Chapter One

The dry air hung heavy in the hospital room. Hospitals always had a way of quieting my mind. I watched as buildings began twinkling to life as the watery light poured in. Exhale. The beginning of another day.

I had been to so many hospitals in the past six months, all covered in various shades of creams and beiges. This one though, was by far the nicest. There were green vines tangling and intertwining on the paneled walls behind the bulky bed in the middle of the room. That wall paneling had brought some life into the otherwise still room. Inhale. Beeping and breathing, that's all that filled my head. The beeping was a good sign though. We had made it through another night.

I set up against the makeshift bed rolling my shoulders and surveyed the room. Nothing had changed. The small fragile mass still laid unmoving on the bed in the middle of the room. There were cords and tubes splayed left and right hooking up to various machines. Exhale. I was only 21 and I already felt the weight of the world on my shoulders.

The small woman laying in the bed had once been full of life, strong, and spontaneous. She was a mother. And what was left of her, was my mother. Over the past three months she had lost most of her muscle, she was gaunt and frail. Every look at her had me flashing back to pictures of holocaust survivors from my history book. The ones who were so thin you couldn't help but wonder how they had managed the strength to stand for photos. She hadn't eaten in months, she hadn't been able to. The only thing that kept her alive was a feeding tube that they had hooked up to her a couple months back.

It was a Saturday which meant for once I had no other responsibilities than to just be here.

Inhale. The nurse would be in soon. She always talked to the doctors outside of the room, always away from me. I knew bits and pieces but only what they determined I needed to know. But I saw. I always saw. I know how bad it is. I'm the one in charge of putting her to sleep every night. I was the one who carried her drug riddled body into bed and stayed while she talked nonsense until she would pass back out. I saw it all. They had assumed I was just a selfish college student who partied too much and studied too little. But I had lost the luxury of being one many months ago.

Exhale.

I woke in the middle of the night to the crescendoing beeping of a machine. Jumping up, I realized it was the heart monitor. I ran into the hall panicked yelling for help. The nurses and doctors rushed the room surrounding her lifeless body. Sobbing I curled into the corner begging God, the universe, whoever it was that listened to our prayers to save my mom. I had no one else. This was it. The beeping flat lined, the doctors were barking orders and the whole world became a blur.

Inhale.

"Time of death, 3:19am July 7th, 2021." The doctor announced.

Exhale.

I was screaming and raging. "Why, Why, WHY?" I kept screaming. There was no one, I was alone. And the world burned around me. I ran out the room and through the lobby, I needed to escape. This was a nightmare, I just needed to run away, I kept running and running. The too bright headlights of an oncoming ambulance raced towards me and before I could take a breath, I was falling.

Inhale.

Suddenly I felt weightless, like I was floating between worlds. My body was being torn left and right, slamming into invisible walls, popping in and out of darkness and light. I was hurtling down like a shooting star engulfed in flames. The fire was so bright I thought surely my skin would burn off my bones. The world came into view beneath me. I tried to focus as I fell but all I could make out was hundreds of people all standing on a balcony that jetted out from the side of a red mountain. They weren't necessarily people. I thought I might have been falling into a costume party. There were wings and colored skin, some were tall, and some were so small I thought they had to be children. There were others around me flicking between worlds like shooting stars but I was the only one whole and burning

I kept falling, I kept burning brighter and brighter, I kept hurting. As I slammed to the tree tops they cracked and splintered beneath my impact. And when I finally hit the hard rocky ground the world shook beneath me. Crumpled in a heap I was cut and broken, the world was burnt and blurry. I faded in and out of consciousness until I allowed the last wave of pain to usher me into darkness.

Chapter Two

To be continued..