CONSUELO ROLAND

Hospital Bed Epiphany

I have lost many things in my life. But on this occasion I have lost something irreplaceable; something I can never get back. There are no tears. I have done my crying. I am as dry and desiccated as a dried-out pumpkin gourd on a hot tin roof. If you pick me up, you will hear the pips of my misery rattling around, the echoes of my desolation. Long after everyone else sleeps I lie awake in my hospital bed, bathed in a soft blue hospital haze that promises protection but gives no relief to the ache no doctor or nurse can see.

Suddenly, without warning, a luminous white sun crests within my core, the way a living pod might unexpectedly burst open and release winged seeds to fly all at once. Euphoria radiates outward from the centre of my being, a palpable force that rattles my rib-cage and startles me to wide-eyed attention. It travels instantaneously through constricted veins and cold cells, widening and warming, dispersing grief and misery like a skulking heavy fog busted by the illumination of the first sunrise.

I am floating on a bed of glacier-white light, lifted high, but I am not dead, or even half-dead. I am part of the amorphous white spirit. I am welcomed into its arms; all my hurt and ache is soothed away; it is mother and father all at once. My panic has subsided, my fear has diminished, my blood has quickened. I want to raise my voice high and sing in astonishment. Loss is the beginning. My life opens up before me; what had dwindled has in a moment outgrown me.

I close my eyes and know sleep will come.