Respite | Previous Challenge Entry

how it works

TITLE: Respite | Previous Challenge Entry
By Cindy Carver
01/10/10
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Respite

The light was too bright, almost hot. I closed my eyes and raised my arms to cover my face and then a jolt went through me as I landed on my feet. My eyes were still closed as I felt the intensity of the light starting to fade, and took my arms down. I wanted to yell, “ow!” as my whole body hurt, but it was more like the pain of a stubbed toe. By the time the light was softening, and the jolt from landing on my feet fading, I’d forgotten to yell, and all I felt was a dull throb like after you stub your toe, but all over.
Blinking I looked at my hands, and I couldn’t help but blinked again. They weren’t my hands, or rather the wrinkles were gone, and they were the cream color of a newborns skin with a soft healthy glow to them. I opened and closed them a few times just checking to see that, yes they were mine. I felt my face and the wrinkles and grooves of my 88 years were gone from there as well. My fingers brushed through my hair which was soft and long. I’d never had long hair that I could remember. In fact, I was bald when I was 30. I still couldn’t see clearly from being temporarily blinded by the light, but I could tell that the jolt wasn’t really a landing as there didn’t seem to be a floor, more like soft clouds that blew around my ankles. I looked at my clothes, and they were what I had had on, a hospital gown, but where it had been breezy in the back, it easily wrapped around me. I was thin now and looking at my arms I could see the muscles where I had sagging old man skin before. I jumped up, trying my legs and I was amazed when I didn’t come back down like I had originally arrived. I landed softly like a cat, and realized too I was barefoot. It amazed me-- realizing I could jump and run. Slowly my vision was clearing. Everything was crisp and defined like after a rain and I knew I didn’t have my glasses on. I thought I saw people coming toward me, but they were in the bright light that had blinded me when I had arrived. I squinted and couldn’t make them out. Then I did yell “ow!” I heard myself yell, and my voice was my old gravelly smokers’ voice. Several people were around me and all of them seemed to be talking at once. I also heard a soft bleep, bleep, bleep, and a green line going across a screen that I was hooked to with wires and pads. IV bags hung from metal poles. I was lying in a bed. The same pain I had felt before, the throbbing like a stub toe but this time in my chest. The bright light above the bed blinded me and I blinked and raised my hand with the long tubes dragging across the sheets. My hand seemed to move in slow motion. I could see the wrinkles and age spots and sagging skin under the tape that held the IV to my arm. My hand dropped, the bleeping stopped and I knew I wouldn’t be back this time.

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