This Is How the Story Ends in The eye of every storm

Hospital room’s brown. Tiles are brown with little brown flecks. On the wall, there’s a banister either to hold yourself or prevent gurney’s from crashing through the drywall. It’s brown. This isn’t a deep earthy brown. It’s a light brown. It’s the brown that doesn’t make since with the white ceiling tile, light, but not exactly the color of sand. No. Not exactly like that.

There’s bright lights, of course. The machines in this room are all white. Tall. Looming. Limitless. Illuminated and center stage.

This room has no discernible door or window but a voice instructs me to place my left leg on the first step of this little stool. They want me to cock it to my left, like I’m posing for Cowboy picture, without the lean in from my elbows on me knee. I do this, and the back of my gown parts and a cold icy air hits my bare rear.

The machine in front of me, tall, looming, limitless, moves slightly, but it’s loud. The two inches could have been a hydraulic press crushing a car. The little brown room with the white light with no door makes everything deafening.

Bang.

Whir.

Bang.

Whir.

Bang.

The voice of god tells me to put my left leg down, put my knees together, and move my ankles far apart while keeping my toes touching. And I can’t.

The voice repeats the instructions, and I try, and something crunches deep within. My body shifts. No, shifts isn’t the correct word. It slides apart. My hip slides off of my leg, stretching my skin. My world blurs. The brown room spins and I try to regain my balance, stepping on my left leg and hearing another crunch. I cry out but it’s not the pain. It’s just a cry of mercy. The scream is a cry of pain.

I can’t make out the banister meant to balance me. Just in case something like this happened. Just in case someone slammed me into a wall. This whole fucking room is brown. It’s not brown like mud or clay. Not like that.

I spin wildly on my right leg and come down again on my left. I fall and feel my head hit the floor. My vision pinpoints a pool of blood beneath my sideways head, covering those brown flecks on that brown tile with a crimson red. The lead vest pins me to the ground, staring at my blood washing over the brown beach with its apocalypse wave.

Finally, some color. Finally some life. I’m finally feeling something again.

Later.

I lift myself up. It’s 4:00 p.m. I’m unsure if my leg works. Tentatively, I step out of bed. It works, but it’s asleep. The tingling feeling begins prickling its way down the more I move my toes. A cat that’s grey, but not the color of an overcast day, slides up next to my right leg. I reach down and cup my head around his head and his ear. It’s my cat. This is my bed.

I stand up and stare at our brown walls. I walk to the kitchen. I make coffee. It’s black, so black the pope wouldn’t touch it.

My fiancees’ at work, but she left the mail on the counter. I move to the couch. I open a letter from Major Airline. It reads:

Dear Mr. Scenario

P.S. Congratulations on your upcoming wedding

I fold the paper in my lap and sip my coffee. I feel it burn my throat. This letter is read again. And again. And again. And again.

I walk back to the brown bedroom to make sure this isn’t another dream, like the hospital one from March’s hip surgery. I feel my ear, the course scar from the stitches that reattached it to my head still elevated, twisting into my skull like tree roots from an old forest. I look at my toes and the scars from the four surgeries to repair them from my 2011 hiking trip are there, along with my toe nails that have regrown.

The grey cat, who isn’t grey like your step-fathers work out t-shirt, but more of a dark grey that can be blue, runs against my leg. That leg has a scar about the size of a drill bit on the side of my upper thigh.

It’s 4:00 p.m. I wonder who reached out to this team with my concern? Someone in my management? A co-worker? As far as I am concerned, this year is over. I’ve made it through the hardest year of my life. This is how the story ends.

Last updated November 12, 2016