible to harken to, but in my comatose state it felt like a serenade of sound. My brain felt foggy, like this whole situation was supposed to be concerning, but I just couldn’t bring myself to care. My eyes glazed over and I lost consciousness.
My eyes fluttered. They tried to awaken, to see where they were, but that was too much work for them, and they shut back down. 10 minutes later, I tried again. My eyes still burned, but they didn’t close, and I could see the world around me.
It was downright depressing. That was how hospitals were. All the walls were the most boring shade of white, there was more white in the cabinets with those metal handles, and there was this curtain. It enclosed me, and I felt like an animal. Where, I wondered, were all the tourists with their cameras?
The space was just so small, so dehumanizing, that I wanted to scream. Instead, I cleared my throat and braced my arms for a sudden heave so I might get out of this tiny room. That was when I discovered my arms had the structural integrity of spaghetti, because all they did was convulse and collapse. Inspired by this display of defiance, my whole body decided to suddenly send signals of pure agony my way. My eyes hurt, that I knew, but so did my legs, arms, feet, hands, chest, and just about every bone in my body.
So I just sat there, dejected, on that little bed that who knows how many people died on, in a room that barely qualified as a cupboard, inside some hospital of exceptional dreariness, my body uncooperating and my head having the most splendid splitting headache.
Who knows how long I sat there, drooping down like a wet noodle, waiting, watching, for anyone to come my way so I could yell at them very loudly about my entire situation. I didn’t like hospitals. Everyone knew this. I had told my best friend once,
“Listen, if I’m dying on the side of the road in absolute torment, don’t call for an ambulance. I’d rather die than recuperate in one of those glorified cemeteries.”
I meant every word of it. From a young age, hospitals had given me the creeps. It was just the knowledge that people in it were dying, people who had no hope, who just had to endure every day because they couldn’t bring themselves to end it. Of course some got better, but that didn’t change anything for me back then, and still didn’t now.
At last a nurse happened to check on my sorry self, and I raised my head wearily.
“Wha- what happened?”, I croaked out. I couldn’t get the words out of my mouth, because every movement of my throat let out a spasm of burning pain. The nurse just stared at me, and said,
“Sir, this is the 12th time you’ve asked this question. You’re all right, but you’ve been drifting in and out of consciousness. Sit tight, I’ll get the doctor.” And he dashed off. As if I was going anywhere. I sat there decrepitly for a few more minutes, until a doctor walked into the room. This time I had prepared my throat.
“H- hey! What’s going on? Why am I here? What happened? And why am I in so much pain?” I had a million more questions, but that was all my throat could bring itself to say before seizing up, leaving me choking, hacking, coughing, gasping for air. “What the hell is this?!” The doctor pursed her lips. She took a deep breath and replied at last, confirming that I indeed was the person everyone said I was, and then cutting to the chase, quickly, to get it over with.
“You have the most severe form of West Nile virus.”
“What the hell is that?”
“West Nile is a mosquito-borne virus that spreads through birds. When the mosquitoes bite the infected birds and then bite a human, they spread it to humans.”
“You said it was the most severe? What’s gonna happen to me? What already happened to me?” The doctor sighed again. She seemed to sigh a lot. I’d have smacked the sighing out of her if I could. As it was, I could barely move my arms. My left hand felt splendidly uncooperative, and the rest of the arm wasn’t much better off.
“Yes, well, 8 out of 10 of the people infected have no symptoms. But 1 in 150 can develop more… serious symptoms, such as meningitis. And uh, 1 in 10 of people who develop those symptoms die.”
“And… and I? Do I have those ‘serious symptoms?’”
“Yes. We’re going to be keeping an eye on you for a while, and if you do well, you could be discharged as early as a month.”
“A month? In here? Wh- what happened to me anyways?”
“You went into a coma for several hours. It’s one of the symptoms. Let him know if you have any problems”, she said, gesturing to the nurse, and walking away from me briskly. The nurse stood attentively for a minute, and then decided that this was perhaps the most awkward situation he had ever been through, and slowly edged away.
A coma?!?!
I couldn’t stay in the hospital for a month. There was… no way. I’d go insane. I had to get out of here. I just knew it. There was an incessant throbbing in my temples, and my fingers twitched. My spine was arched in agony, but I could hardly move it to try to reposition it into a position of comfort. Hospitals were nothing but bad memories. Memories… things I had tried to forget but never could. The stench of the dying filled my nose, and I had the irresistible urge to claw it off. My eyes stared through the bed, seeing another bed entirely, a bed I had grown to hate. A deathbed.
No, I had to leave tonight. And this, this sickness, I couldn’t succumb to it. I had so much left to do. I had barely left my mark, and already I was being called away? No, indeed. I couldn’t bear that. I hadn’t suffered so long, walked through the gates of hell every day, for my life to mean nothing. That wouldn’t be fair, not to me, but to her. I had to live for her, I had promised. She told me that one day I’d do great things, and everyone would look at me, a champion of the universe. Those were her exact words.
Well here I was, a young guy of 20, still barely a man, unready for the world, let alone the universe. And to be told that it was over? When it had hardly begun? No, no, that wouldn’t do at all. I had to get out of here. That was what my brain kept spiralling back to. But how?
So in the place I hated most, less than a day since I had suffered through a coma, not having talked to anyone I loved, stuck with some horrible disease that was incurable, my body spasming in pain and my muscles groaning in fatigue, with that insidious fog creeping over my brain, I hatched a plan.
I called over the nurse, and asked if I could sit in a wheelchair and roam around the yard. He acquiesced grudgingly, probably realizing that if I was outside I wasn’t lounging around and bothering him inside. It was late evening, and dark clouds were scudding across the sky. I could see other trapped souls, people looking gaunt and hopeless. That sealed the deal.
It was midnight, and all the hospital was quiet. Not silent, but quiet. Oh, the machines still beeped and I could hear some of the denizens wandering in their rooms, moaning in pain. Oh, the nurses and doctors doomed to the midnight shifts still bustled around, tending to the sick. But the hospital was quiet, an unnerving quiet. This was my time. I leapt out of my bed and into the wheelchair, every limb screaming at me and my skull throbbing like I had just face planted on the tiles. My left arm was particularly difficult to put in any sort of useful position, so I had to use my right arm to lift it over.
It took a lot of adjusting, but I managed to get in the right position. It was one of those motorized wheelchairs, and so I started moving off to the hallways. I saw a nurse off in the distance, so I stopped, and backed up a bit, trying to avoid her roving gaze. Finally, she passed out of sight, so I gunned my wheelchair and sped off. These things were surprisingly fun.
I zoomed out the doors, out at last, back into the fresh and cool midnight air. It had the tinge of rain, and as I looked up the sky was alight with orange and reds, a sure sign of dark clouds catching the sunlight we couldn’t see. I took a deep, bracing breath, and could feel the pain recede. The fog rolled away, and I could see the clouds stretch far off into the horizon. Now that I was out, I could think clearly. What would I do with this freedom? For all my brave words, I didn’t know if I could do it, bleed out on the streets rather than recuperate in a sickly cage.
Suddenly my eyes widened as the disease surged again, and I lost all consciousness, staring up at the expanse of Heaven before me.
There I was, 7 again. My grandmother stood seriously, and so did everyone else. It was the old church by the hill, with its sweeping arches and arrays of benches. She had made me wear my best clothes, and my hair was done, aggressively combed hours before. They said their prayers, long and dreary. I remember the sonorous drone of the preacher, and I remember wondering what the point of it all was.
My grandmother was a faithful woman. She went to church every Sunday, rain or shine. She taught me the Lord was in everything, the trees, the dirt, the sky, and the stars. He was in each and everyone of us. At the time I was uninterested, caring more about riding my bicycle than God above. As I grew into my teenage years, I saw the world through cynical eyes, and saw God’s kingdom lacking. And then it happened, and my faith was shattered in a million pieces, a reflection of what happened to my heart. Until now, that hadn’t changed. But now…
My eyes surged open, and my chest heaved. Had I lost consciousness? Outside in the present, was the cool air flowing through me, ruffling my clothes. There were cold tears on my cheeks, and more welling up. My head hurt, and I knew it, but I didn’t care. I looked up to the heavens and saw them for the first time. The shining stars, shimmering in the dark night. The clouds on the horizon, catching the last sunlight. I knew where to go now.
I don’t remember how long I travelled. It could have been minutes or hours. It was just me on the lonely roads, rolling down inclines and huffing and puffing my way up elevations with my wheelchair. My left arm dangled off to the side, and I was so disoriented, I could hardly muster enough strength to care. My mind travelled back and forth from the land of dreams to reality, but I kept moving even in the darkest clutches of imagination. At some point I must have stood up, because the next time I gained consciousness, I was standing in front of the old church by the hill, my legs screaming at me. I opened the doors, and walked inside.
The stained windows let faint light stream through the windows, and the church was unlit. I could see half-burnt candles that lost their flame, extinguished by the midnight air. Shadows masked the hallways, and there was a faint spark in the air. I brushed it off as dust illuminated by the rays of lights that peeped from the thunderclouds. Thunder rumbled to my left, and I turned there. There was a stained glass window, and there he was, the Holy Son. I stood there, enraptured, at his face.
The clouds broke miles up in the sky, and moonlight streamed down the window, illuminating my face. Never before had I taken God seriously, not until that day, that fateful night. Never before had I ever believed in the idea of a higher power. Maybe it was desperation, maybe my brain was just addled from this disease, or maybe it was the culmination of 20 years of life, but when the time came, I kneeled, more akin to a collapse onto the floor, and I prayed. It wasn’t a very venerable prayer, but it was a prayer all the same.
Dear God, I don’t want to die. My name is —–, but I suppose you already knew that. How is she doing, by the way? Up there. Oh, God, I don’t want to ever die. I made some promises to her, promises I intend to keep. I know I haven’t exactly been your most devout follower. I might have sinned here and there, once or twice. But this isn’t for me. What I’m asking for, if you can give it, it’s for her. Everything I’ve ever done is for her.
She said I’d be the best man on this Earth. How am I going to do that, if I’m dying from this disease? I need time, God, to make things right. Right with myself, right with the world. Right with her. I need all the time you’ve got. I don’t want to die. Ever.
Why should we die, anyways? Why do all the best have to go away, to leave us behind? Wouldn’t the world be a better place if the heroes of yesterday weren’t just legends? If no one was left to pick up the pieces and leave flowers every day at someone’s gravestone, for someone who was infinitely better than them? It doesn’t make any damn sense!
This is probably the worst prayer you ever got. I’m just ranting here. But I feel entitled to. When did you ever help me? When I needed you most, no, when she needed you the most, where the hell were you? And now there’s all the expanse of Heaven between me and her, and it’s your damn fault. I guess disease runs in this family, picking us off one by one. No. No. It ends with me. I’m not going out until I’m the champion of this universe.
So if you were ever who so many say you are. Someone benevolent, with compassion and kindness, someone who would help someone lesser than Him, then you’ll grant this prayer. And if not, well then, I’ll be looking up at you from down there.
My hands were shaking and my mouth was splayed in a grimace. I opened my eyes and raised my head. Violently and brilliantly, a lightning bolt shattered the sanctity of the sky, and the image of the Holy Son was illuminated before me. His eyes were pitiful, and his mouth creased in sadness. Raindrops began to fall, and many hit the window.
I felt woozy, but even with my spinning vision, I could see that Jesus looked like he was crying. Lightning flashed again, and thunder grumbled, and the wind howled, and my head was swaying from side to side, the beat of the raindrops aligning with the drum of the rain. A third time the lightning flashed, and my eyes seared, and turned inwards, leaving me to see blackness and blackness alone. I collapsed on the floor, by the foot of Jesus, who was still sobbing in the night.
All the eye could see was darkness, stretching out and looming over the void. Colors had long died out, until all that endured was black, black that had swallowed whole the prismatics of the past. Frozen rocks floated past, once magnificent stars shining bright in the endless night. Now they were dead and desolate, hunks of metal and stone fated to wander the shattered cosmos. It was a ruined universe where nothing could ever hope to live.
Yet one thing lived, in that empty and broken universe. Left to drift in the boundless confines of space and time in perpetual agony. Doomed to have watched every star fade and die, and the last living things snuffed out by the cold, loneliness, and hunger, and see the world it had come from crumble back to the celestial dust it came from. Fated to persist long after the Sun decayed into stardust, after the Moon burnt up like a ball of fire and fell down from the sky, after all the things it had come to love and cherish were gone to the inexorable destruction of entropy.
