anonymous
I wake up. In a room. A strange room. A room I have never ever seen in my life. I start to panic. I feel my cheeks heat up and my breath falls heavy. I can’t get any more air in my lungs. My eyes begin to lose focus like a dying camera and my head starts to spin like the merry-go-round from second grade.
A bright light shines above me. No, I know for sure I’m not in heaven. I begin to blink, but every blink hurts my head. I try to stand up, but my head begins to pound harder, as if my head is a bass drum and someone is hitting it. I hold my head, thinking it would stop. But it’s soaking wet. I looked at my hand expecting blood, but it’s just wet. Everything is wet. My clothes, my hair. The floor isn’t wet, except for the small pool around me. I don’t know where I am, or how I got here, but I have to get out. I need to get out. I look around but the room looks the same. White walls, white lights, white floors.
Everything is white.
There is no sound, or there should be no sound but all I hear is white noise. The ringing won’t go away and neither will my headache. I want to cry, I want to feel a pain in my chest, I want to scream. I want the ringing to stop. I want my head to stop pounding. I start to turn around making full circles, I start moving faster, and faster, I start to scream… And then I fall; everything starts spinning, my eyes begin to lose focus and the floor seems to be closer and closer to my head. My head throbs as it hits the floor, and then everything goes black.
In what seems like only seconds, cold hands grab my arms as I am dragged up. I begin to open my eyes, but all I see is a white suit. I’m being taken away and strapped to a narrow hospital bed. I’m being run through the halls with sirens blaring. I see doors and people running all over the place. I have no idea where I am going and what lies ahead of me but everything is going by in a blur.
Nothing looks familiar like I am being born for the first time, seeing a new world for the first time. It is all just white walls, white lights, white floors. These people keep talking to me and asking me questions, I can’t focus so instead I just nod my head as I drift off into my own thoughts. Only listening when I hear my name called. The first time I heard my name I didn’t know it was me they were talking to. I thought it was just a word like the, and, or, when…why.
They tell me I’m going to be okay but I don’t know what’s wrong with me in the first place. They explain it all as a bad dream. They say I’m safer here. Safer from what? What is so bad that I have to be here? I have to find my way out. I have to.
They take me back to a room. White walls, white lights, white floors, and this time a white bed. I still don’t understand why everything is white. On my way to my new room, I take in my surroundings. Each room has a number. But in random order like 23, 476, 98, 222 and so on. I don’t understand this system. I begin to notice a small rectangular window in each door, looking into the life of one. One person that doesn’t know who, where, when they are. One person in the same boat as me. One person lost in confusion.
They throw me into the room and slam the door. I hear a click and I know I’m trapped. I know I won’t escape. There is no way I am going to get out of this place. I am stuck. Whe-re-re-re’s my fam-m-mi-lly? W-h-e-re-ee a-m-m I? My chest begins to tighten and my breath falls heavy and the room begins to spin as I collapse down onto a bed this time. My thoughts disappear and everything goes black. The noise disappears. I don’t know when I’ll wake up next.
Part 2:
I did wake up. I don’t know how much later, or how long I had been out for. I blink the sleep from my eyes. Everything around me is white walls, white lights, white floors. Everything is white. It has always been white: that never changed. I sit up. I am no longer in just a white room with nothing in it, I am in a white room with a bed. A bed with a growing red spot expands, eating away the white. It turns to a deep crimson, reminding me of my brother’s head after he bashed it on the table when we were little. I reach up to my right shoulder where I feel a burning heat. They have lodged something in my arm.
The memories seep back into my head and I can remember things that happened when I was little, but I don’t remember faces. The memories are blurred like the time I had a concussion, and everything went downhill. I remember fire, gas, screams, glass shattering, sirens, the taste of blood. The sounds and lights flash through my head but I can’t make anything out. I close my eyes slowly, like when the curtains closed at my sister’s play.
The siren goes off again pulling me out of dreamless sleep. I walk to my door, the cookie-cutter handle as cold as ice. I try to pull it towards me but it doesn’t budge. Locked. I look through the window and I see people being dragged out of their rooms. Fear written all over their faces. I don’t want the people in white suits to get me. I look for a place to hide. A gap between the floor and my bed catches my eye, I run and slide under it. Just in time. White boots walk in. They search every corner like a dog sniffing through a war zone. They move to the middle, complete one turn, and leave. The door is open.
I stay under the bed till I hear no voices, no more white noise. Till I only see white walls, white lights, and white floors. I crawl out from under the bed and creep into the hall. Empty. Now how on earth am I going to get out of here? One hall at a time, I walk past overturned hospital beds, room numbers, open doors, clipboards scattering the floor, some blood, and even hospital gowns. My head begins to pound like a bass drum and the white noise becomes louder than ever.
A screech fills my again dreamless sleep. I wake up with a jolt almost as if I was falling off of my bed. I stand up way too fast only to fall back down again. My head is splintering. I move across the floor and rest my back against a wall. I need to find two things, the noise, and some serious painkillers. Oh no, I hear footsteps echoing through the hall. Getting louder, louder and louder, and then they stop.
My heart stops beating and restarts again only getting faster and faster with every fleeting second. The footsteps resume and they are coming closer. I can feel the vibration; I look to my left nothing, I slowly and carefully not to make my head hurt to look to the right. A boy with dirty blond hair and freckles, a hospital suit, barefoot, and a tear-stained face approaches me. He begins to run towards me and I can’t move. I brace for the worst. He falls on me wrapping his arms around me and my jaw unclenches and I forget about the pain in my head, my heartbeat slows and I let the tears roll down my face. I remember.
Elements Magazine 