The Beginning

I stepped into the empty hospital room and took a seat near the window on the far side of the room. A hospital bed with several little machines around it sat in the center of the room, its mattress laden with wires and chords. With so much adorning the space, it made me wonder how anyone could have lived through such bedding. My mind rushed back to the memory of me lying in that bed, unable to speak and losing my ability to walk as the days passed. I blinked the image away, remembering that it had been hard, but I had survived. It made me feel weird whenever my relatives said I almost died several times while here. Thinking about it, I slowly started drifting into offtrack memories and childhood experiences. Then she stepped in, interrupting the empty feeling. The room exuded and scattering my offline thoughts.

She stood in the doorway in sea green hospital scrubs with her long, dark brown hair falling over her shoulders. Some of it draped over one eye, giving her an almost shy look. Her skin was smooth and very close to a light cream color. She blinked the one visible brown eye and stared at me. Then she pulled back the hair covering her other eye and tucked it behind her ear.

“Odd place to choose for this don’t you think?” she asked.

As she spoke, she looked around the room, taking it all in. It had been a while since we’d first met here.

“Seemed a fitting place,” I said. “This is where it all started. I remember you standing outside the door though, in the hallway around the corner.”

She laughed a little, “I’m not recreating the whole ‘when we met’ scene.”

“It’d be romantic,” I joked,

She shook her head and stepped further into the room and took a seat in the chair across from me. The sunlight coming through the window hit a few strands of her hair, giving it an auburn glow. As she sat there, it amazed me how attractive she was—far too attractive to have been made up by me.

“I’m not here for romance,” she said. “It’s been a while since we’ve spoken. Especially in this sense. Thinking of making this a habit?”

“Maybe,” I said. “For now this...is just an idea. I would like us to talk more though.”

I gestured around the room when I said this. Most of the time we’d talked in the past had been on little walks away from people. It was those times she brought structure to my inflamed thoughts.

“Alright, so what shall we talk about then?” she asked.

She folded her hands in her lap and shifted in the seat, getting comfortable. Her eagerness to know what was going on with me was what made me like her in the first place. Well that and her simple beauty.

“Things have changed.” I said, “Things have changed a lot.”

I sat back in my chair, thinking about all that I’d done and all that had happened since I last spoke to her. It was a lot.

“That’s usually the way it works, isn’t it?” she asked.

On the last word, she raised her left eyebrow and stared at me quizzically. I smirked and sat forward.

“This...this is way more than usual,” I said. “Maybe more than any time we’ve talked.”

She smiled and sat forward as well. “Then I look forward to Every. Last. Detail.”