In A Burning Hot Sea

Walter

I could not recall how long I had been without sleep. I felt tired and alert at the same time. It was all that sleep deprivation perhaps, but I could not make out where I was or who I was, I think I was hallucinating a lot. All around me was the darkness like a thick, black veil that kept me from seeing. And it kept getting darker still. I could not even tell if my eyes were open or if they were closed. I knew, I was in a room of some kind, but no matter how hard I tried to search the walls with my hands, I could not find a way out. I felt weak. It was hard to move. It felt as if something was pushing against me when I tried to walk around the room.

I was plagued with a sense of hunger. I could not recall when I had last eaten. How did I get here? Has it been an hour or days? I did not know. My memories were full of holes. I did not remember getting here. But I remembered my name now, or so I thought. I had a vague sense of who I was even though I could not know how I was unable to sleep. I was trapped in that room alone and restless.

I was sure now that it had been days. Suddenly, I started to hear voices coming somewhere outside the room. An unfamiliar voice spoke and I could feel the walls trembling. I felt unsafe. I was afraid that someone had come for me but at the same time I hoped for rescue from the prison I was locked in. I could not make out the words. Maybe it spoke a language I did not know. I tried to listen hard but it did not help. I was still not able to sleep.

Then, one day, a familiar voice answered. I knew that voice from somewhere. Then it hit me, it was my mother’s voice. I could hear her speak, but I still could not make out the words that were said between her and the other. If it truly was my mother, she would come and help me, for sure. I pushed myself against the wall and tried to yell. They did not hear me, though. I went from wall to wall and screamed until my voice was gone. Did they answer me? I could hear my mother speak again and this time the words were clear:

“Can he hear me?”

Yes, mother. Yes, I can hear you. Then the voices started to get blurred again.

That went on for days. Those two voices spoke to each other. And sometimes there was a third one too. My mother spoke a lot. Sometimes she sung. I could not sleep. The hunger inside me grew and I felt weightless, weak, light like a feather of a newborn baby bird or heavy like lead. I really needed to sleep. I really needed to eat. My skin was tickling and it would not stop no matter how hard I scratched. How long has it been?

I was wondering how long I would be able to get on without rest before losing all sense of reality. I could still hear the voices but I did not try to answer anymore, I had lost my own voice yelling. I did not know if they ever heard me. I was pondering on the fact that the voices could be just my imagination. My skin was crawling, and I had scratched it so bad, junks of it were coming off. It was burning. I still missed getting some food as well and my hunger made me do something horrible: I was eating my own flesh to feed myself. The flesh that came off my ribs and my face. And even though I was eating, I was eating my own body up, so I felt even weaker day after day. Although, I did not feel the passing of the time. I still did not remember getting there either, and I was starting to forget who I was. But every time I heard my mother’s voice, it brought warmth in my heart and hope that I could see the world again some day. But what was the world like outside this room? I could not remember.

Then came the cold. I was shaking in my little room and I felt dizzy. The voices outside sounded panicked and hasty that day, even sad. I could feel people moving restlessly behind the walls. I pushed myself against the wall and tried to speak again. I was answering to something, I guess, just did not know to what exactly but I kept talking anyway. I thought it might help. For a while I thought I could see some colors. Hues of red and blue. Light that kept growing until the walls around me suddenly disappeared and I was standing in the middle of a sea.

The sea was covered in ice sheets that glimmered in the bright sunlight. I could see shores and pure white, snowy mountains on them. I was cold, so, so cold. I had no clothes on and it was at least minus 30 degrees celcius. Everything looked absolutely beautiful, though. It reminded me of something from my childhood. Then the memory came to me. I was six and traveling north with my parents. The sea was the same one we were passing by in a cruiser back then to an island so beautiful and icy. My breath turned into white mist around me. It was freezing. My broken skin tinkled in the cold weather. I just lied there, floating in the sea, surrounded by ice. I felt calm and restless at the same time. The cold sea burned me like blue fire.

I still had not slept.

Vivian

Does not open eyes, makes sounds, abnormal flexion to painful stimuli. I was reading the words the doctor had written but it made no sense other than it was getting more unlikely that he would wake up.

It had been six days and Walter’s condition remained mostly the same. I knew that my son could hear me as he reacted with hums and sounds to my voice. The doctor’s ensured me that he was not really saying anything but sometimes I thought I could recognize a word. It was as if he was trying to say my name but perhaps it was only wishful thinking.

I talked to Walter as often as I could. Sometimes I even sung, although I had a pretty lousy ear for music. My voice sounded too high-pitched. It did not matter though, as Walter would recognize my voice and that was the most important thing. And that is why I sung mostly lullabies I had been singing when he was little. That would be thirty years ago next month. He was still my baby as he was my only child and I had raised him alone. It was hard to see your own son fall into coma. Everyday I woke up hoping that it would be the day he would wake up. But it only kept getting worse.

At the eight day, Walter got fever caused by an infection. The doctors tried to get the fever down by putting backs of ice in his bed. That is when he started making more sounds than usual. I did not know if it was the fever or the ice. I held his hand and hummed to calm him down. I wished that he would feel, at least at some level, that he was safe.

I wondered if Walter dreamed or was he totally unconscious. How does it feel? And what would happen if he woke up? Or if he fell into vegetative state? Would he feel that he was dying? No parent should have to think this.

He finally broke out of the fever in the tenth day. The hospital chair at his bedside had become my other home. I had found old children’s books, Paddington Bear-books, that I used to read to Walter when he was little and had the flu. I brought a few of them in to the hospital and read them to him as the doctors encouraged me to do everything that could bring back memories to Walter. I started with the one named “Paddington Passes Through”.

Walter

The ice was gone, and so was the sun, but the darkness had not returned. I could see movement, it looked blurry like a watercolor painting. I knew then that my eyes were closed and I could see through my eyelids. I was able to imagine scenes around the moving figures like forests and fields, streams and rivers. I still felt restless and hungry. My skin hurt, I felt so weak, but at the same time I felt more alert. Back when it was cold, I had heard no voices but now they were back. In the burning sea, I had felt weird serenity and it still lingered. I liked it.

I heard my mother speak again. Her voice was soft and paced. I sat on a cornfield with my legs crossed and listened carefully. Suddenly, I had these familiar visions, even though, I could not remember exactly what they were from. There was a thought waking up inside me. I felt warmth in my hand like I was touching something. Then everything disappeared: the sounds, the light, the touch.

It was as if the world, I had been imprisoned in, was no more. Am I waking up or falling to sleep?