Alive on Arrival

Chapter 7

7

Pretty Nurse was right. She’s not gone for more than two minutes and what was anxiety speeding through my veins is now replaced with something warm and soothing. My eyelids feel heavy and my body weightless. I almost feel like I’m about to go out of body again and my soul is to resume its perch in the upper corner of the hospital room.  

But I’m fighting the urge to sleep. Pretty Nurse mentioned a cousin who wants to visit and bring me flowers. I haven’t spoken to any of my cousins in years. Decades. I don’t even attend family funerals anymore. Why should I? Once my parents were dead, I swore I would never attend a family function again. I had nothing in common with my cousins from both my mother’s and father’s side. They were strangers to me. On those occasions when we had no choice but to attend the same event, I’d usually get the predictable strange looks, and the inevitable question, “Do you still write?” How do you answer such a moronic question? “No, I gave it up and now I work for the sanitation department.”

 The hospital is quiet. Too quiet. I no longer hear voices talking, shouting, laughing. It’s like my ears no longer work. Maybe it’s my brain that’s going silent. If not for the monitors, I might as well be dead again. My eyelids grow heavier and heavier. I can’t fight the medication. I don’t have the strength.