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Your days typically consisted of a routine.First, you were up at 4:00 to get ready for your early morning job cleaning a local department store before they opened. These morning shifts were short ones, lasting only four or five hours, so after clocking in at 5:00, you were on your way at 9 sharp. The customers were on their way in as you were on your way out. This gave you just enough time to get home, change, and head out to your second job as a hotel housekeeper, where you may or may not take a lunch depending on the number of rooms that needed stripped and prepared for new guests. The first time it happened that day was as you were driving to Le Montagne, the hotel at which you spent the majority of your working day. A peculiar blackness crept up on the edges of your vision, stealing your sight for a brief moment like a second pair of eyelids blinking and closing in from side to side. It came without warning, as it always did, and you sucked in a quick, shaky breath through your teeth. This had been happening for several weeks now, the inky black encroaching on your vision, disappearing as quickly as it had come. But this time something new occurred, and that breath was immediately stolen from you. When the blackness receded, the road ahead of you had changed, as if overlain with a second layer set at half opacity: the cracked asphalt now looked at once like it normally might, but crackled beneath you as a dirt, stone-ridden path just the same; the facade of buildings and stores had half-transformed into rows of impossibly tall and thick trees that loomed over you, but glass windows and doors still seemed to glint in the sun between them.Then, the side-blinking, and the world was as it should be, only you had veered slightly out of your lane and were halfway through a red light, prompting a chorus of horns and squealing tires to follow you into the next stretch of road. With a white-knuckled grip on the steering wheel, you made a dangerously sharp turn into the next parking lot, jerked the gear stick into park, opened your door, and vomited onto the dark gray of the parking spot next to you.Several things ran through your head as you calmed yourself enough for a semblance of rational thought. Firstly was a feverish, panicked, “Oh, fuck, what was that? What was that? It’s never- That was- It was always just the blackness before, the… oh, no. Oh, no.”Secondly was that you could in no way afford to see a doctor or whatever outrageously expensive specialist you would be referred to for these… sight problems. Third was that you really, really needed some water.Fourth was that you definitely did not have the time to continue sitting here, debating on the nature of whatever madness had suddenly taken you. Compartmentalize, compartmentalize, compartmentalize. You were probably better at that than was healthy, but if you sat here much longer you’d -A quick glance at the clock showed that, somehow, a half hour had passed in what had felt like no more than 5 minutes. And, somehow, you had 2 missed calls from work. Shit, shit, shit.So you pushed aside the unease and dread still coiling in your stomach, snapped your car door shut, called your boss, put the phone on speaker, and peeled out of the parking lot. An existential crisis could wait until after your shift.“Hey, Janice, I am so, so sorry. I’m on my way now, and-”... When 5 o’clock finally rolled around, you were physically exhausted on top of the familiar mental exhaustion. The usual ache had settled in the arches of your feet and your lower back, so part of you was looking forward to getting home. Another part, the one that knew that the few hours of free time meant time to think and revisit your morning incident, was not so thrilled.What was that? You knew you weren’t in the best of mental health. You also knew that the weird, blinking blackness that had been occurring now and then for the past few weeks was probably an indicator of… something. But hallucinations? Had your mental state really deteriorated so far? I mean, things hadn’t been great for some time now, but you liked to think that you had been making steady progress in getting better. A hot, crawling sensation of dread and anxiety began to travel up your back, coming to rest as a heavy, uncomfortable weight on your shoulders. Your chest felt tight.Maybe you were just tired? A hallucination of a different kind, one that only indicated you needed a great deal of sleep to get yourself right again, rather than some onset of mental illness that had been waiting to pounce from the depths of your mind. You pleaded for that to be the case as you came to a slow stop at an intersection on your way home. With a moment to let up your concentration, you took notice of where you were on your journey home, and tensed a little as you recognized this as the intersection you had blown through that morning. And almost as if in reaction to your recognition, it happened again.The slow, sideways-blink, and a changed landscape, this time a little more solid and real: the trees, now throwing deeper shadows in the evening light; the road stretched in front of you now a narrower, worn path; to your left, an opening in the line of trees that you hadn’t noticed (hallucinated?) last time. It revealed a path that would have normally cut through a high retaining wall and the chain restaurant that sat above it. Now, it led up to the incline of a hill that would, over a space of about a mile, become one of the low-rising mountains that cradled your city.Something in you urged you to follow that path. Your eyes tracked the lazy, blinking movements of some fireflies, then landed on the glowing flowers that lined the path. The reasonable, sane part of you that knew no such path existed began to be overcrowded by the growing need to follow the envisioned road. The idea became a pressing need, so much so that for every moment you didn’t oblige it, a sense of urgency and impending trouble bubbled and grew in your head. For every moment, it felt like the air was being squeezed more and more from your lungs.A startlingly angry, frustrated feeling was filling your chest in place of the oxygen. Any moment now you would explode with its expansion, nothing but this feverish, foreign intensity left of you.All at once, an inner voice seemed to hiss, Go! and the sound of a car horn broke through your delirium. The world you knew shuttered back into place, but only partially, so that you were seeing the wall and the path overlaid on one another in a jumble of foliage and asphalt, fireflies and headlights. The light was green and the driver behind you was still pressing on their horn. Then, a series of events in a split second: you turned the wheel sharply to the left, slammed the gas pedal to the floor, flew past the line of oncoming traffic, and drove head-first into the retaining wall. The vision of the firefly and flower-lit path disappeared. A frenzy of terror and defeat exploded in your head.Then darkness.
There is nothing.
You are nothing. A tiny speck in a vast abyss, empty except for the warm purple glow that saturates all you can see. You don't feel yourself move but get the distinct impression that you are looking around all the same, however that works. You don't seem to have a body, here, just a deep Awareness existing among all the nothing that this place is.
And there is nothing, until you think to look down - which way is down, again? - and are blinded momentarily by a light impossibly bright.
Your eyes — if they can be called that, now — adjust, and beyond that light you can make out a haze of purple, the source of this space's coloration. Shades of purple dance in your not-eyes, a horizontal and harsh gradient from deep, deep plum to a saccharine, pastel lavender.
You are in awe, struck or intoxicated by some compelling force within this light. It’s beautiful in a way you can’t find the words to describe.
You are disgusted. Something is very, very wrong.
The dichotomy makes you nauseous, and there is a pain, of sorts, in your very Awareness of yourself here. It's both a struggle and a relief to look away.
In the distance, the same light reappears at a distance that could be a yard, could be a mile, and flashing — a mirror in the dark, and the sense that there is something more. Then it's gone.
You are gone and maybe there was something, after all.
The darkness folds in on itself.
Reality comes back to you in bits and pieces, unfurling slowly in whispers of sensation, or like a flower blooming, petals opening to face the sun.First is a sharp, biting smell that clings to your nostrils, pungent and unpleasant. Second: a hum of energy, both comforting and grating, and a rhythm of higher pitches sounded after even-paced intervals. Ghosts of contacts along your being, gentle and tugging.Then, after hours or days or weeks, flutterings of awareness.When you open your eyes, there is a brightness that stings your eyes. The moment of familiarity is lost after recognition sets in: off-white drop tiles and bulky fluorescent lights. It takes a concerted effort, but you are able to roll your head to the left, and there is more — a heart monitor, an IV stand, an empty seat and an empty vase atop a stand.A hospital room?You recognize it all with a certain detachment, your senses resumed but feelings and thought not yet caught up with your tangible awareness.There is a mumble and a hum, then a blurry figure in your line of sight. You blink at it slowly, tiredly, what energy you had spent on the roll of your head. You think there is someone else, but you slip back to sleep, into a different kind of nothing. The next several awakenings are increasingly easier. There is less background noise — what you now recognize as having been background noise — and the room is darker. Thoughts are existent and a little more concrete, but when there is another mumble and hum and a nurse comes bustling in, you aren't quite able to understand her. You try to say as much, but the words come out jumbled and slurred and just as incomprehensible, even after a cup of water is held to your lips and slowly tilted. Sleep comes just as easily again, but you are reluctant this time.The time after that, you can't remember those first dizzying moments. Suddenly, you are just aware of more daylight, a nurse flitting about and adjusting machinery and limbs. Her words are distant, but mostly there, and it takes you a few moments to understand that what you're hearing is in fact speech, and even longer to realize they're directed at you.Your own words are still mush, but she seems to understand you well enough to respond, "This is the longest you've been awake. Recovering well. You are at Mercy Hospital, and a doctor will be in shortly to speak with you, if you are up to it."You aren't, and although you are slowly coming to grasp the situation, becoming restless in your own skin, you still slip away once more. The whiteboard is blurry and indistinct as your eyes sweep across it, barely focused, until you finally make out the date filled in across the top. Energy comes to you in a sudden rush of adrenaline and panic, enough that you are able to sit up with sharp protest from your wasted muscles. "Woah, woah," a voice cuts through as you try and fail to swing your legs around, restless in the hospital bed. "Probably not a good idea to move around so much so quick." Your head snaps in that direction, to a woman in the hospital bed to your right, and she winces at the audible crack of your neck. There's something familiar about the gentle, lilting cadence of her voice, and you wonder how long she's been your roommate. The passage of time in this place concerns you more in this moment."Almos' a'mon?" you rasp, working slowly to get the words out as intelligibly as you can. She takes a few moments to parse it, brows furrowed over hazel eyes."I've only been here a few days myself, so I'm not... Was the last date you remember sometime in mid August?" That sounds about right. Trying to recall an exact date makes a pressure and pain build in your head, so you give up and nod. Close enough. "I suppose it has been almost a month, then, since you...." She drops her face to her hands, fingers twisting and locking in her lap. A few strands of her ashen brown hair fall forward. She looks back up at you, smiling at you pitifully but kindly."Would you like me to call a nurse for you? They will be able to explain your condition better than I could," she offers, then makes a vague motion toward you. "You knocked your remote with the call button to the floor, so...."Your eyelids droop, heavy with sleep again already. By the time she tries to introduce herself with a soft, "I'm Adelaide, by the way," you are already asleep. Periods of wakefulness come and go over the next few days; soon, you are able to stay awake for hours at a time, and when you do drift off, it is not quite such a shock each time you reawaken to the sterile whites and grays of your hospital room.With consciousness comes a flurry of information from nurses and a rotation of doctors, bits and pieces beginning to stick in your mind each time you, with a measure of guilt, have to ask them to repeat it all. Soon, a fuller picture returns to you: a car crash, a traumatic head injury, a hematoma, and brain swelling. A surgery to relieve the fast-building pressure in your skull that is barely effective, and a medically-induced coma to coax out a further decrease in swelling. It's only now that you are able to string together more than one or two coherent thoughts that the words 'suicide attempt' jump out at you.You can't remember the accident, but you certainly remember the days and weeks leading up to it. It's a swirl of stronger-than-normal depressive episodes, more extreme mood swings, bursts of anger, and a slew of emotions and behaviors and, very briefly, hallucinations that feel shameful and painful to recall. And despite not remembering the act, the build up toward it is real enough and raw enough that you can't deny its outcome, nor the eye witnesses who attested to how you very suddenly slammed your foot on the gas and directed the head of your car into a concrete retaining wall.You also can't deny that the thought of it had never flitted through your head, teasing and tempting, some days an insistent urge and others a casual, passing thought, no more prevalent than thoughts of what spread you might like on your toast that morning or whether you should wear the blue or orange t-shirt that day.It occurs to you, not for the first time, how fundamentally changed you are and your life is. How different things will be after you’ve been given the clearance to go home and resume your life, or what remains of it, after all of this. It leaves an unsettled feeling in your gut that goes much deeper than any normal anxiety.The day you regain enough bodily control to do so, you almost obsessively begin to reach up to trace the protruding incision arching around your right ear, fingers feather-light against the stitching and the prickle of shaved hair surrounding it. You wonder with amusement if hair will ever grow here again or if you're doomed to sporting an undercut for the rest of your life. It's only after your fingers brush against a particularly sensitive area this time and you feel your stomach lurch that you reluctantly pull away, hands coming to rest in your lap.A flush from the bathroom pulls your attention, and you glance back up at your roommate, shuffling back toward her bed and wheeling an IV stand along with her. Despite the circumstances, she's in a good mood today. After four days of bed rest, she was finally granted permission to move about the ward on her own. Still, she mostly stuck to the room and still requested meals to be brought to her instead of joining the rest of the ward in the large room that served as a combination cafeteria-rec room-group therapy space. With a grace you didn't think possible in a paper gown, Adelaide settled down on the side of her bed facing you. "I hope this isn't too crude, but it is so nice to be able to pee without having to feel the bag of it warm on your hip.""I'm looking forward to it. Catheters suck." There is still a slur to your speech, but the dry monotone of your response still comes through well enough. Adelaide grimaces. "Sorry. I keep forgetting you still have yours.""No worries. At least I'm not stuck with an IV anymore. And I'll have mine removed as soon as my legs start cooperating again." She nods, looking sympathetic. "How are you? Overall, I mean?" She's asked this several times today alone, and you'd be touched by how concerned she is for you (a relative stranger she'd only known for 3 days) if you didn't get that damned flash of bubbling irritation every time she asked. Still, you don't allow it to show. Repetition aside, it was kind of her to care and want to check in, even if she was dismissive of any concern you showed her in return."Okay today. The pudding at lunch is a lot more agreeable when I only have to taste it once." Again she grimaces, and you cut her off before she responds again as if she'd done anything wrong. "Sorry, just my way of dealing. Bad humor.""I know. I just hate that you were shafted with such a tough recovery." You soften at her forlorn expression. You felt like you didn't deserve this level of kindness."I'll be better in no time," you assure her. "Physically, at least. Then I can get back to work and my cat." Both things have been weighing very heavily on your mind. So much has changed and will continue to change, whether you are ready for it or not. This accident — and all of the side effects it and the surgery will have — are going to be... an adjustment. Maybe someday you'd be able to return to a semblance of normalcy, but that would be a long, long time from now. Hard to reach but not impossible.So while one of your bosses, Janice, had assured you that you still had a job to come back to and had even been the one to offer taking care of Jellybean while you were in the hospital, you didn't feel much better. Caring for your pet was a burden on her and your absence at work a burden on your co-workers, for one thing. And just because you'd have a job to go back to didn't mean that you were receiving pay in the meantime. Just the thought of all the past due notices you were going to face when you were released was enough to make you-"Hey, hey, I know what you're thinking and stop it." Adelaide is suddenly seated at your side. When had she gotten there? "Everything will be fine. I promise. The caseworker said they had some resources for you to look into, right? And you still have the option of applying for that temporary disability program, too."The mention of it makes you scrunch up your face in distaste. "I'll get better. I can still work. I don't want-" She fixes you with a reproachful look."There is no shame in getting the help you need and deserve, you know." "Yeah, yeah, miss social worker. What about you? You just graduated with a degree in that. Tell me you aren't ready to get back out there and at it. Get back to some semblance of normalcy.""Maybe." She turns away from you and reaches for the tv remote to your side of the room. Typical of her, changing the subject as soon as the focus is on her. "I think we both need a bit of distraction. You up for another bad Hallmark movie?"She presses the power button and the screen lights up before you can even respond. A flash of a news segment appears, and you aren't quite sure what it is you just read, but quicker than lightning she changes the channel."Wait, wait. Go back. What was that?" "Just the news. Same old, same old." Her posture is stiff, eyes a little wide and fixed on the television. She doesn't seem to notice you as you lunge forward until you've already snatched the remote from her hand, rapidly pressing the channel button until you cycle back to the news station.Adelaide hastily tries to explain herself, saying she was afraid this might be too much of a shock for you so soon, but you barely hear her over the din of your thoughts and pounding heart.“What… holy hell. Adelaide, is this —?” 'KING OF MONSTERS THANKS VOLUNTEERS FOR COMPLETION OF TEMPORARY HOUSING ACCOMMODATIONS' Return to normalcy my ass.