Suddenly, a 5-year-old child ran across the road, and his mother came chasing after him. I slammed on the brakes and yanked the wheels. The car skidded, the tires screeched. I lost control of the car. It continued skidding on the avenue until it crashed into a parked truck. I could feel my forehead was bleeding. I felt dizzy and my eyes dropped momentarily.
I opened my eyes slowly and was sshocked by the intravenous injection and the feeding pipe running down the edge of the bed and finally piercing through my skin. Everything was white. My white clothes. White bed sheet. White blanket. The atmosphere was so silent that even the “tick-tick” of the electrocardiogram placed on the table besides my bed could be heard. I tried to move my limbs. My left hand and left leg could be lifted up a little. How about the other two? I did not feel anything and after a few minutes trying, I could not believe my eyes. They could not move! I broke out into tears. Vain and pain gripped my heart and at that moment, I fell unconscious again.
When I woke up, there was a doctor besides my bed.
“Calm down! I know how you feel but accept it and be happy that the accident did not take your life!” he said in a mellow tone.
“How do I live with this disabled body? It is even worse than hell! Worse than hell!” I yelled back at him.
“No, it is not hell because you are alive. There is still hope if you keep yourself happy and make good use of some physical therapies. Your disability is not forever. It can be healed. Understand?”
“…Only if you keep yourself elated can miracle happen. I assure you can recover then, of course not fully, but you can walk and leave this place. Ok?” he continued.
Silence covered us and I felt as if I was drowning in a sea of despair.
My room was a two-bedded one. There was a man suffering from prostatic cancer. His name was John and John was in is his last state of the disease. That means he could not live longer than half a year more. I did not know where he was going to face his own death but we soon became good friends as there were only two of us in this ‘separate’ world. With him, I felt less lonely and that life was somehow meaningful as we shared our beautiful memories.
Every evening, he sat up, leaned against the wall, looked outside the window and described what were happening there as I requested. This is one of his descriptions: “The rain has just stopped, my old friend (the name he usually called me). The murky clouds are pulling apart like curtains, revealing the sapphire sky. The peach-colored sun hangs brilliantly above the horizon, reflected by the sparkling ocean now surrounds the beach. Children are playing their toys. Some are slashing water at each other and some are pulling their mother’s dress. Couples spot the area, hugging and kissing each other. Wow! What a pure, untouched and unspoiled beauty, man!” His descriptions gave me a lot of imaginations and I really felt as if I had been walking along that marvelous beach.
Days had been crossed off the calendar quickly until I was announced that my hope to recover is now possible due to my positive altitude. I felt as if I had been on the moon and the first one I broke the news with was John. He did not say anything, just frowned and turned away. That day he did not talk to me anything. He might be tired then?
The next three days, I had not seen him once. I was transferred to sleep on his bed. Feeling curious, I asked the nurse and found out John was dead while sleeping. He could not endure any longer and had left this old friend behind without a goodbye. I stoned and fell into deep silence. Suddenly, remembering the wonderful outside world he told me, I asked her to help me sit up. However, all I saw was just a blank wall. No beach. No sun. No couples.
“Where are the beach and the people there? Has the wall just been built?” I frowned at the nurse.
“Who told you so?” she murmured, staring at me.
“John,” I sighed.
She replied in a soft voice, “Did you know that he was blind?”
