hello, friend. it’s me again. it’s - always going to be me, sometimes, i think. i have to find my footing. our footing. whatever they said, he’s not ready to be awake. he’ll come and go. maybe he’ll go back to that safe place. i don’t know. what i know is they won’t discharge me until they’re happy i’m not sick or going to get sick, but —
they will let him walk around the gardens, though. they seem willing to let him move and exist. so i do that, in drawstring pants and slippers that darlene got me and told him make him look old as fuck, dude, totally in line with your spirit. a t-shirt and a new hoodie - grey, not black - round the whole thing off, and elliot drags the aching, rusted joints of his legs over to sit on a bench, zipping the hoodie up to his throat. my old clothes were ruined. there wasn’t a meltdown, but turns out it’s still dangerous to have big explosions at a nuclear power plant. darlene said something about the hospital being worried about contamination. i have a few broken ribs, too, but they said they just wanted to monitor me a day or two more.
it’s probably too cold to sit out here, staring at his feet, staring at the threat of ice on the grass. it’s - oh. it’s new years day, isn’t it ? it’s january 1st, 2016. the shadow of a person appears in elliot’s periphery, feet crunching on the ground, but i don’t look up. just look at the grass, contemplating its freezing and its growth. i thought i was going to die. even when i was trying to live. i didn’t know i’d get to see what happens to the world.
quiet and impulsive, to the peripheral shadow: “ — happy new years. ”