Citrus | ONC 2024 ✔️

4: Mild Case

Listless beeping flooded my mind. Rain pelted the ground. Everywhere my ears could reach was the tumult of mindless water, drawing on in the endless pursuit of happiness—satisfaction in its terror, sloshing over the top. Too much.

Rain? The steady sound wasn't rain, not constant tapping, a soothing noise. This being was endless, an aggressive, choking monstrous, man-eating plant from the movies. There was no attack. There was no screaming. There was beeping and darkness and rough sheets tucked over my shoulders and my sides. Alcohol wipe smell clung to my nose too. Used alcohol wipes...

My eyes shot open. Of course, the alcohol wipes had to be used to have a smell, to say something about anything.

Blinding white spotted my vision, a flurry of color blinking in and out like the concentrated beam of a flashlight. Upon focusing, there were no flashlights, just a rectangle on the ceiling, probably fluorescent bulbs illuminating through the thing. There were no colors, no blinding oranges or greens or purples. Normal, dull gray clamped itself close, wholly settling itself in my eyes.

White and gray and white...

Black and blue... Where was the nearly empty road? The traffic cones and night? Sleep? Old home and maple-scented candles? Where was driving up the gravel road in the cover of darkness, rubbing sleep from my eyes, and stepping into the home I missed and wished to destroy but couldn't? I wasn't that snake of a person, after all.

"You're awake?" Mathew's voice cut through the air. It was stiffer than I thought.
The gray sky of the ceiling seemed to drip like rain.

You don't have to pretend to be asleep. The phrase echoed in my head, Mathew's words, his soft tenor whooshing in and out of my head, a comforting breeze. Home.

But it wasn't home.

He continued, "Are you awake? I could call in a doctor. You're not..." The words were in the air, on a boomerang never meant to be caught by hands, only hit the branches of a wide oak and come tumbling down.

Slowly, I dragged myself upright. My black T-shirt felt fitting for the gloomy occasion. "I'm awake."

In my head, I heard myself answer the accusation of pretense. I'm not.

"Good, good, good." Mathew opened his mouth, then closed it, looking away, at the ceiling.

My brows furrowed. What's up with you? Sucking a breath, I stretched, a time flashing in my mind. 11:58.

"What time is it?" I asked, wiggling my toes. The white blanket shuffled. Nothing else moved. The beiges bricked walls were all set in stone, the sink to the left and heavy looking wood door ahead, Mathew too. He was a statue, staring at me like I was a sort of alien.

Be cordial with him. I swallowed, rehearsing the words in my mind... as long as he didn't use that nickname, everything was fine, cool as any cucumber I could grow.

"Fifteen till one, in the morning." Mathew barely moved, his plain black button-up jacket attached to his figure like water clinging to the xylem of a plant, climbing. "The crash was around midnight... You've been in and out since then. And Morgan..." He trailed off.

"Crash?" The word burned my lips, like an overdose of citrus flavor. Bitter and unreasonably sour. "And Morgan? What about him?"

"The crash," Mathew emphasized the words like it was something I was supposed to know. "We almost crashed into a construction zone and then the semi behind us ran us off the road... Do you not remember? Do I..."

He stood and stalked out of the room. The hospital room. In the emergency hospital room? The guess felt right, with a crash... A crash. We crashed? I searched my brain for the orange construction cones and found them sitting upright and untouched. I tried to find a semi and saw them surrounding us in a jam in Atlanta. There was only a time. 11:58.