Awareness - 5/15

The rest of the afternoon passed in relative peace, or so I was told. At some point, medics arrived and loaded me up, carrying me to my new location, which was a tent of some kind. Whatever peace that had existed, I had missed it, because the screams of hurt people around me were anything but.

Despite my pain, I am not the priority of those running the tent. As night took over, nobody came over to talk to me, touch me, or even look at me from what I could tell. Something is connected to my neck that makes moving my head nearly impossible, so I lie in near-perfect stillness.

The whole time, my body is burning inside with a pain I have never experienced. Everything hurts, yet I don’t have the energy to yell. All I can do is groan to myself, mumbling expletives whenever a new part of my body comes alive in agony.

I was right. This is hell.

“You awake again?”

His voice was almost soothing at this point, standing out from amongst the screams. Even if I didn’t understand why, he was the one constant in my life right now. Maybe the first one in years, other than the interior of my apartment.

I don’t know how to respond. I don’t want to talk. What do they do on TV in these situations? I blink once.

“Hey, you awake?”

I blink again, more deliberately this time, so that he could tell it was intentional.

“Good. Good. Uh…” he continues, his voice trailing off as if he hadn’t expected me to respond.

“You lived upper floors of building 23F?” the man asks, looking down at a paper in his hand.

For some reason, my blood ran cold. I slowly blink once, confusion growing inside me as I try to match the man's face to anyone I had met in the last couple of years. All I drew was a blank.

How did he know me?

“Have you seen this girl?” he continues, now looking directly down at me, his bright blue eyes piercing into me. He holds a picture in his hand of a girl, probably around my age. Even through all the dust, I can see the resemblance in their features. She looks familiar, but I can’t tell if that was just strong genetics or if I knew her.

I blink twice, slowly and deliberately separating them.

Maybe it would be easier to just talk to him.

“Oh, thank god. You sure you didn’t see her in your building? Round the 34th floor?”

Outside of the accidental run-in when putting my trash out, I hadn’t seen many people before my building was condemned. After?

It dawns on me once I realize what he said. 34th floor, my floor. Despite the days' worth of haze in my brain, there is a distinct moment when I remember another person being near me in the darkness. Had that been her? Something inside me wanted to bring it up, but something else was nagging in the back of my head, telling me it wasn’t the time.

It wasn’t her.

I blink twice again.

The man sighs so deeply, I think I’m going to be blown off the bed. A lifetime of stress leaves his body.

“She’d already left,” he says to himself, the smile on his face evident by his tone.

It wasn’t her.

“Alright. She’s alive. I’ll find her tomorrow at an emergency shelter,” he reassures himself. “She’s alive,” he repeats.

We sit silently in the earsplitting tent.

“Hear those alarms going off?” he asks, pausing to let me listen. Originally, I hadn’t picked it up amongst the rest of the noise, but countless alarms were sounding off from the areas around me. It was as if an orchestra of crickets had descended nearby and were celebrating the fall of the city.

“Never a good sound to hear, especially not that many.”

I wasn’t sure what he was talking about, and sure wasn’t going to break my silence to ask. Whatever it is, his temporary joy fades as he listens

“Best you get back to sleep,” he finishes, “I’ll make sure they check on you once I leave.”

Maybe it’s because he gave me permission, or because he said someone would check on me, but either way, sleep came easily after that, pulling me away from my aching body and back into the void.

The void once again was not kind to me.

I was back in my hallway from that morning. Everything was still, frozen in time. Even the particles in the air hung in place, disappearing only as I touched them.

My heart aches to return to my apartment, but something urges me to escape, to run.

Stairs. I would need to find the stairs again. I didn’t know why, but something was compelling me in that direction.

“Help, HELP,”

It was the voice again.

“Please, help me move this. I’m stuck.”

Is that what she had said? At the moment, my mind had gone blank. Now, disembodied, it seemed clear as day.

“Wait, stay please, help.”

I walk past the girl, not daring to look at her. I won’t let myself remember. I can’t. Her hands desperately reached for me as I pulled away from her once more.

“Come back, my leg is pinned, please.”

I keep pushing, head down. The stairs were so close.

“Please”

Don’t. There is nothing for you here.

“Please”

I froze once my hands hit the cold metal bar. All I have to do is push, and I would be free. That is the only thing that could make sense. This is my brain playing a trick on me after a bad day. That is all it is. Look, the air isn’t even real. None of this is real, it’s all your imagination.

So what would it hurt to look?

If it’s not real, why am I so afraid to look?

I press against the bar and swing open the door, only to find myself staring off the edge of my building.

I’m back in my apartment, watching the man jump. The chaos below unfolds on repeat, the same cars driving in a loop, people reappearing where they had previously been.

He jumps.

I jump this time. It is better than the alternative.

I’m looking out from the room once more.

Just wait here until you wake up. That is all you need to do. You can wait this out like any other nightmare. It’s vivid, sure, but if it’s a dream, you can influence it. That’s right, it’s my imagination.

None of this is happening. Maybe it didn’t happen in the first place.

He jumps.

The screaming in the hallway gets louder. It’s not muffled, but clearer than if it were my own screams. If she kept getting louder, this whole building would come down.

“Wake up,” I say aloud, as if bartering with my own subconscious.

Screaming mixes with the sound of the alarms, beeping endlessly from somewhere below, creeping ever closer as their sound crescendoed.

I try to jump once more, only to run into nothing. The outside no longer existed, swallowed by the screams. There was only one way out.

Slowly, I opened the door to the hallway, its dim light was much more vibrant than it had originally felt. Steadily, I walked toward the screaming.

She doesn’t look up at me as I approach, instead facing the stairs I had left. Repeatedly yelling the same plea, looping like those I had seen below.

“Please!”

“Don’t leave me!”

“Oh god, please!”

I’d heard all of it, yet done nothing. I looked at the rubble she was stuck under, but couldn’t make it out. The details of my dream focused on the person screaming for help.

It was best not to know.

I walk past once more and turn, looking at the face of the person I had left behind. It was the first person I’d seen in months, so of course my brain would have remembered the moment I saw her again.

Her piercing blue eyes plead with me, vibrant even in the terrible lighting. She repeats her last plea over and over.

“Why won’t you help me?”