Status: hiatus
Marrow
ONE
Every hospital I have ever been interned in has had the same grey speckled ceiling tiles. The same thin, acrylic blankets, the same acerbic nursing staff. The same grey-faced relatives, parading past my door like a pre-emptive funeral procession, armed with sickly lilies and quiet irises.
This time my room is small, and the wide pane of glass offers me a glimpse out to the grey skies and treetops of the suburbs. Beyond that, the smog and distant heights of the city. My hand rests palm up on a white blanket, hair and eyelashes and too-warm breath fanning across my hollow cheekbones. I am aware of the low whirring and beeping of several machines, and fleetingly I think it will rain later today, but my thoughts are slipping out of my head like oil on water, and all I can concentrate on is my blackened veins and the racing pulse of my morphing blood.
Today I am leaving this place. The idea of my mother hovering over me, talking too loud, pretending it’s not happening, it makes me sick inside. I can still hear the doctor’s voice, as I slowly pull my lethargic arms from the blanket of anesthesia – six months or so. He’ll be back on his feet in no time. I don’t feel as if I have any feet left to get on to.
“Oh, Patrick.”
The sound of my mother’s voice is like a lullaby and a mosquito buzz at once. I haven’t done anything wrong, yet she always finds a way to sound so disappointed in me.
I close my eyes for one instant, and when I open them I am staring at the acrylic fuzz of my father’s car seat headrest. I am not sure if I have truly lived through the hours of my day, dreamed my sedated peace or the grey of the morning. All I feel is a numb, distant pain in my right bicep and the warm caress of afternoon sunlight.
“That boy is out again.” My mother clucks, and I lift my heavy eyelids to the horizon.
On our low brick fence, a boy a little younger than me is cross-legged and playing with a small radio. He’s a ribby little thing, and the sunset is hitting his arms in such a way as to make his thin wrists look peculiarly angular. As we pull up, his eyes seem to snap to me through the car window. When I open the door, a faint melody comes to me over the distant bird sound and traffic noises of the highway, the keening notes of a song I am sure I’ve heard before. And as my mother bustles and he watches, I grow increasingly conscious of my sunken eyes and yellowed skin, and the small circular band-aids on my hands that cover the small circular holes in my protective armour. I say what is this song? and he says breaking up and I say what? and then I am inside, and the door is closed, and I am sent to my room with the curtains drawn.
This time my room is small, and the wide pane of glass offers me a glimpse out to the grey skies and treetops of the suburbs. Beyond that, the smog and distant heights of the city. My hand rests palm up on a white blanket, hair and eyelashes and too-warm breath fanning across my hollow cheekbones. I am aware of the low whirring and beeping of several machines, and fleetingly I think it will rain later today, but my thoughts are slipping out of my head like oil on water, and all I can concentrate on is my blackened veins and the racing pulse of my morphing blood.
Today I am leaving this place. The idea of my mother hovering over me, talking too loud, pretending it’s not happening, it makes me sick inside. I can still hear the doctor’s voice, as I slowly pull my lethargic arms from the blanket of anesthesia – six months or so. He’ll be back on his feet in no time. I don’t feel as if I have any feet left to get on to.
“Oh, Patrick.”
The sound of my mother’s voice is like a lullaby and a mosquito buzz at once. I haven’t done anything wrong, yet she always finds a way to sound so disappointed in me.
I close my eyes for one instant, and when I open them I am staring at the acrylic fuzz of my father’s car seat headrest. I am not sure if I have truly lived through the hours of my day, dreamed my sedated peace or the grey of the morning. All I feel is a numb, distant pain in my right bicep and the warm caress of afternoon sunlight.
“That boy is out again.” My mother clucks, and I lift my heavy eyelids to the horizon.
On our low brick fence, a boy a little younger than me is cross-legged and playing with a small radio. He’s a ribby little thing, and the sunset is hitting his arms in such a way as to make his thin wrists look peculiarly angular. As we pull up, his eyes seem to snap to me through the car window. When I open the door, a faint melody comes to me over the distant bird sound and traffic noises of the highway, the keening notes of a song I am sure I’ve heard before. And as my mother bustles and he watches, I grow increasingly conscious of my sunken eyes and yellowed skin, and the small circular band-aids on my hands that cover the small circular holes in my protective armour. I say what is this song? and he says breaking up and I say what? and then I am inside, and the door is closed, and I am sent to my room with the curtains drawn.