Where do they all come from? (Fiction, Short)

A Story by Ardneliahs

This is the year of nerve damaging, brain-haemorrhaging competitiveness filling my lungs with the 21st century.

If you are not the kind that handles s**t with prudence then you're going to end up in a hospital.

The last thing I remember was the brushing of my hands against scorching gravel on the road and my trousers getting torn to expose my bare knees, I remembered the sound iron makes when it rubs down the asphalt. My body took the impact, my head was safe. The morning sky was the bluest that day.

I found myself in the emergency ward. The ethanol of surgical spirit was making me lightheaded while the familiar acrid stench filled my breath. Next to me was an old man in his 60s. Intracerebroventriculars in his bloodstream, he was laying still, I wondered what got that old man.
Above my head the vital monitoring machine beeped, there were four patients in that hall and all beeps were out of sync.

The old man's beep was high on tempo while mine on the lower side maybe because of the influence. The other two patients included a kid that maybe swallowed something or had diarrhea, his folks were trying hard to keep the younger sibling from touching things.

And there was this woman, maybe in her late 30s.

I couldn't tell what was wrong with her, she seemed fine, her vitals were more normal than any of us, I could only see her face from my bed and it was pale like somebody squeezed all the blood inside her from her eyes that were dark.

A man accompanied her and hurried in and out of the room with a manila file holding some of her reports. My sleeves were folded to the point where they injected me. The ambient voices are soothing when the only thing you're listening to is beeps.

The old man's folks came and took him away, he had diabetes, the doctor told him to do a little exercise and change his lifestyle. I wonder what he meant by lifestyle, that old man probably spent all his day in front of the television hoping to receive a call from his daughter while his son sets out to spend the weekend with his wife and children leaving him alone in the home for the entire evening, maybe then he cold do some exercise.

The kid kept on crying like he's the only one in this whole world who's got something stuck inside. Cheer up m**********r while you have the time, it gets much worse.
The fluorescent lights were playing with my mind so I had on my wayfarers and was laying numb on the bed waiting for one old-time school friend I hadn't talked to in years to come and take me to my apartment.

"Wearing glasses inside a hospital ward isn't going to help you much in this life", the woman was moved to the old man's bed, she was next to me.

"Yeah, I know, I just hate the lights here"

"They are fine"

"Maybe I am accustomed to darkness", I laughed.

"Oh, okay"

The man came back again. He was wearing a pale blue shirt with beige trousers, straight out of his office I guessed. He murmured something in the woman's ear and went back outside.

"Is he your husband?", I asked.

"No"

"Okay"

We didn't speak for some time. Then she asked again:

"How bad is it?"

"My knee is shaved of all its skin if that qualifies for bad and my hands are burning"

"Pretty bad"

"Yeah, What got you here?"

She took a pause and then responded:

"I took some sleeping pills a week ago, they transfered me here today."

Sleeping pills kill you by suppressing your brain functions that control your body. Your brain stops sending signals to your muscles, this shuts down the respiratory system as your lungs are unable to contract enough to let the air in to oxygenate the blood. This kills your heart and brain and you stop breathing.

I was speechless for some time, It was hard to comprehend what went around her head at that time and I didn't want to disturb her tranquility and mine.

"A week ago..", She spoke,"Now things are back together."

I still didn't say anything.

"Did I scare you? Sorry if I scared you"

"No you didn't scare me", was all I could manage. The drugs were keeping her uplifted.

As I was trying to think of something to say she asked me to take her to the women's restroom, "I can't walk properly, I'll be dizzy for days"

There was no one in the room to ask for help so I accompanied her, a nurse confronted us on our way out but we seemed to be doing fine so we were let to go.

I waited while she was inside. I could hear her movements inside the room and I got a sudden urge to puke maybe due to ethanol. She came out less unsteady and asked me for a cigarette, I searched my pockets, there were two left.

The restrooms were outside the campus so there were no smoke detectors, I checked until I got assured.

"Maybe you shouldn't smoke, It's injurious in your current state", handing it over.

Lighting the cigarette she said,"You know what's injurious? Soreness, plight, collective effort, kindness, compassion, love, to live in the past...", she laughed briefly,"... the latest dynamics, to soar in the air, to be air is all that's injurious", exhaling and slowly moving her head in a way someone disagrees.

"That.. I don't know what that means", I knew what she was talking about.

She put her left hand on one of the rails on the window, her right hand holding the cigarette.

I looked at her and realized that she once had been a beautiful girl, maybe not so long ago. It's funny how everything fades away and how hilariously painful it is. She had dyed her grays into browns, her face was starting to get wrinkles, her neck looked like a 50-year-old's, yet I knew that she was and is beautiful.

I wanted to kiss her at that very moment. I wanted to make love to her, we have found each other in a mutual state of despair and maybe love is not possible until you are completely miserable in front of each other, completely undone and ludicrously naked.

I wanted to taste her stale mouth that puked benzodiazepines mixed with blood, I wanted to taste the tobacco on her lips, I wanted to know all about her and I wanted to take her someplace where she would be free, where there would be no soreness, no plight, no collective effort or any of that bullshit, where she'd never grow old and where I'd never die of expectations.

We had done smoking and had nothing else to say to each other if any of us speaks now it would be absurd. I knew that I'd never meet her again, I feared that she might try killing herself again and hoped that her heart keeps on taking all this abuse done to her soul and never ceases to beat.

She turned to me and said,"Maybe it's not that bad, it'll heal faster, you're young", I could see a line of gray in the roots of her hair and she smiled.

"Yes, It's not that bad", at some point in life people stop taking things in, they form some kind of monolith in its final form, you can't change the shape of it, so I decided not to speak of that to her.

And as we were standing there the man in beige came to her and said something softly to her.

"I need to go", she said,"please excuse me"

And she left, just like that. I stood there for some time staring outside from the window and wondered how many emergency rooms are there in this world and how many of them hosted a pale skinned woman and a wounded man, and how many of those pale skinned women and wounded men found solace in their loneliness and how many of them tried to fly away from their rooftops or hanged from the ceiling or took some sleeping pills to induce a lifelong slumber they'd never rise from. Where do they all come from?

As I was limping back to my bed I saw that the kid and his folks were gone and my old-time school friend was waiting for me sitting on a chair near the bed, it was almost evening.

"Hey, Comrade!"

"Hi"

"Done with the revolution?"

*****