Waving Not Drowning

This is an incredible moment of panic. Opening up the freezer and not finding the stash of emergency chocolate. The really expensive kind, too. Fair trade, organic, chips of mint, maybe coconut, she can't remember. It was a spontaneous purchase for occasions just like this one. She knows better. Stay away from the computer. Flashing across her screen. His face. The date. The announcement. Probably as close as she'll ever come to skydiving without a parachute. She imagines that this is what it feels like. Her vision blurs, she feels her pulse pound through the veins in her neck like a torture porn movie, and waits for her heart to explode. Any second now. This is it. Old ghosts. Living in her psyche. Lining her fascia, sheathing her entire body. Tiny tubular webbing filled with fluid, stretching and undulating, tightening, seizing, creating adhesions. Blocks. Sticking patterns. She needs to break it down before it hardens into more scar tissue around her heart. Again. Months of ...

The doctor apologizes for the delay. It's only ten minutes but in this place, ten minutes is ten minutes too long. She's sitting 8 floors above people dying. Dead people, all around her. People in agony, writhing, screaming, moaning, drugged up beyond belief and still in unbelievable pain. Suffering. Uggggggh. Anabelle can't stop fixating on being trapped in a building filled with sick people. Sure, some people are fine, perfectly healthy; they're the ones dealing with the sickies every day. It's their jobs. Wandering the maze of corridors and elevator banks downstairs Anabelle is overwhelmed by the amount of hospital gowns and lab coats and wheelchairs and walkers and oxygen tanks surrounding her. It's like a convention for the walking or rolling wounded. Obviously she's missed the cafeteria and food court section. There has to be some part of this massive infrastructure where the happy, healthy, living people full of recovery are at. Suddenly the PA system...