Sleep

This flash fiction piece was written as a story companion to the day 21 drawing prompt Sleep from the 2020 Inktober prompt list. Click here to see the drawing.

“It's been two years.”

“WHAT?!” I scream, and the pain that reverberates through my head feels like a cleaver straight through my brain. When I wake up, it’s dark outside the window and a different nurse is standing at my bedside.

“Shouted yourself back to sleep, there, didn’t ya?” She’s adjusting things around me, pushing buttons on machines and prodding the IV bag.

My vision is blurred and my head is pounding. The pressure in it is so intense I feel like I’m at the bottom of a 6-foot pool. I reach up and touch it with my left hand and feel something slide into my right. Looking down, I see what looks like an old fashioned TV remote, except it only has one button.

“Push that when it hurts, sugar. It should help.”

I mash the button three times and the pain starts to fade. It’s heavenly. I’m about to start peppering the nurse with questions but I can’t make my mouth move and that’s when I realize I’m falling asleep again. Not more sleep, is the last coherent thought I have.

The next time I wake up, it’s light outside, but it’s the oranges and purples of a sunset—I slept all day. My head is pounding again but I drop the pain medicine remote because I can’t go another day without answers. I can’t yell out because I know it’ll hurt too much, so I look around the button panel on the side of my hospital bed. One has a little picture of a person on it so I mash it in hopes that it calls a nurse or something.

Sure enough, about 3 minutes later, a nurse enters my room—a guy, this time.

“What can I do for ya?”

“Please,” I wince at the pain in my head.

“If you’re in pain, you can—”

“I know, thank you. I was hoping to see the doctor I spoke with yester … or, was it, two days ago?”

I close my eyes, realizing I have no idea how long it’s been since I woke up in this hospital. I feel the nurse’s hand close over my wrist. “I’ll get the doctor.”

All I can do is nod and swallow around the lump in my throat. While I wait for the doctor, the pain in my head gets worse but I don’t push the button.

Two years. Two years I’ve been asleep and somehow, I’m still tired. I wonder who the president is. I wonder what song is on the top of the billboard Top 100. I wonder who won the last two Super Bowls. What I don’t wonder about, what I force myself not to wonder about, is my fiance, Michael.

“Knock, knock,” The doctor says, but he pronounces the “k” at the beginning of the word. It makes me hate him immediately. “How are you feeling? I tell you what, we’ve never had a coma patient shout themselves back to sleep before.”

“Please tell me what happened.”

“Well, what’s the last thing you remember?” He starts poking and prodding me while we’re talking, taking my pulse, pushing his freezing stethoscope on to various parts of my body. I close my eyes and try to think back.

“Going into work,”

“And then?”

“Umm … I got off the subway, went in the building, got on the elevator and then …” It’s all blank after that.

“Well, that elevator didn’t make it to your office.”

“What?”

“One of the cables failed and it fell six floors.”

“And that put me in a coma for two years?”

“No, but it started the hemorrhaging in your brain and the complications from the surgery to stop the bleed put you in a coma for two years.”

I swear, hard and loud.

“You said it. I can tell you more about the accident now, or I can wait until after you see your visitor.”

“Visitor?”

“Yes, there’s a Michael Stewart in the waiting room. He’s been pacing there for at least two hours waiting for you to wake up, so like I said, we can talk more about your prognosis now, or we can wait until—”

“Please let me see him.”

He pats the back of my hand in a gesture that reminds me of my late grandpa and walks of the room wordlessly.

My stomach roils, everything I was holding back comes rushing in. I wonder how often Michael came to visit, to check in on me. I wonder if he got the deposit back at our reception hall. I wonder if he’s still working at the bank. I wonder if he’ll kiss me right away or if we’ll just hug. The last thing I remember with him is waving goodbye to him as he walked the opposite direction to his subway stop.

And then, there he is, at the door of my hospital room. I smile for the first time since I woke up.

“Babe!” I breathe, unable to contain the happy tears dripping down my cheeks, waiting for him to rush to my side. But Michael doesn’t move.

“What’s wrong?”

“It’s, uh, how are you feeling? Are you okay?”

I hold up my arms, displaying all the different wires I’m hooked up to by way of response. He still stays in the doorway. “Well, um. It’s good to see you.”

“You mean awake?” I chuckle. “It can’t have been that long since you visited me ... sleeping beauty style, right?”

He won’t look me in the face, instead he keeps nervously glancing from side to side.

“Listen, I just, uh, I just wanted to make sure you were doing okay and that, um, that you … knew.”

“Knew what?”

He’s sweaty. Why’s he so sweaty? When he reaches up to wipe his brow, that’s when I see it: the gold wedding band on his finger. Now I get it. He hasn’t been visiting me … because he’s married to someone else.

This time, I manage to scream for a lot longer before I pass out again.