"I'm gasping for the air to fill my lungs with everything I've lost"
-It's Beginning to Get to Me, Snow Patrol
Monday, June 12, 2023
Morning
Pain. Pure, unadulterated pain. There is nothing but pain. He doesn't even know his own name. He only knows that everything hurts and he doesn't want to hurt anymore and he doesn't know how to make that happen. He doesn't want to think or breathe or feel or even be. He just wants the goddamn pain to fucking stop.
He tries to ignore it, to turn his thoughts to anything besides hurting and it's hard to do but he slowly recognizes disharmonious beeping that's extraordinarily annoying, but a nice respite from thinking about the pain. There's a weird clicking noise and it seems to be timed with his breathing and he's not sure if the clicking is coming from him or a machine, but again, it's something besides pain so he lets himself ponder it.
He's trying to assess things, but it's hard because his thoughts are muddled and his brain is slow and it wants to concentrate on the pain but he can't go there. His eyes are heavy and opening them feels like too much work and his mouth is dry and he can't even move his tongue or swallow and he's a bit alarmed with that and he hears the beeping intensify and he suspects that's his heart rate and just hearing the fear reflected like that makes it worse. There are more noises then, footsteps maybe, voices, and he can't understand them, but he feels more pressure, and suddenly an ice cold grip on his hand and he wants to pull away because it's so cold it hurts and then his thoughts are back on the pain. And fuck his arm hurts and it hurt before the grip, but it hurts more now and it hurts so much he has to try to get away and his attempt to move fails entirely and the attempt just made everything hurt more and the beeping gets louder and faster and there are more footsteps and a soft voice that he thinks might be soothing if he could understand anything besides pain.
There's a tingling then, a buzzing, a fog rolling through him and it displaces the pain for a moment and he manages to pull his eyes open. There's a woman leaning over the beeping machine and she's talking but he doesn't know if she's talking to him because he can't understand her and he turns his eyes because turning his head is too much for him and then there's another woman and he sees the blonde hair and the blue eyes and the wide smile and he knows she's greeting him and he knows he knows her but he can't think anymore and he's so tired and his eyes are so heavy and he's giving into the pull of sleep.
He's drifting away in a painless fog and his brain is cooperating again because there's less pain but it's not really less pain, it's just a different kind of pain because he can label that woman now as Kathy and he wants Olivia and he remembers he shouldn't expect her here because she was never real but she was real to him and this pain is so much worse that he never wants to open his eyes again.
He tries again later, not really tries so much as comes to when the pain meds wear off again, but somehow a whole thought occurs to him and he understands this time that it was some kind of narcotic that knocked him out, and he's very well aware that he doesn't have the strength to alert anyone that he's awake and needs more medicine. His eyes are heavy still and it takes all his strength to pry one of them open.
The room is bright, sunlight streaming through the window, and he remembers the bright blue sky that was blinding him as he lay dying and he remembers the blinding sun of the desert and he's not sure if he's in a field hospital in Saudi Arabia or if he's been flown to a hospital in Europe or if he's actually made it all the way back to the states, but he decides he hates the fucking sun and he remembers he wants to move Kathy and the girls to fucking Seattle if he survives because he wants the sky to be dull and gray and as miserable as he is and he adds asking someone to close the shade to the list of things to ask people for right after pain meds once he's able to speak. He hears the beeping again, this time able to definitively match the erratic beeping with the pounding in his chest and he figures that's probably how they know to bring the meds to knock him out. He recognizes that it's unlikely to be soon enough for him because it has already taken too long, but there's nothing he can do about it and he waits for someone to notice the beeping and come help him and he desperately hopes it's not Kathy because her face will just rub salt in the wound of losing Olivia and he's already suffering enough.
He's freezing and he adds a request for a blanket to the mental list of things he needs and when he manages to force his other eye open he realizes that he already has a blanket and it's not enough and he sees Kathy asleep in the chair next to his bed just like he didn't want and he squeezes his eyes closed and fights the urge to cry because he can't possibly explain the way he's so glad to see her alive and so crushed that he's lost Olivia at the same time.
He's distracted then, wondering why the memories of his dream life are so damn vivid when he has no idea what the fuck has happened to him, but he doesn't want to probe it too long, doesn't want to dwell on it, because if he thinks too hard about the delusion, he might notice all the gaping holes and then the idea of Olivia will fade away like the memory of all dreams eventually do and he's shocked by how much it hurts to think that he'll lose the idea of her face and their friendship and he can't give up the love of his life, even if she never existed.
Kathy shifts slightly in her chair and draws his attention and she's still asleep and half in shadow with her back to the damned uncovered window and he's trying to look at her and remember being in love with her and his heart is telling him he was never in love with her and just never realized it until he actually fell in love and it was too late by then and the dichotomy of his disjointed thoughts plagues him as he looks at this young woman and he remembers her aging alongside him and he guesses it's the jaundiced eye of hindsight even though the hindsight came from a dream but he thinks Kathy doesn't look quite like he recalls her looking and she looks a little older than when he was deployed but not the way he remembers a fifty-something Kathy looking and he's so fucking confused. He starts to think maybe it's not Kathy in the chair, but it's definitely not Olivia and now he's afraid he imagined both stories and he's left helpless and broken and can't even identify who might be sitting here with him because nothing makes sense anymore and as the anxiety rises, so does the pain and he feels his arm throbbing like it's on fire and his chest hurts and his fucking back is killing him and his legs don't hurt but they won't move either and he's wondering if he's paralyzed and maybe that's why he can't breathe or speak and maybe he's dying slowly and he's already shivering from the cold, but now he's shivering harder and the movement makes everything hurt more.
He hears the heart monitor going crazy as he contemplates the idea of having amnesia and being paralyzed and he's feeling paranoid that he's going to be trapped and helpless and silent in his own body as people he doesn't even remember make decisions for him and he won't even be able to communicate to them that he wants to die rather than live in pain and anguish and he wants to be glad when a nurse comes into the room because he hopes that means more unconsciousness is coming his way and he wants to beg for mercy, to ask her what year it is and who this woman is beside him and if she knows Olivia and he's afraid to hear the answers to any of it and he can't talk and he can't even breathe without a fucking tube down his throat and he can't even be thankful for the blanket she drapes over him because it can't help the icy cold fear that's emanating from inside his mind, but he is glad when he feels the familiar tingling, the assurance he'll be back to sleep soon, and then he doesn't feel anything.
He's trying again, like he did before, trying to think of Olivia and remember her hand against his cheek and he's trying to tell himself she's here because he made her up so he should be able to summon her presence again, but there's no warmth of her palm on her cheek, not caressing, not even slapping, and he doesn't want to think it, but he knows the last time he imagined seeing her she'd been walking away and he knows he didn't think she was ever coming back and of course she wasn't because none of it was real, but he clings to the thought that they've fought a million times and she's always come back except he can't remember them fighting anymore and he can't quite picture her in his kitchen that night even though he's certain he can still feel her delicate fingers plucking at the buttons on his shirt but that didn't happen because it was a dream and he's more upset then, realizing he dreamt up the perfect woman that he loves so fucking much and in the end she fucking hated him because something bad happened to her after he left her and she can't forgive him for it and he's desperately trying to cling to the memory of kissing her and her legs wrapping around his hips and instead all he can remember is that someone hurt her and he knows it's his fault because he should have been there with her and once again, as he loses the pain and gives in to the sleep, he doesn't want to wake up.