There it was again, the world. Coming back in slow sips. He could feel the tape on his leg, the pubic hairs beginning to grow back where he had been shaved. His hand was wrapped up, the needle, though mere plastic, the metal bit having contracted, still irritated, and was inside him.
“Hey.”
“Curtis?”
“Mandy. He’s awake. Evin’s awake.”
He tried to move his hand, his limbs were of led, and the back of his head felt heavier still. His whole body had a pulled back feeling, like some invisible force more powerful than gravity had exerted its pull on him.
Mandy came into his room with two Styrofoam cups of coffee in hand. She had red hair and thin lips, both like Evin’s. She gave one of the cups to Curtis.
“But you’re in Atlanta,” Evin said.
“No I’m not. I’m here,” she replied sitting down gingerly on her brother’s bedside. She took a sip of her coffee. It had been a year since his sister had moved away.
“Both of you,” he stated, struggling to move his head enough to look at Curtis too.
Curtis nodded, “Of course.”
“But you’ve got classes. What about work?”
Mandy answered, “This kind of thing drags all that to the ground. We’re here for you.”
A mechanical click came from behind him, “What was that?”
“Your morphine pump,” Curtis said, glad to be able to explain something, anything.
Maybe it was the recognition of what the thing was, maybe it was the drugs themselves, probably it was the drugs themselves, that made Evin’s heaviness disappear. The lightness floated through his chest and spread. When the feeling came to his head he made a light “Um,” sound. The dulling of pain had hit him as hard as pain would have.
“How do you feel?” Mandy asked.
“Funny,” was all he said. He didn’t know how to express how he felt to them. They couldn’t possibly understand. Cocooned in the white bed he knew he was safe. He gathered that the heaviness and lightness were both unreal. He felt the pain, perhaps paradoxically, more strongly because of its morphine mask. It felt like a foreign object was lodged in his chest, it felt like he could cough it up, or puke it up, but his body wouldn’t react in that way. That pain he knew was real, his body knew it was real, but because of the unreal contraptions around him that reality disappeared; the man was the shadow and the shadow was the man. But he couldn’t tell them that. His mind liquidated, and his eyes drooped.
“ahhh,” he let out quietly.
Curtis slugged down his coffee, gritting his teeth like it was whiskey. Mandy blew on hers, and sipped.
“I left this afternoon. Had a lay-over in Omaha, and got into DIA about five,” she said
“Oh,” he said, the words hardly left his lips.
“When we both got in mom and dad looked so tired. We shooed them off, you know, they didn’t want to leave. They would have wanted to be here when you woke up. You know.”
“Yeah,” he exhaled, eyes fluttering open and shut.
“But… but… um.”
“I’m pretty sleepy…guys.”
“Oh. Yeah. We’ll… um we’ll call dad.”
“Okay.”
“It’s good to see you Evin. It’ll be all right. You’re important to us,” Curtis said to him before they left.
And Evin disappeared again, the last thought in his mind was that his throat was dry.
(To be continued)
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