-The corridors continue, going nowhere. The body is wheeled through and its eyes, in its laconically motionless head, scan the crevices of the space, the walls, the forms of the people walking by in white robes and blue scrubs. It searches, as it can, slowly, for something like the orderly, something which represents the familiar, something which soothes, but there is nothing. Nothing more than the movement forward, which while still new, is the most familiar thing in the body’s experience, since waking. It is not recognized by the body, but it beckons back to the body’s previous awareness before complete loss of consciousness.
There is a slowing, a breath at the back of the body’s neck, a sound, words. “Do you want to keep going, or do you want to head back?” The words, the body recognizes, but cannot figure out how to use, how to create in its weak state. It simply nods, its head still supported by the palm of its hand, supported by the bone in its arm, held up by the weak muscle which strains to keep posture. It nods, the body, and the motion forward continues, and the eyes continue to scan, continue to search for something familiar.
It comes, something familiar, but not the something the body hoped for. The metallic mechanism slows again as the frame of the door approaches. The eyes stop scanning, they stop moving, they remain as motionless as the rest of the body. The shoulders slump down a little further. A breath escapes the body and the fingers quiver, just below the birth mark, just below the ear. The bone in the arm, held up by the straining muscle, quivers and falls off the arm rest. The orderly catches the body before it falls over.
Weak, the body weighs in the orderly’s arms. There is a quivering, a muscle strain, as the orderly pulls and picks the body up and places it in the bed, on the white sheets and the thin brown blanket above them. As the body makes contact with the twin size mattress, the blanket and the sheets, it remains, sitting, upright, fingers twitching, gaze fixed on the white walls. Head slumped, not fully, but partially, there is a movement to the body as it sits. It is the pulsing of a heart beat.
Muscles twitch, the face contorts. It does not remember how to, but still it makes the attempt. The orderly smiles back, as she rolls the metallic mechanism out of the room with her. The body, still, resting. Eyes, still, on the white walls. Facial muscles still contorted. A slight twitching of the hands, a quivering of the spine, the body lets out a long breath and manages to push itself back onto the white pillow above the white sheets and brown blanket. In the darkness of the white room, the body, the nine year-old boy returns to slumber.
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