Empty chairs and elevator music, and suddenly it’s all too familiar. I hear the hushed voices of the nurses behind the counter. I feel their glances, indiscrete as they may seem. And then my "accident voices" arrive. Here to steal my story, they confuse sympathy with complete understanding. As I sit among the machines and tools, I know it is only a matter of moments before I'll disappear. In they come, three maybe four of them, starring at the specimen as the lights blind and they become only black shadows emerging from an eye chart.
And then the questions begin. With every word I'm aware of the changing face of "the support". Cringing when I say I haven’t noticed any of the symptoms and itching to add on to every answer. I try to ignore the people in the background, the main players, but for a moment I hesitate, and then I know I've lost the floor. I look to you to save me, and you begin to speak because I suppose you think that’s best. With one glance I've become invisible. In jumps "the support" and begins a story about a girl who could be me, but whose "case" has been sculpted to sound the way it needs to sound. And it’s difficult not to scream, "Look at me! I'm the patient!" when I feel less alive than the instruments around me. It’s difficult not to feel dead when no one looks to you for answers and they keep referring to my pre-morbid state.
They've split me in two. No matter what I do, I will never be whole again. I never thought I'd be striving to live up to myself, but there it sits, on its high pedestal, this perfect picture of a young woman in the pre-morbid state.
In the midst of all the activity that goes on around me, while I sit in the fog which has long since cleared, I am pulled out by kind words. And by kind, I mean civil. Dr. Alburti calls me by name and looks me in the eye, and suddenly I am so much more than a study. He sees past all the bull shit and seems to care in the cold, detached way some doctors do. I am referred to as Megan or you instead of she. I am in the room. Your cord gets tangled, but I am of no use because of the large spots I'm seeing induced by your bright light. And it’s like a warm embrace, the way your words grab me. The way you look into my eyes seems to say more than infinite I love yous.
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