Missy closed her eyes. As the truck bumped along the road, the summer sun invaded her eyelids, painting her thoughts with flashes of orange red heat.
She was standing at the base of a long, wide staircase that stretched up into the sky. Plush carpeted steps that welcomed her feet as she began to climb. Surely this staircase was taking her somewhere important. Why else was it there? She walked and walked until she had almost reached the top. For a moment, she hesitated, feeling it was only right that she look behind her, to see how far she’d come. So she turned.
Through heavy, dry eyelids, a grey-washed hospital room came into focus. She became immediately aware of a tube stretched across her face that stuck into her nose. The air was cold and smelled other worldly. Her mouth was dry. What was its purpose again? Oh, yes. Speaking. She attempted to move her lips but found she barely had enough energy to form the thought in her foggy brain. She focused on seeing. That was the easiest.Forcing her eyes open after several labored attempts, Missy looked around the room. The curtains were closed, blocking out the bright orange red sun, cloaking the room in a melancholy dinge. Through the grey, she could make out the standard pink-grey plastic cup on a tray next to her bed and a brown-grey chair across the room.
There was a young man in the chair. The plaid-grey person who had stopped to talk to Missy on the side of the road. How did he get from there to here? A question for which she had no answer.
He seemed to be sleeping, leaning against his arm, face shut down in a dream. His plaid shirt looked rumpled and crooked. His other hand loosely clutched what looked like a red-grey baseball cap. He was asleep.
But he was there.
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