As She Sat By the Window

As she sat looking out the window, she remembered the day her life came tumbling down around her. The voices, noises, sights and smells were still fresh in her memory; as it had been for the past three years, forty-seven weeks and four days. She could hear her mother singing, a light tittering tune she always sang while cooking the turkey every Thanksgiving. The smell made her mouth water, her lips glistened with saliva. She could still see the floral patterned wallpaper in her room, just down the hall from the kitchen. The print of the George Orwell novel blurred in front of her eyes as they started to tear.

A noxious smell invaded her nostrils, wafting into her room, stinging her eyes. She started coughing, couldn’t take a breath, at least not one that didn’t hurt. Black rolling clouds billowed under the top of the doorway, quickly filling her room with smoke as sudden as a wave crashing into her. She couldn’t see her own hand through the thick black smoke that poured under the dark menacing clouds.

She couldn’t hear her mother singing!

Abandoning her novel somewhere, carelessly tossing it away, she dropped to the floor. The air was thick and heavy, but breathable. By crawling across the hardwood floor, she exited her bedroom and made her way into the hallway. She inched her way down the hall, the air growing thicker, blacker, every inch she went. The temperature started to rise. She fought the urge to flee, her instincts screamed to escape the flames. Her will pushed her on, driven by her fear for her mother.

The flames licked at her fingers as she clawed her way into the kitchen, searing the hair from her arm and blistering the flesh. Then she broke. Curtains of scarlet draped down the walls and began to flow over the very floor she lay on. The hardwood caught like dry tinder.

She knew pain as the fire began to hungrily devour her.

And then, nothing but cool empty darkness.

She was dead; this had to be death. It was nothing. No dreams, no sounds; nothing

Waking was hard; a sweet, melodious voice reached deep into the recesses of her mind, gently plucking her from the void. She could feel it. It felt like being picked up by a giant hand and being placed in a pool of light, and pain.

Before her eyes fluttered open, the memory burned at her soul, the flesh on her arm was still consumed with flames. Fire burned all around her. The lady calling for her to wake – a nurse that didn’t seem to notice, she just kept dabbing softly with a damp towel; cooing softly. She screamed for help, screamed for mercy, screamed for death.

Oh, to float in the deep, dark void, sweet blissful nothing. Only to escape the pain

She would have fled if her muscles had the strength within them to break the bonds that bound her to the bed. Wrists and ankles tied to the metal rails, the rest of her body left to writhe violently with the pain. Hours passed, the flames burned but did not consume – her mind had fallen into hell.

As the pain began to ebb away, darkness fell again. Again, there was nothing. Void of pain, light, sound; she would have felt soothed. Had she existed.

She jumped back into existence as quickly as she had dropped from it, the lights shining from above, blinding her. No screams came from her, at least not physically and she scanned her surroundings. She knew quickly she was in a hospital, she was alive. Then again, she wished she wasn’t.

Unwanted memories flooded her mind; her mother singing, the smell of the turkey roasting in the oven, the crackling of the flames. She cried out for mommy. She couldn’t find her, but a soft touch brought her back to reality.

The face hovering above her was halloed by the bright hospital lights and spoke in soft soothing tones, stroking her scalp with a healing touch. “It’s okay Samantha, rest my dear, you need your strength.”

Samantha’s speech came in ragged bursts, as if she were finding her voice after years of being mute. The words were foreign to her, and nearly undecipherable to a listener, but the meaning was clear, “Where is my mother?”

“I’m sorry dear, you mother isn’t with us. We couldn’t help her in time. I’m… sorry.” Tears flowed from the nurse’s eyes as she spoke softly and consolingly.

Samantha’s pain began anew, twisting her body into a ball, her extremities no longer attached to the metal frame of the bed. She heaved with each racking sob that assaulted her body. Flames no longer chased her, but there was an icy cold that gripped her heart. Each tear that fell begot another ten, followed by hundreds. Time had no meaning, the only thing she could experience was her hurt and the soft, loving touch of the nurse who never left her side.

She felt hollow, spent. Her spirit refused to accept that life would go on, abandoning her in her time of need. As the burned healed and scarred the once beautiful body, she stoically accepted the changed that marred her flesh. She would walk through the corridors of the hospital despite the pain that coursed through her feet each step she took. She welcomed pain, filler of the void where emotion once was.

Aimlessly, she wandered, unsure of her future. She didn’t believe she had one. Her life had tumbled down around her as her newly grown blond hair fell down over her shoulders and hung limply, as if it too, were defeated.

The doctors and nurses accepted Samantha’s wanderings, mistaking it for her way to find her place again. Never did they suspect that it was her way to leave this place that had been carved out for her. They watched her, day after day, by the window. They assumed she was lost in the leaves of the cherry tree in the courtyard, assumed she found solace in the blossoms that had begun to burst.

They did not know; how could they know? As she sat looking out the window, she thought of the day her life came tumbling down around her.