As It Was

Chandler

I don't know how exactly it happened.

Everything was fine. I was driving down the highway, only about a mile away from the exit leading to town.

Then, everything went dark. The impact of the hit shook my bones. What one would expect to be the most painful feeling imaginable was nothing of the sort. My eyes saw nothing, and my body was numb.

The last thing I heard through a fuzzy static was the sound of footsteps running toward me and the hazy siren of an ambulance in the distance.

After that, everything had been different. I couldn't open my eyes. I couldn't move my hands or legs or head and, worst of all, I couldn't move my lips.

They kept asking me, "Mr. Lee," frantically, "can you hear us?" Over and over again.

It was an endless mantra. The worst part was that, even though I could hear them, I couldn't tell them so.

I could think; I could formulate thoughts and words and feelings, but I couldn't express them.

I knew by then what was going on. I was stuck an a hellish place between asleep and awake- I was unconscious.

Although I could feel, it was mostly mental for the first few days. Then, I started to be able to feel a slight tingle in my fingers when someone touched me. I only knew the day had passed into the night when a nurse would come in and speak to me for a minute. She sounded old, voice frail and aged in the most comforting way.

Nobody knew if I could hear them, or if I was even more than just an empty shell at that point. The point is, is that she still tried. She would tuck me in slightly, murmuring a good night and good morning. If it weren't for that, then I would've thought it all was just one never-ending nightmare that I hadn't yet woke up from.

My family visited often, mostly my mother and father at first. Then, my brother came eventually. We'd always been close, but getting older meant that we both had our own lives and we didn't see much of each other anymore.

I remember the sound of my mother's sobs next to my bed, and the sound of Sam trying to console her, but even his own voice was thick with pain, betraying his strong words.

The most painful thing, however, was when they'd go home. Nobody knew when or if I'd be up. The medical staff expressed their concerns on the matter and, for lack of better words, said that it was a waiting game. There was nothing they could do to make me wake up. The trauma to my head from the crash had done damage, but they said it could've been much worse. I'd thought I was alone, and I didn't know when anyone would be back to see me.

A big part of me hoped that they wouldn't be back to see me so soon. I didn't want them to see me lying there looking like I was an inch away from death. I didn't want them to hurt anymore than they already did.

But then, I felt it.

A chair somewhere to my left, seemingly close, scraped against the floor. Then, someone sat down. It must have been late into the night by that point and I didn't know who it was until I heard that worried, exhausted sigh that I knew like the back of my hand. The tone, the way the breath escaped his mouth, it was the same as when we were little.

"Chan," he started, voice cracking around the edges and splintering through my heart all the same, "I tried-" he paused, voice shaking, breath stuttering out of his throat, "I tried to come in and see you earlier, but they wouldn't let me. T-they said only family was allowed."

Something tightened around my left hand, squeezing and shaking slightly. If I'd been able to fully feel it, I know it'd felt warm and soft, comforting, and full of care just as it always had, just like he always had.

"Chandler," he muttered, whimpering lowly from next to me. I felt something press on my chest. The weight was refreshing and not enough all at once. It reminded me that I was in fact alive, that I wasn't completely numb after all like the white blur all around me was trying to make me think "please be okay."

He repeated it over and over. His voice was closer to me than before, and I then knew that the weight on my chest was his head. He'd been pressed close to me, begging me to be okay, to wake up and be better.

If only I could do just that.

What hurt the most was that I couldn't reach down and stroke the back of his head and twist my fingers in the soft locks of his chestnut hair just the way that always calmed him down the quickest.

I couldn't wrap my arms around him and tell him that I could hear him, that I knew it wasn't his fault that he couldn't see me until then- that I wasn't mad at him.

As he sobbed into my chest, body wracking with uncontrollable pain, I could only lay there, still as a rock on the hospital bed.

I could only scream in my head, over and over again until my brain forced me to give up.

Henry, I hear you.