The ceiling of the guest room was painted a soft, creamy white, but to me, it looked like the inside of a coffin.
I lay there for a long time, just breathing. Every inhale was a negotiation with my ribs. My right shoulder was encased in heavy plaster, weighing me down into the mattress like an anchor. My left arm was wrapped so tightly in gauze that my fingers were numb, sticking out of the bandages like swollen sausages. My body felt less like a person and more like a collection of broken parts that someone had glued back together in the dark.
But the physical pain, the throbbing in the bone, the sting of the disinfectant, the deep, muscular ache of exhaustion was nothing compared to the silence in my head.
For weeks, ever since the assimilation, there had been a hum. A background nois
