Glass Desires
Page 9
Chapter 8 – Picking Up the Pieces...
I didn't recognize what magic took me away from that chamber filled with mirrors. I couldn't guess how long I lingered in the spaces that exist between the snow globes. I could not distinguish if my thoughts were a reality or dream. I simply floated, where and for how long I could not determine.
My eyes opened upon a world of white – white sheets, white walls, white lights, white halls. I worried that Fay banished me to a last snow globe filled with cold and snow when my eyes focuses upon so much white.
She had not. Later that afternoon when I returned to the realities of my world, I learned from my visiting nurse that I rested in room 22B at St. Elizabeth's hospital. She explained that the doctors believed I suffered a stroke, that my medications and treatments had perhaps pushed me too far. She explained how my landlord, who came to my door to ask how I was feeling, became worried when I failed to answer his knock. He had proven a friend I did not recognize I owned when he phoned the ambulance. Good fortune, good timing, the nurse explained, saved me.
The nurse even said she thought it was a kind of magic.
I have been in room 22B for one day shy of a week. My doctors promise to visit me this afternoon to share the results of the scans and tests they have conducted during my stay. I feel optimistic. My doctors and nurses smile when they pay short visits.
Most of the pain in my head has disappeared. Occasionally, the hurt will spike, but the pain no longer lingers for very long. My head swoons less and less with each day.
No one has checked in with reception to visit me during my stay at St. Elizabeth's. I have taken no phone calls. During nights when I have struggled to sleep, I have heard nurses outside of my hospital door commenting how sad it seems that no family or friends bring me a little cheer as I recuperate.
But I don't feel at all sad. I don't feel the least bit lonely.
The doctors and nurses don't realize that someone does visit me. They do not take enough interest in the snow globes that crowd my windowsill. The snows within those globes do not cease swirling no matter than I have never shaken them. Looking at those balls of glass gives me comfort, telling me that I have not been forgotten, that a sprite of a friend still thinks of me, still waits for me to stand from my hospital bed.
I have no doubt that Fay again searches for pieces of her precious mirror. I have no doubt that the Regent again leads her through worlds of diamond mountains and emerald seas.
And I have no doubt that I will accept Fay's invitation to help her pick up all those small pieces of jagged, glass shards.