I Was Still Awake

I keep staring at the ceiling even though there is nothing interesting about it, nothing at all, just flat white panels passing above me as the trolley moves forward, and I try to convince myself that if I just focus on the lights then maybe my body will stop reacting the way it is reacting, like I’m already halfway gone and still trying to argue with myself about whether this is really happening or just some kind of mistake that everyone else seems too calm to correct.

People are walking beside me, I can hear their footsteps and the soft sound of fabric brushing against fabric, and I can see their faces when I turn my head slightly, all of them trying to smile at me in a way that feels carefully practiced, like they’ve rehearsed it somewhere in a room where nobody is allowed to cry properly, but I can still see it in their eyes, that thin layer of panic they are all pretending is not there, and that somehow makes everything worse because if they are scared then I am allowed to be scared too, but nobody is saying it out loud so I just lie there and let my thoughts get heavier and heavier.

My mother is holding my hand and I can feel her fingers tightening every few seconds like she is trying to memorize me through touch alone, and I want to look at her properly but I can’t because I already know what I will see, that expression people get when they are trying so hard not to break in front of you that they end up breaking anyway in smaller invisible ways, and I don’t know which is worse, seeing her cry or seeing her pretend she is not about to, so I just stare at the ceiling again and let her grip do the talking for both of us.

The doors ahead are huge and metal and they open slowly like something in a movie that is trying too hard to be dramatic, except this is not a movie and nobody is playing music in the background to make it feel structured or meaningful, it is just real silence and real wheels and real time moving forward whether I want it to or not, and as we pass through I feel my chest tighten because this is the point where things stop being “almost happening” and start becoming “already happening,” and I wish I had asked more questions earlier, I wish I had not trusted the way adults say things like “it will be fine” as if saying it makes it true.

I hear my mother speak but I can’t fully process the words, they pass through me like sound underwater, something about staying strong, something about being brave, and I want to tell her I am not brave I am just here and that feels very different, but my throat feels completely closed like it has been filled with sand and I can’t force anything out no matter how hard I try, so instead I just listen to the wheels again and try to hold on to the idea that maybe I am exaggerating everything in my head, maybe this is just another moment people survive all the time and I am the only one reacting like this.

Then I see it, or at least I think I do at first, because it doesn’t fully register as a person immediately, just another trolley beside mine moving at the same speed in the same direction, and it takes a few seconds for my brain to understand why everyone around me has gone slightly quieter, why my mother’s hand has stopped moving completely, why even the air feels different, and when I finally turn my head properly I realize there is someone lying there next to me who is not asleep in the normal way, not resting, not waiting, but suspended in a way that feels wrong to look at, like life has been paused but the body forgot to disappear.

I don’t understand at first what I am supposed to feel, because nobody prepared me for this part, nobody explained what it does to you to see something that is both part of your future and someone else’s past, and I feel my stomach drop in a slow delayed way as I realize what everyone already knows but nobody wanted to say too directly, that this is not just a room I am being taken into, it is a place where something is being moved from one body to another like a quiet exchange that the world pretends is simple when it absolutely is not.

And as they bring me closer, I can feel the mask hovering somewhere above my face without even looking at it, and I realize that the counting is already starting even though I haven’t agreed to it yet, and the last thing I manage to think clearly, before everything begins to blur into sound and pressure and fading light, is that I hope the last thing I hear is not silence pretending to be peace