The Bright White Tunnel...

She is being led by the arms, someone on each side holding her up.  There is a lot of buzz going on around her, people are looking directly into her face as they pass...she notices that the look at first is one of general recognition, but then the slightest shift occurs...she sees it and she wonders if they know.   The chin lowers, the eyes lower and the head tilts ever so slightly to the right...and she wonders if they know who she is.

The lights are so bright and the halls so white...the combination of the two make her feel like she is floating through a tunnel, the hands on each arm still holding her up...guiding.  Voices, she hears voices but they are not clear.  Like when you were a kid and would sit on the bottom of a pool...you could hear voices and see images but nothing was clear...not the voices...not the images.

Suddenly she is looking at a wooden door and realizes she is no longer moving.  The one who owns the hand on her right is talking but she doesn't know what he is saying,  maybe if she looks at him in the face the words will be more clear but all she sees is his eyes.  His eyes are full of sadness and sorrow...it is pouring out of his eyes and she wants to tell him it will be okay...he will be okay.  She doesn't know why he is hurting, but his eyes tell her that he is and she feels sorry for him.  No time to dwell on it though for she feels these hands begin to guide her onward once again.

As the door opens, her body tenses, her heart begins to beat too loud and too fast and she knows that behind this door is her greatest nightmare...she should not be here, she wants to run but the hands are holding her and she knows she has been given a job to do.  Ever the one to please...she will do her task to the best of her ability and then she will be permitted to leave, so she raises her eyes and blinks...She is in a small room, it is all white and stainless steel...the walls are lined with machines and in the middle is a bed draped in a white sheet...the sheet is hiding a secret.  She knows that under that sheet is the answer to why she is here, why the looks, why the sadness in the mans eyes and she knows this is her job..she has been given the task of answering the riddle of what is under that sheet.  And suddenly the hands let her go...she is standing on her own and she is moving to the side of that bed and everyone in that room is watching her and wondering if she will get this right.  A woman to her left pulls the sheet half way down the bed.  It is time, there is only patience here, but she knows they are waiting for her to do her job...

So...I raise my eyes and I take a good long look and I utter the words everyone is waiting to hear... 'that is him, that is my husband'...and I say those words because there on that bed is the man of my dreams, the teenage love of my life all grown up now.  It is my David, but it is not.  I see a neck brace thing and a tube in his mouth, and his open eyes are blood red, there is vomit all in his sideburns and around his ears and instantly I am furious.  What the hell is wrong with these people?  Why would they not clean him up a little, how could they want that to be the image I see.    And then I am thinking 'no, it is fine because this is all just some sick twisted joke, someone is really fucking with me and none of this is real'...so I  step forward and hold my husbands beautiful hand and rub his arm, he is freezing and I have blood on my hands, I tell the nurse he is bleeding and she just looks at me with that slightly lowered 'look' I had seen earlier.  I look closer and realize that my David is cut and bruised all over, and those blood red eyes...I have to get out of there, I have to run away.  I lay his hand down, tell him one last 'I Love You' and I walk out of that room.  But my job is not done...I have only finished half of my task...

It must be something in that tunnel because I am back to sitting on the bottom of the pool, the hands are back to guiding me towards my next task, just a few short steps away, the next room actually and we do it all again.  The bed, the nurse, the sheet hiding the secret to this final riddle.  This room is large, the bed is at the other side of the room and I must make a huge effort to walk over to it.  It is in this room that I am aware of my friend Kate by my side, she has been the hand on my left arm all along.  Together we walk to the bed and there under that last sheet is our beautiful friend Evelyn...but not.  We see what we saw with David...all of it, and it is very surreal.  I hold Eve's foot and rub her leg...I know Kate is saying something, but what I have no idea.  Without even knowing I am speaking I hear my voice say 'I love you Evelyn, thank you for what you did'.  And I know in that moment that my job here is done, I have answered correctly and now I must go back to that rock and wait for my husband and my friend to return to me.

She is being led by the arms, someone on each side holding her up.  There is a lot of buzz going on around her, people are looking directly into her face as they pass...she notices that the look at first is one of general recognition, but then the slightest shift occurs...she sees it and she wonders if they know.   The chin lowers, the eyes lower and the head tilts ever so slightly to the right...and she wonders if they know who she is.