One-Fourty-Nine
I came to under the muffled wailing of a siren resounding from the walls of houses the ambulance was passing. Flashes of blue whipping the night outside. When I opened my eyes again I lay in white sheets, staring at a white wall under the glare of white fluorescents. An electronic beep at regular intervals close by. A green line bumping across a dark screen ...
Three beds to the room. The first week I was alone, then a young man was brought in. Unconscious and on IV. Apparently no beds in the other rooms for male patients were available. Both of us too far gone to be up to any foolishness anyway ...
He‘d tried to kill himself. Been in love with a girl who didn‘t care about love. But that had been more than two years ago. He‘d accepted that she had no interest in him or love. She was a dancer and said no one could possibly give her anything as intense as the dancing. He‘d accepted that. Content to see her every now and then when it didn‘t bother her, like tagging along when she went to training ...
He'd dropped out of university and started driving a taxi. Ten hours a day, seven days a week. Anything to drown his mind in the drone of redundancies. To kill off whatever else there might have been ...