Darkness

Darkness. Everywhere around me. Everything’s black. I try to move, but nothing happens. What’s going on here? Am I dead? No.... ‘cause then I wouldn’t suddenly feel this terrible pain that’s flowing through my body. It’s horrible, as if every single bone is being smashed. Oh my god, now I’d rather be dead... Could somebody please tell me what this is all about? I can feel that I’m starting to panic, what I’d like most would be to scream of pain. Okay, calm down, this is certainly not the right moment to get into a panic....

I try to open my eyes. I can’t; my eyelids feel as heavy as stones. And it even hurts when I try to look around ...

Suddenly the darkness I just got used to changes. The blackness lifts at one point, it becomes light grey. Now it’s looking rather like a tunnel …there’s a light at the faraway end....

Wait, now I can hear something, a voice, is it talking to me? It sounds familiar, but I don’t know where I know it from.

Okay, just one more try to open my eyes. Hey, the light becomes brighter.... only for a very short time, then it’s already over again. I never would have thought that you need so much strength just to lift your eyelids. It’s like you’re swimming through molten rubber or glue... or like you’re tied with a rubber band that’s pulling you back again and again.

But now I’ve become ambitious, so I try it again, and really, the light becomes brighter.... and brighter.... just don’t give up now.... finally my eyes open, and the first thing I see is light, so bright that I have to shut them again, but now that I open them for the second time - quite slowly - it’s not in the least as strenuous as it was before.

All the things I can perceive for the time being are blurry shapes, I can’t see anything at all. But little by little sharper images arise and I finally see where I am - in hospital. I’m lying on my back and staring at a dazzling lamp at the ceiling, it’s not surprising that the light was so bright at first. And now I know where the voice is coming from, too. A woman is sitting beside my bed, and when I turn my head a little - which really hurts - I can see that she has blonde hair and blue eyes..... actually she looks pretty nice.

"Hey Zac, you really worried us. How do you feel?" she asks concerned, stroking my hand with her fingers.

Zac? Who’s Zac? Is she talking to me?

It seems that she doesn’t notice my confusion and keeps on asking: "Are you in a lot of pain?"

I check: arms and legs unexpectedly seem to be okay, the pain has even died down a little. I probably could move them too if I wanted to, but now I'd rather not try. Well, at least my limbs are okay, but the rest feels anything but good....

My head feels like it’s going to burst every minute, if I already feel like a balloon, how must I look then.... I don’t want to know. Every time I breathe the pain burns in my whole upper body. Great, so I can’t do anything without hurting, why did I wake up at all? I want to return to the protective darkness.

I nod to answer her question, I don’t trust my voice yet. The woman looks at me, her face worried. She just wants to say something when the door opens. A nurse appears.
She looks just like the nurses I know from movies, pretty big, her hair in a knot and a stern face. She walks over to my bed and takes a little torch out of her pocket. Oh no, she doesn’t want to..... yes she does. I try to close them, but she pulls up my eyelids and shines the lamp into my eyes. I bet it’s one of her favourite things to do, to torture her patients with that. Where the hell did I end up? Now she looks at me even more threateningly, as if I’d jump out of the bed and attack her any moment. If she knew how much I’d love to do that...

After looking at the monitors beside me and writing something down on her board she looks at me again and even lets herself down to actually talk to me.

"How do you feel?"

How do I feel? Does she really wanna know? I could tell her a lot about how I feel, but instead I just give a shrug. I regret it the moment I do it.

"Do you want something for the pain?"

Oh yes, please, give me anything, drugs or morphine, I’ll take a whole bucket.

"Yes please", I answer. Well, at least my voice still seems to work. She nods and disappears through the broad door.

Now we’re alone again - the woman I don’t even know the name of and I.

"I know that it must hurt really bad, but when the nurse has given you something it’ll definitely get better", she says and smiles at me. I try to smile too, but I don’t think it really looks like one, ‘cause I just don’t feel like smiling at all.

The nurse comes back, this time with a syringe in her hand. Oh god, I hate syringes. Without batting an eyelid she pricks the tiny needle in my arm, and compared to my previous pain this little prick is really petty, I’d like to get five of them in each arm, if only it would help.

"You’ll be able to sleep well soon", she says while pushing the end down and the delivering liquid starts to distribute itself in my veins. Sleep.... oh yes, sleep would be good. When she leaves the room I already feel how the medicine starts to take effect.

The pain gradually subsides and my eyes become heavy, so I let them fall down.

All I want right now is sleep....

The last things I see are the woman’s light blue eyes. Who is she? Have I already seen her somewhere? Does she know me? And who’s Zac? I really want to know the answers to these questions, but I don’t care since I feel the sleep coming over me. I don’t give a damn about anything, all that counts is that the pain disappears.

I feel her stroking my forehead, then the blackness sucks me in again and I dive back
into the darkness.