2.
After a long, four days in the hospital, I was finally discharged. I knew I had some long-term problem with my brain because of the accident. But I didn't give much attention to that because I didn’t care.
The same old house was waiting for me to open its door that had been locked since then. After standing for a while before the gate, and observing the entire lineament of the house, put all my weight on the oaken door consuming the entire wave of silence. Trying my best to keep up with my posture straight, I slammed the door producing multiple echoes throughout the house. Her absence had turned down the house into soulless structure. My own house wasn’t communicating with me as if it has been restricted to do so. The pumps in my heart were audible. Everything was so visible inside, which I never took any notice of. Those frames with the picture my wife and me were the one that I refused to take because I disliked being sketched by any means. These frames were the only left pieces of memories that I was able to hold into my hands. Small pieces of art which I never took notice of were as elegant as the nurse who looked after me. I chuckled. My wife really was a hidden artist who altered all the setting of the house and turned into a masterpiece.
I was healing at my own pace, that's what my nurse told me, when she left one Friday morning. The following day was as dead as I was. I kept telling her that I don't need any more checkups but she didn’t listen. She told me, she has to, at least, do it for formality sake, which I understood instantly. That is one of the several reasons why hospitals look so dead. She was the different nurse from the hospital, a rude one. I was silently wishing for the one that I met in the hospital.
Hospitals usually make me question about the motive and intentions of the medical people on their treatments. Some doctors, even though, they know the direct cure won’t provide the direct facility, instead, they will take a long way just to earn some extra expenses. I know, they are regarded as the life-savers and I am not talking about everyone of them. Some of them are really devoted towards their duty. Well, I am well aware of my habit of finding the worst in everything that makes me skeptical, even, about the devoted ones. I don't know the source of it but yes I am a negative person which I accept dearly and I am happy to live with it. And as a normal human, I resist change.
I sat on my couch, after she left, and turned on the TV to get rid of the sea of silence. After switching from one channel to another for several minutes, one of them grabbed my attention. It was a news channel portraying my face accusing a murder of a lady. “What the hell!” I baffled. I waited for a while to see if it really was my face. As I noticed “Graham Atkinson”, written in big bold letters, below the image, further confirmation wasn’t needed. Without further explanation, the reporter jumped into another topic.
Obviously, I couldn’t believe what I saw. “The news was fake”, as I considered it for the first time. And then, I began to rewind my memory to see if I could remember anything that corresponds with the news. But all I could remember was our accident. We both met the same accident but the news said otherwise. It reported that I shot my wife in an alley. “What the hell is wrong with these channels!” I exclaimed.
I could feel my lungs requiring more air to breath and my heart acting abnormally. I could think of nothing when they told the lady, in the image, hasn’t been identified yet because of her distorted face. I might be a negative person but it is more towards skepticism not cruelty. I cannot be that cruel. I realized that silence of the room was far better than those sounds coming out of that reporter’s mouth. I turned off the TV and sighed behind my into my contemporary couch. I could feel the sweat on the surface of my back pressing the sponge behind me. Wondering, if I was really a murderer, which I didn’t believe, I grabbed my cane, stood up stumbling and took a flight, leaving the door open, into the December rain.
The sound of each drop shattered the silence inside me. The storm inside me made the outside storm look so weak that I was feeling a winner against the nature around me. I did not have anywhere to go which made me discover myself into a small park near my residence. I was trying my best to remember anything I could, and then followed by a concussion which resulted in severe headaches.
After trying to control myself, I remembered having a close friend but couldn’t recall anything more. I couldn't even sit there for any longer. My anxiety was pushing my entire body and I was going along with it. I noticed a café, which was about 5 minutes far from the park. I was exhausted and confused and couldn’t even wait to order a latte.
Every nerve was accelerating inside my head and every pound of breath refusing to enter my lungs. I was breathing through my teeth. With a queer feeling of being observed from the surrounding, I rushed inside my house with shaky feet and few liters of sweat when I heard my phone ringing as if it was going to detonate.