Tragedia Et Amor - Prologue. Prologue

June 1996. Port-A Memorial Hospital. The body lying on the bed in the center of the wall. Eyelids fluttered. Thoughts: White. Nothing but white. Bright lights. Burning through my eyelids. Pain. Scorching up my leg, arm, shoulder. A hotness I can’t understand. Sounds of squeaking in the distance. Sometimes near, sometimes far. That annoying beeping and a sound. A sound like slurping through a straw. My throat hurts. My mouth doesn’t want to move. Tongue. It sticks to my mouth. A cold damp feeling of something rough wiping across my face. Whispers in the distance as I feel the cold damp thing touch my other side of my face. The flash of heated pain before it stops. Everything sounds like it’s in the distance. I jerk at the ice cold on my chest. Again the distant whispers. Sounds off to one side before the coldness shooting up my arm and the heaviness of my body. The slowing of my thoughts as I drift again on a sea of pain and dreams.

* * * 

I remember boats everywhere. The water was covered with boats. People listened to the words spoken across the radio. People sang hymns. My mom spoke, then threw wreaths and flowers into the water and emptied a vase or something with ashes over the side of the big boat. The sound of horns, many horns sounding at once. Blasting the air with a calliope of sounds. I was tired. Slept on the makeshift bed that transported me. Rode in an ambulance after being in a church. Many people I didn’t know patted my arm with sad looks and tears. Telling me everything will be OK. That they were sorry for my loss. A nice lady named Tabitha stayed right by my side the entire trip. Whether at the church or in the ambulance or on the boat. Mom held my hand.

People took pictures of us. I was in the newspaper. The photo showed me in the ambulance bed on the rear deck of the big fishing boat. My family and friends are around us. The picture must have been taken by a helicopter. Another picture showed all the boats in a large circle around us. Hundreds of boats. All different kinds of boats. And I hurt. Anything on my left side hurt. I slept a lot. Holding that newspaper in my arms. Refusing to let it go. I didn’t know why.