Passive Crossing

You are waking up. You will feel dazed. There is no cause for alarm. I am here to help you.

Someone was talking. A calm voice. Man, woman, he could not pick up any qualities that would suggest the gender.

Peaceful.

The calmness in the voice settled him.

It was cold, but not in an uncomfortable way. There was a hum, rhythmic, dull coursing through whatever he was laying on and into his body. Pleasant. He felt relaxed.

Who was he? What was his name? A hint of it, his name, filtered through the fog in his mind.

Oh, yes. He was Isaiah Samuel Davidson, named for great men in the bible. His mother would say, “You have much to live up to with names as strong as these son” and he had felt proud whenever he heard one of his names in church.

A church pew, hard even with a cushion, vibrating with the sounds of music.

Except, this was not a pew, solid but it gave around his body and held him up. He felt like he was hovering just above it. His arms were flat against his body, but he could vaguely feel his fingertips. He was still in that level of sleep where you recognize your limbs and know how to use them but have not gained enough consciousness to do so.

He was so comfortable though; he almost didn’t care what he was resting on.

Almost, but curiosity won out.

Slowly, the tingling grew to complete feeling coming back into his fingers. Splaying them, he aimed to touch and really feel this bed. What else could he be laying on? Besides, it felt like he belonged here, meshed with the bed and the covering over him. In fact, he realized, he liked it here. Wherever here was.

Cool, smooth, then warm like sheets.

Sheets, beds had sheets, right? Yet this one did not. Isaiah was confused. He had never lain in a bed without sheets before.

Where was he?

Naturally a calm and reserved person he did not start to panic until he realized that opening his eyes was more difficult than trying to figure out what kind of mattress he had been sleeping on.

Time to wake and get up.

His eyes fluttered open to a dimly lit doom shaped ceiling covered in a shiny iridescent metal. He could only see straight up and narrowly through his peripherals, but the view was more than enough to confuse him further.

Then. Something rolled beneath his head.

Fight or flight.

For a split second, his body seized in the rigors of fear and his heartbeat started banging inside his chest so fast he could see his bangs shuddering with each repetition. He jerked and yelped or so he thought, only to realize that he had accomplished neither.

His head was lifted slightly widening his view.

Dizzy.

Even with such a minor movement his head swam. Had he been drugged? Odd, he couldn’t recall if he had ever done drugs, he didn’t think he had so he had nothing to compare this feeling to.

Comfortable.

Isaiah still felt secure which made no sense because he now knew that he could not use a single muscle in his body except the ones in his fingers. So, what was pushing his head up?

He should be alarmed and asking questions.

“Somebody, can someone tell me where I am?”

He had said each word loud and clear but all that he could hear was that dull hum.

Panic. Time to panic.

Suddenly, his mother Jessie appeared above him. She seemed excited. Not the kind that makes others thrilled along with you but the sort that causes stress.

He inwardly sighed in relief, but something had changed about her. She looked different, older, more delicate, and haggard.

Her wild curly brown hair was slicked back in a severe bun that tightly drew her eyes back giving a sharp severe expression. There was not a hair out of place. She looked stretched so tautly that he could see the veins throbbing against her temples.

He could not see her whole body from this angle, but the top she wore didn’t suit her. Beige only washed her out. Once a fair tawny brown complexion was now ashen with moist greyish purple bags sagging slightly above her high cheekbones. She looked tired, scared and unwell.

Isaiah began to see her excitement for what it was, concern and worry. Though she smiled down at him it didn’t reach the cracks extending from the edges of her eyes.

His panic began to turn into worry.

She was talking too fast to comprehend. Her eyes were locked on his, but the rest of her body was turned slightly backward. She looked distorted and almost grotesque in this position. She was motioning for someone to come forward, his father.

Frightening. He must have been dreaming.

Isaiah started to close his eyes to block the image out. This was his mother but not one that he recognized. He did not think he could handle seeing his father in a similar state.

His eyes closed as slowly as they had opened, but before his lids sealed, he saw her lunge at him. He could feel a pressure that did not feel like weight from body crashing down on him. Strong hands gripped his biceps with a strength she did not appear to have then she started to brutally shake him.

His body jolted at the sensation of touch and sparks fired behind his eyes.

He should not have been scared, but he was. She was his mother anyway, he knew she would never hurt him, but nothing about what he was seeing or feeling made sense.

Still, the desire to see because it was something that he could do outweighed the urge to hide. When he opened his eyes again, he was back in the doom alone staring at the ceiling. Strange in its beauty, this ceiling looked alive. At least it seemed that way. The shimmery opalescence giving the impression that it was breathing. Moving into itself revealing various shades in a purple hue and out again to a pearl that shown bright. Isaiah felt that he could look at the ceiling forever and would have except that he wanted more to know where he was.

He risked a look around. Everything was covered in the same breathing metal and something more startling.

He was not as alone as he had thought. The knowledge added a layer relief to further blanket him.

There were people lined in front of him as far as this angle would allow to him see. He tried to see further down the column of his body, but he could not dredge up the strength to sit higher or even the knowledge of how to. Then he felt that rolling sensation again; this time he registered that he was being pushed up so that he could see further!

Yes, there more than a dozen people in various lounging positions. He looked to the right and saw with a better interpretation of what he must have looked like. People where completely flat on their backs blinking up at the ceiling the same way he had while others were sitting up altogether and facing the aisle.

An aisle. What was this place? His eyes darted around to every nook and cranny that they could reach as he desperately tried to draw a mental picture of the vessel he now lay. He was inside of something that had seats on either side of a wide aisle. He was on the left of the walkway.

It looked like a…like a train car.

Yes, he was riding a train in one of its cars only this one was more sterile and pristine. The humming and the vibration made sense now, but what kind of train looked like this and why was he in it?

His ears started to tingle the same way his fingers had; they were burning a little. Gradually, the hot feeling ebbed until he could no longer feel his ears. Another shock to his confused senses. He knew they had not burnt off because he could hear a voice.

A calm and soothing voice filled the train car with a literal weight.

You have now reached passive crossing Ruth. You can choose to stay, or you can go back. The choice is yours.

Isaiah’s breathe caught in his throat choking him. He felt like the words had touched him.

The rolling sensation lowered his head a bit releasing the pressure on his Adam’s apple allowing him to let loose a faint scream that barely carried a sound through his windpipe.

What was that? An intercom?

Gasping, he blinked back the shocked tears that filled the well of his eyes after hearing the mysterious voice behind the intercom. He tried to regain his composure. “Okay”, he thought, that makes sense, trains had loudspeakers.

The voice said something about a passive crossing. What did that mean?

Isaiah distantly recalled his mother telling him about passive crossings when he was a little boy. They sat at a rural railway crossing that had no directional signage. She had said something about there not being a right of way, the choice was completely yours in which way you wanted to go.

The head of one the women sitting up had snapped to the direction of the voice. She must have been the Ruth called. It seemed like she was trying to get her bearings. She was making small rocking motions forward and backward that grew deeper with each revolution.

All the while, the intercom continued to repeat the same statement which made Ruth rock with more persistence.

Isaiah’s heartrate sped up. He felt like it would beat right through his chest plate and onto his stomach.

Isaiah realized that she was trying to build the momentum to stand. The harder she tried the more anxious he became. He was urging her with words he could not say. Tension built in his legs and abs as if he too were rocking. Isaiah was willing her to stand, needed her to do it because it would mean that he could too.

The voice sped up which upset Ruth. Her rocking became so powerful that when she finally propelled herself up and out of her seat the force nearly sent her flying into the person across from her.

He gasped.

“Please don’t fall Ruth,” he thought.

He did not think that she would have had the power to get up again if she fell.

She spread her arms out and titter tarted side to side giving the impression of someone who had just spun around on a merry go round. She wobbled on shaky legs for a bit. but managed to gain her balance. Once she had found her equilibrium, she started talking frantically like his mother had been doing in his dream.

The shift from one dynamic to another so drastically alarmed him. It was too much, sensory overload with no way to release the pinned-up energy savagely coursing through him.

He wanted to scream out in frustration.

His head started to hurt, and his vision blurred. He wanted to stand up too. He needed to get up.

The rolling sensation pushed him back up a little further than he had been before.

Meanwhile, the intercom had sped up even faster saying the same sentences in the same smooth and easy tone until the words jumbled together.

YouhavenowreachedpassivecrossingRuth. Youcanchoosetostay,oryoucangoback. Thechoiceisyours.

Ruth was talking back to the voice and though her lips were moving her voice sound far away. She repeated some version of, “I want to go back, please send me back,” over and over. She said this until her words meshed with those of the phantom voice filling the car. Eventually, her words grew stronger and louder drowning out the loudspeaker. She fisted her hands at her sides and squeezed her eyes closed while screaming, “I need to go back, I have to go ba…”

In an instant, her words were cut short. The source of which had vanished in the blink of an eye. One moment she was there and the next it was as if she never was.

What?

Where had she gone?

Back he assumed, whatever that meant.

You have now reached passive crossing Lee. You can choose to stay, or you can go back. The choice is yours.

The same scenario played out with a man who was just as eager to go to this back as Ruth had been. Then there was a child, no more than 10 years old who looked too afraid not to go back. His little face shroud in panicked confusion as he wrestled with the decision. He looked like he was pulled in two different directions. In the end, he blinked out of the car with tears running down his face. Another woman simply stood straight up with little to no effort with closed eyes. She wore smile so beautiful it eased Isaiah’s rattled nerves. She had not said a word or looked in any way unsure; she too disappeared. They had all vanished so quickly he could scarcely remember what they looked like.

You have now reached passive crossing Benjamin. You can choose to stay, or you can go back. The choice is yours.

“Alright Ben,” Isaiah thought, “your turn to show me how it’s done.”

Only, Benjamin hesitated, he had an unwavering and exceptionally calm demeanor even as a solitary tear rolled down his right cheek. It clung to his chin a moment longer than gravity should have allowed then it fell in graceful slow motion. During its descent, Benjamin seemed to pass out. His body went instantly limp then caught slowly by the train in a magnificent pearl glove that contoured to cradle each extremity as it gently situated him back into a resting position. And then, just like the rest before him, he was gone. The tear drop splattered on the smooth floor turning the spot into a radiant reddish orange perfectly outlining the shape. Slowly, the color faded into a now familiar dark purple and then gradually waned until it matched the tones around it.

Isaiah wanted to cry too at this point. His determination to leave had grown more with each passive crossing, but Benjamin had shown him that everyone did not go to this “back.” Somehow, his sanity relied on going back and his definite ability to do that eventually. He had no idea what it took to get to a sitting position that marked you as slated for your turn to be called, but he knew that he wanted the chance to decide.

Benjamin had not wanted to go back. What had happened to him? Had he died, did he become a part with the train? Isaiah had no idea.

“I want to go back”, he thought. He wanted more than anything in that moment to see his mother again even if she looked different.

The rolling beneath him returned and this time it moved down his back. The feeling sent shudders throughout his upper body. Slowly, he felt a tingle spread down his neck and suddenly, he could feel his jugular pulsing with each heartbeat. Next, his shoulders came to life, they felt heavy. The prickling sensation continued its downward path through and past his shoulder blades. When it reached his waist, all the muscles above constricted causing his breathe to catch in his lungs. The sensation hurt, but only for a moment.

He thought through the process of exhaling and nearly suffocated before he figured out that he did not have to try. He relaxed as best he could and then his body did what it was designed to do. When he finally sucked down his next breath it felt like it was the first, he had ever taken.

His arms twitched and throbbed as if he had been laying on them and had cut off blood supply.

“I need to sit up” he thought.

He was pushed higher still.

His eyes darted around again.

“Wait a minute,” he thought. He had some control over the bed.

Isaiah did not have the ability to hold his head up completely at this new elevation yet. His head dropped forward until his chin was nearly touching his chest. Slowly, he rolled his head to the right expecting it to be stiff, but it was not. Instead, he felt perfectly limber. He was finally moving on his own, albeit awkwardly.

Then he saw it. The window, or, at least where a window should have been.

Instead of seeing rolling hills or open dusty plains, he saw his mother ringing her hands in front of her stomach and his father looming powerful and strong behind her his hands flexing on her narrow shoulders with an expectant but weary look on his face.

Dad.

His father looked more mature too, not a drastic transformation like his mother, but older. His hair was grey at the temples, as was most of his thick black beard, a sharp contrast to his mahogany brown skin. Yet that was not what held Isaiah’s attention.

Isaiah saw himself, propped up in a bed in the same position he was currently sitting in.

He frowned. What was going on?

He was older than he remembered himself and taller. He nearly covered the bed.

There was a nurse on either side of him one of which was slowly adjusting his head. Rotating it to the right the way he had. The room looked nothing like where he was, but somehow, he knew that the scene was real.

He was in a hospital bed.

Every move he thought he was making was someone touching and moving him. He saw that his eyes were closed, so, he focused with his entire being to the task of opening them. He could see his mother’s frantic lip movement, so, he focused on her too. He desperately wanted to know what she was saying. The harder he concentrated the more he could understand.

Faintly, he heard her say, or, he was just reading her lips, “open your eyes again baby, show them like you showed me. Please baby, just open your eyes for Momma okay!”

She was sobbing, licking her lips as tears flowed into her mouth and sprayed out as she sputtered on each word. Seeing her so distraught only made him more determined than ever to look at her again. To do what she was begging him to do. To open his eyes an ease her pain.

This time he would not run.

This time he would not hide from her.

The train seemed to warm beneath him, the thrill of it amazing. It charged him up somehow because he saw his eyes flutter. Everyone in the room stopped moving except his father who jumped from behind his mother to the end of the bed absentmindedly grabbing one of his feet. Another shudder coursed through him. He felt his father touching him!

His mother appeared beside one of the nurses and grabbed his hand. He squeezed here which simultaneously gripped her hand there. She let out a wail that sounded like she had been wounded. He squeezed again as hard as he could.

In the window, he saw his body give out, he felt tired and weak. He must have released her hand because she started screaming at him to squeeze if he could hear her, but he couldn’t do it.

All he could do was watch.

She became hysterical to the point that his father had to restrain her. Isaiah was lain back down but his body did not match the movements to those in the window this time. He stayed propped up. Watching.

The nurses went into action. One ran from the room while the other tried to soothe his mother. The other nurse returned moments later with a doctor in tow.

The doctor had a syringe aimed at his mother, pushing a little of whatever sedative he out he looked up to his father who nodded his consent. His mother had not registered the needle jabbed into her arm; she had been too crazed to see it coming through her tears. She appeared unfazed by all going on around her simply concerned with him.

He watched the scene until she passed out in his Father arms who picked her up and placed her on a small bed in the corner of the hospital room.

What was going on! Had he been in a coma? If he was awake, why was he still here?

As if in response to his unspoken question, the window flashed a brilliant near blinding white. He was shown a scene he did not remember and thank God for that because it was horrible and all about him.

It was hot out, summer in Georgia 105˚ in the shade. He had been out running with his headphones on blasting a song about ambition by Wale his favorite rapper. He had looked both ways before crossing the street but that had not saved him. A car had come out of nowhere barreling through the residential area faster than the speed limit on the highway.

It had only clipped Isaiah on his right side, but the force was enough to send him hurling through the air then slamming to the ground. He had broken his collar bone, right tibia, his wrist and split his skull. He saw himself bleeding out and visibly broken. A lady rushed from her home and kneeled beside him, then a big black truck stopped a few feet away blocking traffic. The driver had jumped out and started yelling orders to the small audience that was forming. Someone must have called 911 because an ambulance came to a shrieking halt in front of the truck. He was loaded up with efficiency and skill then driven away.

The scene flashed white then new.

He was in the emergency room as doctors and nurses clamored to save his life.

Another white flash.

He was flying through a timeline he had not lived. Years of him lying in a bed. He was not on life support, but he was still comatose. He watched as his mother aged by his side. Every year she lost more of what made her the women he remembered.

She read to him, shaved, washed, and kept him company.

Every time his mother came, she would say something to him about the choice being his to stay safe in his dreams or come back to her. His father was there as well working his limbs and keeping him lose. One of them was always there. They rarely left. A few scenes showed them crying over him alone and putting on shows of strength for each when they came to visit him together.

He started to understand, to see the train for what it was, a sort of limbo, somewhere between reality and the abyss of a coma. No, how could that be? Never had he heard of such a thing, but then again, why would he?

Where was the train going, did it always move? Isaiah did not recall the train making any stops; not that he had been paying attention anyway.

Another person was called, and he watched until they faded and then another.

He had watched enough; he was ready to go back.

The rolling sensation returned, but this time it pushed him up in to a 90-degree sitting position. He thought his head would drop forward again but was surprised to learn that he had more than enough strength to hold himself up. The seat formed a headrest that lowered on whichever side he turned his face. Lastly, a support formed under his knees.

He was utterly comfortable.

He signed when the pleasant warmth of the train fired up signaling another wave that would awaken more of his body. The soothing pressure ignited in his hips, under his buttocks, down through his thighs and into his calves. It seemed to stop there, not fully completing its’ course to his feet.

What did this mean and why did he not regain all feeling? He was ready to stand up. He was as ready to go back to see his mother again as he would ever be. So why was the train stalling?

A white flash jolted him from his thoughts prompting him to look at the window. He was no longer in the mood for anymore glimpses from the past or the present.

Isaiah was ready to go!

The headrest gently turned his head to the window. He had the strength to hold his head up but the enough to fight the train. He did not have as much control here as he thought. The scene that played out before him made was worse than watching his accident and seeing himself bleeding out on the street.

He was undergoing an examination by the doctor that had drugged his mother. His temperature, vitals, and responsiveness were evaluated. After the first round of checks were complete, the doctor signaled for the nurses to draw back his covers. As the layer of thin blankets were drawn away from his body there the same was happening to the blanket here. That is when he saw his legs, or, at least what used to be his legs. Everything below his right mid-calf was just gone and looked to completely healed. The scar looked years old! Years. He had been lying in that bed for God knew how long with a part of his body missing!

Isaiah did not have the stomach to look down at his legs, but the damn train was going to make him do it regardless of what he wanted. The headrest turned rolled his head more gently than any other time that it positioned him the way it wanted. It felt like a caress. The train warmed him in a way that felt like it was trying to ease his pain.

He closed his eyes. As far as he knew, the train could not make him look if he didn’t want to; his own mother hadn’t been able to make him open his eyes again.

His mother.

He thought of the reels that the train played for him; years of his mother’s strength beside him. If there was a way to easy her suffering, he had to do whatever it took. He would be strong for her and find a way to be thankful. Despite all his injuries, he still alive.

His left foot surged to life. The shock of it so powerful it made his eyes spring open. Isaiah looked; he saw what he had not been ready to see before.

Yes, he was scared but only because he did not know what his life would be now. He had been gone for so long and now he was supposed to face this new phase in life without being his complete self. Still, he first thought after seeing the smooth remains of what his leg used to be was of going back.

Isaiah took a deep breathe. A calm washed over him, a sort of peace that he could not understand.

The residual limb began to throb the longer he looked at it until it surged to life the same way the rest of his body had done.

You have now reached passive crossing Isaiah. You can choose to stay, or you can go back. The choice is yours.

Wait a minute, he wasn’t ready! He needed more time to prepare himself. He needed more time to get used to this latest version of himself.

You have now reached passive crossing Isaiah. You can choose to stay, or you can go back. The choice is yours.

The voice that he had been so eager to hear calling is name before was deafening to him now. The sound had been so welcoming for all the others, but to him it was dangerous. He began to panic. Though he wanted to go back, he did not know himself now. Isaiah had been an avid runner; he had never needed help doing anything.

Somehow, he knew that he would not be able to run let alone move the same way ever again.

You have now reached passive crossing Isaiah. You can choose to stay, or you can go back. The choice is yours.

“Stop, just stop” he yelled. This time, his voice came out strong and loud. Only the voice did not stop it only sped up in the same monotone which only made him more afraid.

The little boy.

Isaiah remembered the little boy that had vanished with tears streaming down his face. Perhaps some people went back to good situations, but the boy, his circumstances seemed to be as difficult to accept as Isaiah’s were. Still, he had bravely made the decision to face whatever was waiting for him.

YouhavenowreachedpassivecrossingRuth. Youcanchoosetostay,oryoucangoback. Thechoiceisyours.

Faster, the voice had sped up to the point that he could barely understand what was being said. Had it not been for all the others before him, he would have thought there was a short somewhere in the circuitry of the train. Unfortunately, he did know the voice and he knew that he was running out of time. Everyone had either gone back or stayed, either way, they went somewhere. Isaiah knew that he could not stay here.

In that moment, he knew that he was ready to go back. He would go back; Isaiah would face his life.

Warmth, so much warmth.

There was a rush, a weight like passing under the flow of a powerful waterfall.

He knew that he had made it back without any doubt. His body. He could feel his entire body tight and uncomfortable.

He left the train.

Someone was talking. A calm voice. A woman.

“Isaiah baby, can you hear me? It’s Momma sweetheart.”

The window was gone; there was no more protection from his fate. He was still afraid of the unknown, but he was happy.

He knew that he had made the right choice.

He could hear his mother; her voice was clear.

This time, when he opened his eyes, he sought her out. He followed the sound of her voice and found her near to his side where she had always been. His eyes locked with hers. She looked beautiful.