Insomnia: A Brooklyn Tale

CHAPTER 4 (PAUL)

I was dumped into a sea of confusion. Everything trickled together and nothing made sense. Strange images flooded my view. Dark grey clouds, a towering, brick building and then…green eyes – they floated above me for a while and everything else went quiet. Then they were gone and confusion returned in full force: Red flashing lights, loud sirens...and pain. Every shift in my surroundings caused excruciating pain. I was trapped in my own personal hell. Darkness was closing in on me. It was stifling and heavy but I welcomed it. It was preferable to the constant, stabbing pain.

For a moment I was lost in beautiful, dark oblivion. I felt nothing, heard nothing, and it was wonderful. But then my senses were ripped back into submission by a sudden flash of searing agony. There was yelling, there was cursing and I felt fluttering sensations all over my body, as if I had just been struck by lightning.

“I have a pulse! We got him.” The voice sounded relieved.

“He lost a lot of blood. If he makes it, it will be a miracle.”

“If he makes it, that girl saved him.”

Their conversation made my head hurt even more as I tried to focus on it, but soon I was drifting into darkness again.

The next moment I was aware of anything but the blackness I heard a woman’s voice. It sounded vaguely familiar.

“I don’t know what’s going on yet, Jake. It looks bad. It sounds like they’re flying him out to Seattle in an hour.” The woman sounded upset and I was trying to figure out where I knew her voice from. My eyes felt heavy and they wouldn’t open. In fact, everything felt heavy, like I was buried in a ton of cement. In the back of my mind I heard a rhythmic beep-beep-beep sound.

“No, they just said it is a miracle he’s alive. They said he flat-lined…as in he died….for two minutes or something.” There was a pause.

“I don’t know if there was brain damage-” She gasped and her tone screeched even higher “I’m not freaking out! Okay. Okay…I’m sorry. It’s just. I’m scared, Jake.” She was squeaking now and it confused me more. Who was this woman?

“No, I’m not calling my sister. She may be sleeping; I don’t want to bother her. I’m flying out with him anyway…” This one-sided conversation was making my head hurt as I tried to keep up. I tried to remember how I got here – wherever I was – but my mind drew a blank. All I could remember, frighteningly clearly, were a pair of concerned green eyes forcing me to…to…to do something. The rhythmic beeping accelerated and my breath caught, as if someone had dropped a ton of bricks on my chest. I couldn’t breathe.

“Oh…no…no. No! Nurse! Nurse! Someone help!” The woman yelled, hysterically. There were footsteps and more voices.

“Something’s wrong!” The woman yelled again. I felt hands on my chest, my head was swimming.

“Doctor?” A strange voice.

“His lung collapsed…syringe!” A stern voice ordered.

“What is going on?!” The woman exclaimed.

“Get her out of here…” The stern voice barked before I felt a pinch on my chest. It was like magic and the pressure on my chest was gone.

“Is he going to be okay?” The woman was still hysterical but her voice slowly drifted away…as did everything else. And all I saw was a strange girl in the rain.

Muffled sounds danced all around me – loud beeping sounds and heavy footfalls. There were muffled voices and distorted yelling. Nothing made sense. There was that loud thud-thud-thud sound. People were yelling again. Everything hurt. At some point I thought I was back in Colombia, in that dark room...

There was a sudden shift in my surroundings. My whole body was on fire, but I couldn’t move. I heard the woman’s voice again. She was frantically yelling at somebody.

I was in and out of consciousness at such a rate that I didn’t know what was real was and what not. One reality felt heavy and empty at the same time. In it was only darkness with that beeping tones and faint whispers of voices that once were.

In another reality I was wandering a dark, rainy street. Not far in front of me, another figure was hurrying along the sidewalk. Without seeing a face I instinctively knew she had green eyes. I followed her, wanting to keep her safe. Headlights suddenly blinded us both. The car swerved and….I would jerk right into the first reality again. Every time I sunk into the strange and distorted second reality it progressed a little further. Suddenly I was the one behind the steering wheel. My foot hit the brakes, but it was too late. Her fragile body was thrown halfway across the street. I jumped out of the car and reached her quickly, but fear and shock then paralyzed me. There was blood everywhere. I was on my knees trying to stop it, but it didn’t help. It was real. It felt too real. The pain was real, the rain soaking us both; the coppery smell of blood, everything was real. I stared down at her, at the girl I had just killed and felt my body shaking. I was crying, yelling – cursing at the cruel reality fate had dealt me once again.

I jerked awake in a bright room with that annoying beep-beep-beep sound, now very apparent. I felt trapped by wires and tubes and fought against them.

“No! No, Paul, calm down! It’s me. It’s Jake.” I heard his voice before I managed to focus on his face. He was pushing me down on the bed with a concerned expression. I was breathing heavily. I saw Natalie’s tear-streaked face just behind him. It had been her voice I had heard earlier.

“Where is she?” I asked in a ragged voice. My gaze was still scanning the room, taking everything in.

“Where is who?” Jake asked cautiously, following my gaze a moment before he frowned at me again. He was still pressing me down on the bed.

“Where is she? Is she okay?” I asked again. I sounded hysterical, but I didn’t care.

“Paul, I don’t know who you’re talking about.”

“The girl…uh…the girl I hit with the car…I..”

“Calm down, bro…listen to me. You didn’t hit anyone with a car. YOU WERE hit by a car.” Jake explained and I shook my head vigorously. I was sure of what happened. I was there. I remembered everything. The pain, the glass breaking, the smell of blood…

“Stop! Paul, no! Listen…”

“No! You listen! Jake, I was there! I saw her die! I’m not making this up!”

Jake was still fighting hard to hold me down. Natalie entered the room again. I had not even seen her leave. A man in a white coat followed her quickly.

“Calm down, Mister Mason. You shouldn’t be moving…at all.” The doctor stated calmly and he confused me even more. He pulled a syringe from his pocket and injected it into an IV bag that hung next to my bed. My eyes followed the tube from the bag all the way to where it was inserted into my arm. Whatever he had injected into that bag worked quickly. Numbness crept into my veins and muscles and I couldn’t fight anymore.

I stared up at Jake. He was worried, so much so that it looked like he was in pain.

“Is he okay, doctor?” Jake asked anxiously. I felt a vague fluttering on my neck as my heavy eyelids fell shut. My head was swimming again and I couldn’t move but for some reason I could still hear everything around me.

“Well, his stitches are fine, but his lungs sound a little raspy. We’ll do a CT scan just to be on the safe side.” The doctor explained.

“Doc, what’s wrong with him?” I heard Jake’s muffled voice.

“Well, he just went through a very traumatic experience and his body suffered a terrible shock. It is normal for him to be a little confused.” The doctor explained.

“A little confused?! Doctor! He thinks he killed someone!” Jake yelled and it ripped right through me. Something was not right and it scared me. I could fight anything that was thrown my way, but I couldn’t fight myself.

“I know, but he’ll remember soon enough…” The doctor tried to explain.

“And meanwhile he’ll just t*****e himself. You don’t understand, doc.” Jake sounded despondent by now. I wished I wasn’t there. I wished I was fast asleep as they clearly thought I was.

“Doctor, what Jake is trying to say is…well, Paul already has a lot to deal with. It will be excruciating to watch him add this to his guilt.” Natalie explained. There was a moment of silence.

“I’m sorry. I am a trauma surgeon. I can’t heal broken minds. But what I can do is fix his body. And when we have that sorted out this hospital has some of the best nuero-surgeons and psychiatrists to fix his head.” The doctor suggested. It made me feel like a science project. They were talking about me as if I wasn’t there.

“Will he be okay?” Jake asked hesitantly.

“For now, he is stable, but you must understand that he was severely injured. Most of his injuries are internal – the broken ribs, the punctured lung, the lacerations on some other organs. It is a miracle that he is still alive. He lost a lot of blood. Had it not been for that Samaritan packing the wound on his neck, he would’ve died in the street…” The doctor explained. I imagined that I heard someone sobbing.

“It’s alright, honey. He’ll be okay. He’s strong.” It was Natalie’s comforting voice.

“We begged him. Do you remember? We begged him to come home, because we wanted him to be safe.” Jake spoke in a thick voice.

“I know…I know…” Finally their conversation faded away and I was back in the darkness where nothing mattered.

Every now and then, when I was able to string together a lucid thought, I focused on remembering how I had gotten here. It was hard, since I usually sunk back into oblivion, forcing me to start over when I woke up again.

I lost all track of time, but I was finally getting to grips with my current reality. I was in a hospital in Seattle. Jake and Natalie were there. I had had some kind of accident. I was scared, because I couldn’t remember everything clearly. My memories of the events that led me to be trapped in this hospital bed made no sense. Everyone was certain that I was going insane and I was starting to believe them. My brain was aching from strain I put it through as I tried to remember. It was a process of elimination. The events of that night were all jumbled up, but of a few things I was certain so far: The smell of blood, the sound of breaking glass and the girl in the rain.