2 - The news

It seemed like one minute it was daylight and she was being feed oatmeal, then in a blink it was night and she sat in the wheelchair facing a large television. The room was different. This room felt larger and was painted in pale yellow. There were wheelchair bound people on either side of her and three old men and two woman sat on the two bright green couches that flanked the television.

The confusion of noise and sight hurt her head. The people on the television spoke so loudly that it felt as if they were screaming but Jessica couldn’t understand their words. The elderly man sitting beside her rocked back and forth in his own wheelchair, groaning and grunting loudly and smelling strongly of poo. Somewhere behind her chair, people talked, breaking out into loud laughter. There was music coming from overhead and sometimes a man spoke from the speakers. And over it all was a constant high pitched hum that seemed to cut into her throbbing brain.

Jessica tried to raise her hands to cover her ears, but her hands wouldn’t do as she wished. They curled and raised a few inches from her lap before the twitching muscles gave out and they fell again. The gray fog floated in front of her eyes once more and she stilled her efforts because she didn’t want to be sucked down into its depths again.

She closed her eyes and tried to shut out the barrage of sounds. Tried to think.

But thinking was so hard. Her mind felt wrapped and smothered. Like someone covered her in bubble wrap, layers and layers of bubble wrap till her mind won’t work.

She wanted her mother. She wanted to be in her own bed with the covers over her head and her bunny in her arms, not this strange place. She felt tears drip down her cheeks. She tried again to raise her hand to wipe them away but couldn’t lift her hand more then a few inches. She curled her fingers closed then tried again.

Time moved in fits and pieces, like one of her mother's old movie sticky with peanut butter. The laughing people on the television were replaced by a man and woman. Doing the news she thought. The grunting man was gone. There one second. Gone the next as if a hole had opened up beneath him and he had fallen through.

She squeezed her hands together and released them, squeezed and released in the fits of time until her arms quivered and skinny cords of wasted muscle looked to pop out from the pale skin. Exhausted from her efforts, her head slumped against the side of her headrest and she slept.