It's Only Temporary

Chapter 23: Awakening (Multimedia)

Chapter 23: Awakening

Present Day

David groaned and rolled over onto his back, staring up at the blank white ceiling above his bed.

"Hopeless," he muttered out loud.

He straightened the covers over his chest. Flicked on his bedside lamp. Took a sip of water. Flicked the lamp back off. Stared up at the ceiling once again.

He'd been lying here for hours now, waiting for sleep to come.

Why? he thought. Why even bother? He knew it wasn't happening. Not tonight. His mind refused to shut off - stuck in an endless loop, as usual. Replaying the same scenes over and over and over again.

This new nighttime workout routine may have been a mistake. He'd hoped it would help with the insomnia, but it only seemed to make things worse. His mind always wandered back to the same topic while he ran - the same face, the same night. The same morning. And the memories just seemed to keep right on running, running, running in his head afterward.

"Power Off. Goodbye!"

He could press the big round silver power button and make those words flash across his treadmill's LED display. If only his brain came with a power button.

David closed his eyes again and rolled onto his side. His left side. He always slept best on his left side. No matter what position he fell asleep in the night before, he always seemed to wake up the next morning on his left, with his knees curled up toward his chest. Every single morning, for as long as he could remember. Every morning, including that one....

He'd started out on the other side that night. He'd been flat on his back when she pulled the covers up over him - tucked him in the way his mother used to do when he was little. And then she'd rolled him onto the wrong side and started rubbing his back. His mother never used to do that. He remembered the sensation. Cool fingers running along his shoulders and down the length of his spine. In some corner of his mind, he'd known that he should tell her to stop. He shouldn't let her touch him. Not like that. Rubbing and kneading. Working her way downward. Downward. Downward. Not a direction his mind had any business going.

"What are you doing?" he'd mumbled into his pillow.

But it had been too late at that point. The valium must have kicked in. The vice around his chest had finally released, followed by an overwhelming weariness. Exhaustion in its purest form. He could only compare it to the feeling he'd experienced after crossing the finish line of the New York City marathon. That feeling when every last ounce of energy has been mustered and spent, and every movement starts to feel like floating and sinking at the same time. Like your whole body has suddenly flooded with liquid lead. Legs too heavy to take another step. Head too heavy to hold upright. Eyelids too heavy to hold open. Tongue too heavy to speak. Brain too heavy to think. Every last molecule of your being too heavy to do anything but give in to it - fall to the ground and collapse into oblivion, in whatever position you happen to find yourself.

So he'd fallen asleep on his right side, that particular night. On his right side, with her hands on him. That was the position when the wave of fatigue had overtaken him. But it wasn't the position where he found himself the next morning. He'd shifted in his sleep at some point in the night, just as he always did.

She must have shifted with him.

He remembered how the heaviness of sleep had lifted slowly that morning. Stealthily, the way the darkness of deep night fades into the dawn. Not like his usual return to consciousness - the flip of a switch from sleep to full alertness the moment the alarm clock starts to blare. It had been a gradual awakening that morning. At first, nothing more than the faintest flickering in his fingertips and toes. Then a prickle of warm, delicious firelight, dancing up the lengths of his legs and down the lengths of his arms. Meeting in the center. Joining together in a brighter, hotter flame.