Stream-of-Consciousness (Pure Fiction!)

Inside it is still finally. Inside me, inside the room, inside my head. All the rampage is over, all the pain is settling in around the edges and will be steady soon, not so puncture sharp like at the first, but there beneath the drugs to make me comfortable, a reminder that life continues on.

It was touch and go there for awhile. I was out of it but not stupid even then. Thoughts faded in and out and around like a kaleidescope and sometimes melted like swirls of ice cream, but in the back of it all I knew it was a fight, sharp like brine, and so we set about fighting and here we are. Still. Recovering.

I've been here before. Tomorrow there will be the excruciating moments, lovely; they mean life and senses and opportunities that have not left entirely. Not yet. I dread the screaming moments along with the Buggins turn and the nurse it brings to me, some fine young woman who wants more than anything to be home soothing her crying infant, instead of a grown-up who was in the wrong place at the wrong time and really is none of her concern, at least not in the way the baby is.

I understand that, fully, as I drift off to sleep and I vow to be kind to them all, and most of all to myself. Expect nothing, no disappointments. But there's a face that would do more than any pill, any bag dangling from the silver hook, and I dare not ask if I can see it.