A Plain Room
Once again Benjamin woke up after too short a sleep, dreamless as always, his head in pain. He could not remember when or why he had been brought here in the first place, just that nobody had forced him into it. He did not open his eyes right away, knowing that what he would see was not even worth carrying the weight of his eyelids. Honestly it would not make much difference.
As for the longest time now, he was in a wide, completely dark room, with for only asperities a bed and a bathroom, dark as well. As far as he knew, everything else was floor, walls, and ceiling, as plain as it can be. No sign of a door or exit of any kind. It was better this way, or else it might have allowed in too much hope to have to lose.
The only irregularity in these walls was a hatch, down at the floor level, opening twice a day to slide in meals, tasteless soups or dreary stews, as plain and discouraging as the walls. It was also the only source of light Benjamin could imagine now. But it would close itself and disappear as soon as he tried to get too close to it, leaving no traces of having ever been here.
He had stopped looking toward the hatch for a kind of chance to escape or to communicate with the outside world (had there ever really been such a thing), and instead quietly enjoyed what little light could shine through it.
The light.
He could still remember his days enjoying the sun rays, almost like photosynthesizing, walking around sunny Beyrouth with his friends, talking about anything, everything and nothing. His last memories before his new monotonous reality were actually with them. Driving alongside the coast, he was happy, and then nothing, until he finally woke up here.
He could not remember their names though. Barely some faces, sometimes echoes of voices, reminiscences of some laughs. He could remember that he used to make his friends laugh a lot, and that he always had been the fun one. Of course he had spent so much time alone since then that he would not know why or how to make jokes anymore. All that was left was those inner conversations, ones he would wish more than anything he could to escape from.
Was it a prison he was in ? However he did not think that he was one to commit crimes sufficient for him to be held here for months, even years. Sometimes he thought of himself as the subject of some cruel experiment, aiming to discover the limits of the human resistance to solitude, absence of light, or to the other torments he’d endure in this cell. Was this not the kind of cruel torment some Greek mythological figures had to face, down in the tartarus, damned for the eternity of their death as a sentence for the way they briefly lived ?
Benjamin was certainly not a believer, but paradoxically all these thoughts mixed together had him wondering if somehow this sadistic detention might be how gods punish those who never acknowledged them ? Considering this possibility, he of course had tried to pray, in an attempt to make it up to whatever superior strength was responsible for his ordeal.
Hours had passed (or at least what felt like hours to him, he had about as accurate an idea of the time it was, as he had about the place he was held in) and he went back to the bed to lay down and get some miserable sleep again. But something felt different this time. . He did feel more relaxed, and his head for the first time in months finally started to feel lighter, as if floating in some kind of comfortable numbness. This time he knew his rest would not suffer any uncomfort or premature wake and this alone was enough relief to draw a smile as his consciousness faded away.
***
Saying that Emma had a long day would be a euphemism. It had started by a two hour drive, in an ultimate and desperate attempt to get her mother to come with her. She had given up on her dad a long time ago, after one too many absurd fights. She did not hate, or resent him though, he’d never been the same after the accident, bare hollow walking among men. However she came back the same way, unaccompanied and alone, for what seemed the longest trip of her life. All along the way she was one second too cold, and the next too warm. Her hands were sweating so much that she kept wiping one as the other held the wheel. Had she parked her car that the torments followed her in the elevator. Had she been wrong all along ? Was it too late ? Should she take more time and think ?
No. There was no more time for such considerations, whom she knew they’d come sooner or later anyway. They might even pursue her for the rest of her life, but she swore no to let it stop her. Because it was not about her, it was about him.
She was standing there, holding her brother’s hand firmly, in the same hospital they had both been born in. She had not felt that much connection with him for too long, she thought. She was sure that in this ultimate moment he could feel her warmth, her love, her sorrow also, and all the weight of the sacrifice she’d been willing to make for him. She was smiling, but crying also. She’d to fight for so long and against so many people after his crash so that they would at last allow her to pull the plug, family, friends, girlfriend. All saw her as a monster, but she did not care in the least.
Now she had to let him go.