Recollections

[Lex]

I’m lying in bed, alone. The sheets scratch against me, grating on my already irritated move, but I make no more to push them off me, even though it’s stifling hot in the room. Instead, I just glare at the ceiling. It’s done me a great wrong, that ceiling; as great as any ceiling could. It has failed in its task of relieving my boredom somehow, but it stares stoically back at me, uncaring and unrepentant. Its only job, it tells me blandly, is to hold up the floor above and that is a job it is succeeding at. It must be, I think, or it wouldn’t be there to gloat in its monotone white.

It never occurs to me that I shouldn’t be having a conversation with a ceiling at all, only furthering my frustration that not even the tiles above my head care for my predicament any more than taking the effort not to let the whole place cave in on top of me. I am supposed to be grateful for that, I know, but I can not help but thing that it might be a lot more interesting if it buckled inwards and spilled down upon me. I might see someone then. And maybe there would be a breeze; the outside might get in. I can’t remember the last time I felt a breeze. The window is closed and locked despite the heat. Air circulates, but it all feels the same. Stale. Dead.

That’s going to be me soon too, I’m sure. Dead. Maybe that will be more interesting too. At least I’ll be somewhere different.

I cough and it sounds wrong. Wet and there’s something trying to come up with the cough, but gravity halts its progress at the back of my throat. It’s stuck there and suddenly I’m choking, coughing and retching to try and get it out of me. I can’t, not lying down as I am, but in my panic I can’t remember how to sit up. I’m dying, I can feel it with every breath I fail to gasp and even though this is the most interesting thing to happen for what seems like months, I suddenly don’t want interest any more. My previous, boring existence becomes far preferable to this.

There are people around me now. I can hear them talking, but I don’t know what they’re saying, and I can feel their hands on me, lifting me upright and then leaning me forward. Finally it comes up, that thing that was gripping to the back of my throat and then vomit follows swiftly on its heels. I don’t know how long I’m being sick for, only that when I finally finish, my throat is raw and there’s a terrible taste in my mouth. It’s one I’ve got to know well lately, but it never gets any better.

I missed the cardboard bowl they held out for me. Some of what I coughed up and the vomit sit within its limits, but more of it is on the sheets, cold and damp and heavy and then, then I do scramble to push them away. I have to get them off me, have to get that stuff, that filth off me. I’m tethered, in part, by the tubes sticking into my arms that pull painfully back to their hanging bags of fluid if I thrust my hands out too far or too quickly and I just want to tear them out so I can get away. I’m aware of small sounds coming from me, but they sound nothing like me, so it’s hard to take notice of what they are and what they mean.

The hands are back on me and the voices have started up again. They’re trying to be soothing, but nothing will soothe me right now. They don’t understand. I feel the sheets peel away, sticking along the way and I’d retch again if there was anything left in me to come up. Someone brushes their hand through my hair, pushing it back from my sweat slickened forehead where it’s clinging. It’s grown long and lank while I’ve been here, but I don’t care enough to let them cut it. What’s the point when I’m going to be dead soon anyway?

Then I’m lifted from the bed and it’s an awkward struggle; too many people trying to co-ordinate their movements and mine all at once and not disturb the tubes and wires and monitors that are all working to prolong my suffering and delay my inevitable death. Finally, they get me into a chair with a high back that wraps around to the sides and I collapse to my left, exhausted. They’re still talking and I’m still not listening when I slip away into the darkness again.

Ah, boredom. I missed you…