I write things. Don't know why.

[scalesofrain]

Reconstruction

He was back on the operating table, ten brilliant white light bulbs shining down on him. He wasn't supposed to be awake he knew. People died from the shock and pain of being cut open if they stayed awake during a major surgery. But he didn't feel any pain. He didn't even feel scared. Just calm. Valerie loomed over him, her hair tucked into a handkerchief and a surgical mask over her face, but he could always recognize her piercing gray eyes. She raised the shiny scalpel and slid it down his sternum, cutting through his skin like tissue paper. Again, there was no pain, just a numb tingling as she pulled him open to expose his glistening ribs. Instead of the neat rows they were supposed to be, the bits of bone were scattered over the rest of his organs like shining snowflakes. Valerie briefly met his eyes and reached towards his face, but she aborted the motion halfway. Instead, she swapped the scalpel, painted in a lovely scarlet, for a pair of tweezers and began piecing the snowflakes of bone back together. Gentle was not a word he usually associated with Valerie. She was strong, determined, practical, not gentle. She simply didn't have time for it. But she was very gentle with him, delicately plucking bits of bones from atop his lungs, beside his heart, even from under his stomach, careful not to touch anything but the fragments of rib cage. It took hours and she took no breaks, finding one piece after another and slotting them into place in an invisible frame. She didn't look at his face again until she was finished. All twelve white ribs arched up to the surgical light and she slotted his sternum neatly on top. She picked up the long flaps of skin that were supposed to cover his chest and pushed them closed again. The line she'd made with the scalpel disappeared as she pressed the skin down. She met his eye and nodded once. He nodded back. Then he woke up.

[scalesofrain]

Derealisation

It's like you're drowning. The riptide tore you away from any tactile sensation and the whole world is water. Like Noah's flood, but no arc was ever built. You're flailing for a gasp of air, a sniff, anything to keep you alive another minute. Control? In this current? Unthinkable. So far out of the realm of possibility, the thought doesn't even occur to you. There is no control here, no treading water or dead man's float. The waves are merciless, detached from your pain and fear. Tidal waves pulverize the land not out of maliciousness, but simply because they do. And now you are the only scrap of land in the endless sea and you cannot breathe. If anything approaches you, it is nothing you properly remember. You lash out at whatever may brush your clumsy fingertips and when you manage a gasp above the stinging water, it's like nothing was ever there. But then, suddenly, with no warning, you can breathe for longer than a gasp. The waves don't drag you right back under this time. Your lungs fill with air and the phantom caresses on your fingertips are stronger now. More solid. You're not in the ocean anymore. You're sitting in a pond. And now you can see the forest all around you. The sun's still hidden behind an overcast sky, but you can smell the lichen and clover, the sharp tang of wet dirt at the edges of the pond. A pair of squirrels are chasing each other up and down an old, gnarled oak and one of the leaves falls from their excited movement, twirling down to land in your pond with a plutch! The rain clouds aren't going away. Any moment a torrent could fall from the sky and drag you back into the cruel riptide. But the sun is lighting those rain clouds and now that you've felt the mud squelching between your bare hands, you can't believe you ever forgot it in the first place. You won't let the ocean take the memory from you again. The rain might fall, but you'll find the pond bottom again. Your feet know it now. (That's a lie. You know its a lie, but your lying to yourself about that too.) But while you're here, before the storm comes again, you can think. You can plan. You can ask the fat robin, feathers puffed out even as it hops amongst the clover, to deliver a message for you.