-Dilated eyes register the day, sunlight spilling, filling the room. A white room. There is a sense it is different, but this does not completely register. The body, its up, a clear tube is attached to its arm, a red plasma flows upward. Eyes freeze on the tube, on the red, on the flowing; then make their way to the distracted face of the nurse, as she finishes, packs up, smiles and walks away. A sensation runs along the body’s throat, but it remains silent. It’s eyes adjusting, pupils vibrate before everything becomes clear.
The body rests in the white room, leaning back in the silence of the white sterilization. It is empty, the room, nothing but the metal-framed bed, the TV in a high corner and the body laying on white sheets, a thin brown blanket covering it up to its waist. Its eyes now cleared of any blurriness, scan the room, scan the emptiness and look onto the TV with curiousity. Its hands lay motionless, every couple of minutes a slight quiver.
Startling the body, it’s eyes dilating again, an orderly, dressed in a light blue, catches its eyes, as she walks in with a wheel chair. There is a familiarity in the body’s eyes. It recognizes the mechanism, it recognizes the orderly as familiar. It sits up again. It’s hands still by its side, quiver again, as they sustain the weight of rising. It leans in, the body. A hope for something, other than the white sterile room, other than the white emptiness, other than the too familiar silence.
Approaching, the orderly offers the body a salutation with a smile. Reflex, the body smiles and simultaneously feels that same sensation run through its throat, but again, there is only silence and a slight nod of the head. The orderly locks the wheels on the mechanism, slides the bar down on the metal bed and aides the body into the brown of the seat. It is not an easy feat, as the body slumps, shoulders fallen and arms, hands, weak. The assistance, the movement and the something different are all appreciated, but the body cannot find the muscles with which to smile.
A slight rocking, it comes natural at this point, the body does not control it, it simply happens. Something to do with the weight of holding itself up under the support of weak and too-long unused muscles and appendages. It falls back with a slouch. Its head rolls forward and its eyes peer downward. The orderly notices and helps. Helps the body place, rest, the eight pounds of its head in the palm of its left hand and the body tilts to the left, its head resting in the palm of its left hand, the arm bent and resting on the metallic mechanisms arm-rest.
Fingers quiver resting on pale cheeks, as the body is rolled on the metallic mechanism through white corridors. The fingers begin to settle as the corridors sterilized air creates a breeze, which soothes it. They settle, stretched and laying just below the birth mark left, by this same hand, these same fingernails, at birth, the birth of the body, nine years prior.
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