CHAPTER SIX
Blair
I’m floating through darkness, but I’m not scared. I feel… a strange sort of peace. Then beeps and voices break in. I cycle quickly between the two, and I’m confused.
“Might make it after all.”
“Doesn’t look good.”
“Should we call it?”
A loud long beep.
I want to get away from the sudden loud sounds but find I cannot move. At all. Not even a wiggle of a finger. What is happening?
Then the blackness comes back. I relish it. I want to breathe a sigh of relief… but I can’t. Then I see a light in the distance, and I know I want to go there. I want to run, but I’m stuck in those slow, floaty kind of travel.
Then it’s gone.
What’s happening?
The voices start up again.
“She’s back!”
“Finish the intubation.”
“Husband…”
“Pull through…”
“Coma…”
Then I’m out. This blackness is less dark somehow.
But it’s still there. There’s no light now.
Just… nothing. I can hear things, though.
The beeps and whirs of the machines, the quiet murmurs of the nurses, even the air conditioner turning off and on.
But nothing is quite loud enough for me to grasp.
I try to hold onto a word or a comment, but it’s immediately gone.
What happened to me anyway? I think back and find that my mind held on to things in the past just fine, even though it didn’t seem able to stay in the present. Exhausted, I decide to quit fighting it and stay there, in my memories.
The last things I remembered were the horrific sounds of shrieking metal, the feeling of the car seeming to crumple around me, the onslaught of sudden pain, and the knowledge that I was about to die. My mind doesn’t want to focus on that, though.
So, it switched to something else, just like swiping to the next video in TikTok.
I frowned as everything else fell away and all I could see were the parts of my life that I was trying to get away from.
It was like my brain was operating without me.
It was trying to focus on things I didn’t want to remember.
Sad things. Things about Scott. I decided to force it to stop.
It was hard, though. Like walking through molasses.
The effort was almost too much, but I forced it to something better, something good.
It was still about Scott, though. My brain refused to give up that much control.
Scenes from my life with Scott started playing through my mind, and I was shocked that it was really a thing; not just something that people said. But it was true. I started to see memories, like I was reliving them. Like I was really back there. My life was playing out before my eyes.