I was alive, but I was never getting out of here.
* * *
An alarm clock somewhere out there woke me. I wanted to reach over and hit snooze, shut it up, but I was so tired my body wouldn’t wake enough to move. I imagined doing it so many times that when the beep lifted me to the surface of my dreams again, I actually thought I’d already turned it off. It was annoying, but, somewhere in the back of my mind, as I tried to drift back to sleep, my brain interpreted it as rhythm—reminding me of something I’d forgotten.
Music.
I remembered music. I remembered a song—one I heard so long ago in a place that felt like home, with a boy I know I loved, but could no longer see when I closed my eyes. His song had the same hollow, kind of sorrowful rhythm as that beep.
I opened my eyes and foggy light flooded the room, creeping along the walls and floor like the morning sun sweeping the grass in the early hours. It touched my toes, my ankles, and flowed up over my denim jeans and tank top until, as I looked around me for the first time, saw the orange trees and foliage-covered floor of a forest.
I knew this place…
The lake! It was the lake.
And that perfect song was the whisper on the breeze.
“David?” I remembered him now.
Eternity.
My love.
The red rose.
The silky voice.
It was like I could see him so clearly, sitting just across the way, hunched over a blue guitar, singing that song; his voice so heartbreakingly beautiful. With each note he played, my heart beat double-time, the alarm clock beeping out there in the same rapid pattern.
“Oh, David.” I covered my mouth with a shaky hand, feeling tears track my cheeks like unfamiliar friends in a home they once knew well. “I’m sorry.”
David’s song echoed in the space around me, the volume dropping slowly as it faded away under the alarm clock getting louder, more powerful—the single-tone drowning out the beauty.
“I’m sorry, ma’am,” a stiff-sounding man said.
My body became stiff too, and tight; I could feel gravity again, but couldn’t use it.
“Once the tube is out, she may just slip away,” he added.
“But—” Someone burst into tears; Vicki, I think. “She looks perfectly fine. How can she be brain-dead?”
What? Brain-dead? I’m not brain-dead. I struggled against my confines—trying to get up. What did they mean by brain dead?
“The tests were conclusive, ma’am. I’m sorry. In some cases, the patient can stay in a coma, on life-support, for years to come. In your daughter’s case, it would be best for her if she didn’t.”
Wait! No, I yelled. I’m not brain-dead. Vicki. Dad. Please?
“Wait!” Vicki said. “Just…don’t take it out yet. Please? Give her more time.”
“Her father signed the forms, Mrs Thompson. I’m sorry.”
“Greg?” her voice broke. “Greg, please?”
“Vicki. Just stop,” Mike said. “She’s gone. Don’t make her suffer any more than she already has.”
Mike? No. Don’t give up on me, Mike. I’m still in here. They got it wrong.
“Hand me that tray, please?” the stiff-sounding man said to someone, and in my world, I clutched my own chin as the feel of muggy, sweaty hands touched it.
Get off. Stop touching me! I couldn’t move. I felt my body, felt my arms, my face, but couldn’t get his sticky hands off me. Please? Don’t let me go yet. Don’t give up on me.
David! Where was David? He could read my mind, tell them I was still here, help me, rescue me.
But he left me, gave me away. He never even came to...
A tugging sensation snaked up my throat, grating my insides like the ribbed curve of a straw. My lungs felt tight, strained—as if air was being drawn in through a thick cloth over my mouth.
The room went silent for a breath, then, the beeps sounded in one flat pitch.
“Greg, please?” Vicki whispered. “Please don’t let her go.”
The anguished sobs of those around me flooded my heart. I focused on the beeps—willed them to move—but they rang out in monotone.
“Fight, Ara,” a smooth voice hummed, the melody dark with sorrow, as cool lips brushed softly over my eyes...
Wait, cool? David?
The air was so thick I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t catch a gasp to scream out to him—to David. He was there. Right there beside me. But nothing had changed. They couldn’t hear me. David couldn’t hear me.
And like a door slamming shut at the end of a long, empty corridor, a dead echo rang all around me. I felt myself whole—felt my fingers, toes, arms, legs, everything was here in this room with me, but I couldn’t see them. I held my arm out and ran my fingers down my completely invisible skin.
“Tell me how to get out of here,” I yelled up at the uninhabited void. “I know you’re out there. I know you can hear me.”
A trickling sound, like water over pebbles, filled the space around me and an eerie feeling lingered along my neck. I turned slightly, noticing a thickness to the dark, like a shadow stood there. But when I tried to focus on it, it was gone.
I closed my eyes tight and crossed my fingers, willing the beeps to move again. “God, please. If you’re up there, please...?”
Then, under my prayer, I heard a sound; I opened one eye and looked around, sure it wasn’t possible—until I heard it again; small and faint, and such a long, quiet pause between each one.
My heart skipped a beat and the beep copied.
“Get the doctor,” someone ordered, and Vicki’s high voice broke into sobs, my Dad’s deep, soothing whisper rising above it with comforting words. I missed my dad so much. Would give anything to see his smile again.
“Mike?” my Dad said. “Just breathe.”
“I can’t,” Mike’s voice sounded so thick with sadness. “I can’t. Where’s the goddamn doctor?” he yelled.
“It’s just a glitch,” the stiff man said suddenly.
“It’s not a goddamn glitch,” Mike screamed. “She’s alive. She’s—” His voice trailed away to soft sobs under my dad’s mutters. And everything went quiet again.
I held my breath, listened carefully, but there were no voices, no beeps—nothing.
I understood then; I was a prisoner in their world. David was right beside me, and I couldn’t even look at him; couldn’t even hold him.
“Ara!” David’s hand swept my brow, bringing the world back, desperation rising up in his controlled tone. “S’il te plait, mon amour, lute, bats toi pour vivre.”