“Mom? Dad?” he shouted as he ran through the house. He knew they had to be there somewhere, but he couldn’t find them. The house was his, but not his. They were his things, but arranged differently, in different rooms. It’s as if he were the cat on moving day, plopped down in a new place, with all the things from the old place.
It was a strange twilight zone effect that surrounded him with more questions than answers. Where was he? How did he get here? Where was his room? Where was his place in this new world? They all had to wait, for the most important question. Where were his beloved friends and family?
At last he thought he heard them, outside. Their voices mixed with the voices of the rest of his family and his friends. He bolted to the porch, and he could see them. Hundreds of people sitting on bleachers, watching him, cheering him, encouraging him to fight and stand strong.
For what he should fight, and why he needed to stand strong, he did not know. He shouted, buy they could not hear him above their cheers. He could not close the distance, because a strange fog settled over the ground, and by some instinct he knew he could not step into that fog, or he would be forever lost in it.
They cheered, and he fell to his knees and wept. He wept from confusion. He wept from frustration. He wept from isolation. He wept as he crashed his head to the oak planks of the porch, and he wept as cried for deliverance and salvation from his torment. His emotions jammed him into the smallest corner of his mind, where the only possible action, was inaction. At last he struggled to pull his mind back to his own control.
As his head rose, he became aware of the pain in his hands, the pain in his arms, and the pain in his legs. He cleared the tears with the top of his sleeve, and the snot with the bottom. Then he saw the bandages that he knew were not there just moments before. Rolled around his various pains, and stained dark by dried blood. He stared at the bandages, until he heard the pitch of the cheers get lower.
He turned his head to see his family, and all he saw were some guys playing cards, in bathrobes at the end of a long room full of beds. He looked back at the porch, and it had been replaced with traction cables, and stained bandages that covered his legs. He turned his head the other way, and his eyes met a pair of eyes looking back at him from the bed next to his.
He didn’t know the guy personally. The guy was not in his unit. The guy was just a guy, looking out from under his bandages and sheets, as he was looking out of his. Kind of like seeing your own reflection in a car window when somebody is looking out at you. A tear rolled down the guy’s cheek, at the same time a smile wrenched painfully from his face.
They didn’t have to know each other, to know each other. The stains on the bandages, the tears on their faces, the pain twisted across their bodies, and the glimmer of hope in their eyes,, were enough to know they had crossed the same ground, fought the same fight, and somehow,,, had both come through alive.
Yes, some made it through unhurt. But there were some who didn’t make it through at all. These two, made it just to the twilight zone between reality and oblivion. And until you’ve danced the dance in your own head, you can never truly appreciate the effects it can have on you.
Just hold their hands, wipe their tears, and let them stare at each other. They have the consolation of shared experience, and knowledge that they are not alone in their very lonely struggle.
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