Awake the Nightmares

Awake the Nightmares by Bailey

Waking up was always easy, at least I thought it was. This time was different. I woke up, but my eyes refused to move. My lids stayed put, closed almost as if the eyelashes had been braided in my sleep. What I could see, through the blur of lashes and a reddish ting of light, I was once again in the hospital. Wasn’t the first time, and I doubt this would be the last. My mind was at hyper drive as a nurse looking figure, that for now I’m just going to call Judy, walked in to check on me and the machines. Judy left, closing the door behind her, before I even thought of telling her hello.

Listening to the silence was maddening. I couldn’t stand watching the reddish glow against my un-moving lids. I could slide my eyes across them, they fluxed with the movement, but refused to open. Did I not have the strength? Did something happen to make me unable to communicate ever again? I had no clue, but worrying about it wasn’t going to help in this situation. So instead, I tried to move something. Anything. I had to move. Okay, start slow. A pinky. I can do that. Come on brain, work. Move that pinky! The right one, on the most dominate hand. Just do… it.

Judy’s back, something has her alerted, she’s checking all the machines, opening my eye lids to check my eyes, but she doesn’t notice. I try to move my eyes while she’s pointing the light into them. She just huffed out a breath and closed them again. My eyelids have started to feel heavy, like I haven’t sleep in years. What did I do? How did I get here? I couldn’t remember. Judy’s body outline moves away from the bed, and I assume she returned back to the nurse’s station.

What was I doing last? Where was I before here? Who am I? Start simple. Think clearly. My name… It’s here in this brain somewhere. I know it is. Alaxzander… maybe. The name sounds right. Judy’s cute little body is back at my bedside, she’s got something like an eye dropper. Wait. What.. No, that’s going to burn…

Hey, that’s actually helping. My eyes feel better. Okay, speak. Tell her you’re awake! My throat, what is in it? I can’t speak with this thing shoved down my throat. I can’t tell her I’m awake. Judy! Wait. There’s a look in her eyes, hope maybe. She’s saying something to me, but I can’t concentrate on what it is. Her mouth is just moving. She starts to get up and leave. No, Judy! Come back! Damn, there she goes. But hey, she left my eyelids open. I can see. Progress.

Progress didn’t last long. I can’t seem to move anything. Not a single toe or pinky. Not even my eye lids. The hospital room is too bright, my eyes want to close. To blink. I can see parts of the room around me. Someone, I recognize her but I don’t know her name, is sitting by my bed on my left. Her looks have nothing on Judy’s. Judy was cute, this girl. She’s gorgeous. So, why is she crying? Her face is buried in my hand, her tears streaming onto the blanket the nurses have placed over my thin hospital sheets. I wish I could speak to ask her name.

Judy’s back with the eye drops. She says something to the girl at my left and points to something above my head. Miss Beautiful wipes her face with a tissue before standing to leave. She has a small figure, smaller than Judy, but firm like an athlete. Judy starts to put the eye drops in my eyes again, making me focus back on her. Her eyes, focused on mine. I start to circle my eyes around their sockets, moving them in different patterns and ways, trying to get her attention. I’m awake. I know I’m awake. Judy jumped, dropping the eye dropper and running out of the room. I hope I didn’t scare her too much.

Why can’t I move? I start to think as I look up at the machine’s I’m hooked up to. A doctor walks in, speaking to Judy as he moves. His jacket says Hamilton, but his badge says something different. I’m just going to call him Francis for now. Francis leans over me and starts to look at my eyes like Judy did. I start moving them again, the same pattern as before. Trying to do something to tell him I’m awake. Please pay attention. Please use that brain of yours Doctor and get it. He finally stops shinning that light into my eyes and talks to me. Actually to me. His mouth moves, I can see his breath come with each word, but nothing. Nothing. Why can’t I hear him? Could I hear anything else?

My heart rate begins to rush as I look around. The machines look like they are going haywire, but I can’t hear it. I can’t even hear the heart monitor. Which, is in fact going crazy. Okay, calm down. So I can’t hear. It’ll pass, right? Come on, Doctor, pull this thing out of my throat, let me speak. I start to cough, so Francis looks down at me with a worried look. He puts up a finger as if to tell me to wait, then grabs both sides of my face and opens my jaw. Something comes inching out, it looks like plastic but feels like sandpaper ripping its way through my vocals and out of my throat. Could there have been a better way to remove it.

Francis talking again. He doesn’t know I can’t hear him yet. I try to speak but my throat hurts just to breath. Maybe tomorrow. I close my eyes. Wait. I closed my eyes. Can I open them? By the time I get them back open, everyone’s gone. It’s dark outside the window and I can’t tell what time of night it is. Orion’s belt sits just outside the window with the edge of Taurus peaking in. I try to speak and after a couple of tries, a coughing raspy voice calls out.

“Hhhello??” My throat moves, the vocals working with an intense pain. I don’t know if anyone heard it or if they even know I tried. But something like sound came out. I felt it. I may not have heard it, but I felt it. Progress. My eyes close again and a small tear streams down my face. I’m happy to be making progress, but what am I progressing from? Why am I here?

Dr. Francis came back in to administer something to my head. He hooked up a couple of different wires to a fishnet looking head piece. That head piece was then placed on my head with something poking through it to my skin. Dr. Francis kept talking to me, but I still couldn't understand what he was trying to say. Getting frustrated, he pointed at a screen that had several lines across it like the heart monitor. They were checking something with my brain. So that's why the head piece hurts.

Judy looked over at me and smiled. She held a sign that asked me what my name was. What was my name? Was it Alaxzander? "Alax....zander?" I answer in a very harsh tone that I can feel in my throat, but I don't hear. "I can't hear. Why can't I hear?" I asked her. She was much nicer than Dr. Francis, but when I asked, her smile disappeared.

It was a white board. She was writing on a white board to talk to me. I knew she was a smart nurse. Judy held up a sign, 'You hit your head. We have to assess the damage.' Damage? What damage? How badly have I messed myself up? I know about the body enough to know that you don't fuck with the brain or the head. You don't. "Alaxzander isn't my name. Its just what I remember." I reply, and again her smile is gone. She explains by writing that I have to keep the head piece on for 73 hours to monitor my brain activity without a CAT scan or MRI.

After a day, I still can't move my arms. Judy comes in and moves my legs to bend my knees and ankles, my arms to bend my shoulder and elbows; but I still can't move them on my own. My fingers wiggle and my toes can curl, but I'm still working on the rest. My eyes get blurry the closer it gets to the end of the day. Must be from me not blinking during the day. Judy comes in everyday to talk to me. We chat about everything and anything. She brings me water and apple juice for my throat, which is getting better. Not as rusty feeling as I speak.

"My son, his name is Alaxzander. He was about 5 years old before I woke up here. Tell me, how long has I been here?" I asked her one day. Her sweet and familiar smile slowly vanished as she thought about it.

"You have been here for a while. It's been about three years since I started here, and you were here for four years before then." She wrote, her hand shaking as she wrote because she knew what the information could do. Shock. Why did I know that?

"Who is the lady who comes in every Sunday to see me and cries?" I asked, at least I think I asked. Judy looked like I shattered her world with one question.

"What do you remember about her?" She wrote, her hand more steady than before but still shaking.

"I remember walking on the beach, or somewhere sandy, with her next to me. We fought a lot. I remember seeing her with a blade trying to attack me. Maybe not attacking me, I can't tell. I can see the memory but there's no sound." I told her as her eyes slowly began to swell with tears .

"That young lady was who brought you into the hospital. She called the ambulance. She says she is related to you somehow, but refuses to say how." Judy replied. I could tell that she had hoped I would tell her what they all wanted to know about the young lady.

Almost as if she had been called upon, the young lady emerged at the door. She spoke with Judy for a moment before taking Judy's whiteboard and sitting down. Judy smiled, then left the room to give us some privacy.

'I know you still can't hear. I'm sorry for that. How are you feeling?' The lady asked with the whiteboard. I couldn't help but smile at the look of worry on her face. I had seen it before, and even then it would always make my day.

"Getting better every time I see you." I told her. I wanted to reach out and hold her hand. To give her something to say that I'm okay. Something to make her not worry about me. "Forgive me, but what is your name, dear?" My words struck her. As if she hadn't considered the thought that I wouldn't remember anyone when I woke. Unfortunately, I don't remember anyone. Names have escaped me.

"My name is Callen. I'm your daughter." She answered, tears filling her eyes. The fights and the memories began to make sense. I trained her. I taught her how to draw a blade and how to attack someone, how to be safe when she was alone. She was 10 when I left her, but I hadn't really left.

She was a grown woman now. One who wouldn't need my protection anymore. Her muscles were defined and grown as if she never let go of the sword I had been training her with. It only left me to wonder where her mother was, or anyone else of the family. Tell me she wasn't the only one I had left.

My mind began to drift as I starred toward my daughter, visions taking over my eyesight as memories began to flood back. I closed my eyes in order to let the movie play without interference. I could see myself, standing with a sword in hand, as I instructed her and Alaxzander on how to properly hold and strike with the tips of the blades, saving the edge of the blades for defense and close-contact attack. Her younger-self's hand shaking under the weight of the 36 inch blade with all of the accouterments. As her blade finally discovered its 'true-mark' on my protective gear, the memory shifted. I saw their mother, a strong young archer with her bow in hand, out in the fields picking off the nearby rabbit borough for a Saturday meal. She would skin and cook rabbit once every 3 months to maintain the rabbit population of the back yard. Too many days we spent chasing rabbits back into their gated yard so that they wouldn't get hurt during one of the many practices we held outside. If one got out, however, it would be hunted and shot with the precision arrow my wife was known for sinking into the perfect targets with ease. A female Hawkeye she would soon become if she would be more confident in her actions.
The memories continued to show some of the different interactions through out the house, some happier than others as the children began to grow. A tear began to streak down my cheek, rubbed dry by one of my current caretakers, happy tears as the memory slowly began to resurface. Happy memories began to be replaced by different points in time, shifting slowly like a transitional PowerPoint running through it's pre-programed presentation. The memories, filled with arguments and disputes about one thing or another; some presentation Alaxzander or Callen had that I missed, or some part of her job that made life a little bit more difficult as the years went on. Between daycares and sports games, I had felt stretched to the max where my wife seemed to be maintaining her sanity with a sense of grace and compassion. It was years upon years that we fought, seeming about the same issues just at different points in time as Alaxzander and Callen grew. Then it happened. The day that my wife broke down; the grace and compassion that kept her together like a glue cracked and shattered. The memory burned the back of my eyelids as I lay there, motionless except the rhythmic thud of my heart beating against the inside of my chest. I remember the pain and loss as we laid our youngest 2 year old son to rest in the family's crest guarded catacombs. He was the youngest of our three children, born with a condition that he should never have seen the 6th month of his life, and yet by some grace he was given 2 years to bless our lives. I watched my wife fall apart everyday for two years as she held our son with a locked embrace, hoping she would never have to let him go.
The day we found him, she cried for hours holding his body in her arms. I remember her lifting him out of the crib, his face tinted blue with lack of oxygen, his eyes closed and despite the lack of a pulse, heartbeat, or breath looking like he was merely sleeping. I allowed her to hold him for a while before I called the doctor and the EMT's. My heart broke as we laid him down in the crypts. I tried my best to remind her that he was safe and healthy where he is now, but I know my words fell on a depressed and closed mind.
She left me after a while, her mind spiraling with arguments and disagreements every day. We began to fight constantly until she packed her bags and left. I don’t know if I've seen her since, but I got the kids for a week twice a month.

To Be Continued