The first thing I noticed when I opened my eyes was the ceiling.
White. Flat. Institutional. The kind of ceiling that tells you exactly where you are before your brain has finished booting up. I stared at it for a long moment, breathing slowly, feeling the weight of the mattress beneath me and the stiffness in my limbs—the particular stiffness that comes not from sleep but from unconsciousness. From being somewhere else entirely, and then being dropped back into your body like a suitcase someone had thrown into a taxi.
I was in the hospital. A real one this time, not the facility. The smell alone confirmed it—antiseptic and floor wax and something faintly floral from a vase on the windowsill that someone had placed there, I suspected, to make the room feel less like what it was.
