Chasing Sunshine

It had been six days. Six days since Ruth had submerged into the routine of the hospital. With the lines of nurses boomeranging down the hall every few moments. She spent the first few days watching them go back and forth, back and forth. Until they became unnoticable in their very form. Just flashes through time, like the ticking of the clock. 

She grew to coexist with the film of age over her eyes, as the many before her, void of sunshine. Of life, movement, and hope. Everything bright turned grey. Everything she once wanted, she no longer cared for. But, when did it start? Surely it wasn’t when she was first whisked into this hospital just 6 days ago. No, she had gotten too used to blurring the world around her, to sinking into her sheets every night, staring at the ceiling until there wasn’t much to stare at anymore. Till nothing became her new comfort. Till silence became her friend. 

It was her favorite pastime, sinking into her bed. Watching her consciousness slip away until all she saw was a version of herself she had once been. Younger, perkier, taller, even. She would just stare at her reflection, a portal through time, until she felt a sense of dread or content. It didn’t matter much in the end. 

This time however, as she let her consciousness wrap itself into its prison web, she found something new–something strange. A hallway awaited her, with rows and rows of fluorescent lights. She could still smell the hospital around her, which gave her an assurance to trust that her shadow was reserving her molded form in the bed. With a stale breath, she let herself lift her legs up, finding smoothed, tight legs that rather sprang up to the task. It had been ages since her body was so…willing. Since she actually transformed to this self, instead of watching from a distance. With a curiosity, an interest that was so unfamiliar to her, she let herself sink into the yellow hospital walls, oozing between the walls of reality. 

She was in another room, much like the lobby of the hospital where she was rushed in. Except for one thing, it was open. She could identify the location with her eyes closed, but without the swarms of people rushing in, it was hardly recognizable. She saw the welcome desk, darkened in the shadows. Why was she here? She left this question behind, like a whisper half heard in the wind. She descended down the hospital stairs to the basement.. She had a feeling that both nobody and everybody was here. Just not here right now. Hadn’t they all dreamed of places that seemed so nostalgically distant?

A window was painted with meek rays of light peeking through. The color where you can’t tell night from day. Their source connected to another room’s blinds, and anothers, and anothers. She opened her eyes and closed them, transporting to another room with each blink, each nearly identical to the one before, yet there was always something different. Something that demanded attention, although she couldn’t quite put her finger on it. 

The sound of a broken lullaby crept from behind her. A song she remembered but never sang: "You Are My Sunshine." It echoed across the room with a pang of sadness that seemed fitting. Like the room was meant to hold it. She returned to the hallway, desperate to return to the familiar hospital decorum. 

The tiles obeyed the familiar pattern for a moment, giving into her pleads for darkness and the blinding fluorescent lights that shined upon her shoes. 

She heard laughter bounce across the hospital highway. She had to keep going–fast. Whatever it was, it was following her. Ready to infect her with its disease. She had to keep going–faster, faster!

She sped between blocks and ball pits, running by as each and every toy watched her pass. With eyes–thousands and thousands of tiny little eyes. Begging her to remember, no, watching her start to remember and flee from it. Flee from it all! Isn’t that what this place was designed for? Room, after room, after room, she passed them all, finding the perfect escape route. No matter where she turned, there was always a way out, if only life was this simple! Door after door, hole after hole, tunnel after tunnel. Ruth was the rabbit that was running through time, defying all space and matter. This land was hers for the taking. 

She rested her hand on a hole that seemed different than before–as she peered down, the gray carpet turned dark purple and black and white striped. It was a jester design, showing its twists and turns with a bold confidence that made her nervous. She had to make a decision…would she go down? As she began to debate, she felt the humidity of the stale room on her neck. How long has it been since someone was down here? She looked around at the expansive, dimly lit room. That was, until she began to hear it. The nurses’ scared faces. The fear in their eyes. The beeping of the machine. 

She couldn’t handle it, oh she couldn’t bear it! She felt it coming to her, as if jumping on a trampoline, she leapt down the hole, plummeting deeper into her zombie. Letting her body take control over her mind, she found pleasure in the loss of control. In her submission to the realm of the unknown. She watched as her feet shuffled in front of her, falling down and down, leading her to another hallway, turning right and left and right and left. She was both back where she started and somewhere entirely new. 

Rectangle light–rectangle light–static. Static. She let the fuzz fill her ears and she leaned against the wall. Her shoes melted in too. Maybe she could be a wall too. Just standing here forever. Where nothing was old, or new. Dead or born again. Everything just remained. Stayed still. When did everything change? Or did it really? She was born here. She was sick here. She watched people sink here. She lost something here. Now here she was, too. 

What did she lose again? The question struck her as she finished her fall, landing with a bouncy thump. It stunk of disinfectant that pierced the nose. A bleach used to coat the cots. Cots–that was what she was laying on. She looked around the room, finding rows and rows and rows of cots. Lined up for nap time. She began to bounce across them, like a fish swimming, no flying through air, she was both in and out of her nature. Her movement burned the fear out of her body as she passed figure after figure, ghosts of her past that watched. Beasts that once kept her awake. Taunting her to be afraid. Her nose ached as it took in the smell of perfume. It smelled sweet and rotten, familiar, although its source haunted her every breath. She knew she was going to have to face it. Soon. 

“You have to remember her, or else you will disappear. You have to feel, Ruth.” 

She was pretending to sleep then, like she had been ever since. Pretending to rest. Pretending to move on. Pretending to be the same. She stumbled through the room, as darkened rainbow mats waved beneath her feet, rolling her to a childhood bedroom. It was the same yellow as her hands. Her feet. The lights. The walls. Her face. Was the sun also yellow? Or was it green? Or white? She didn’t really seem to remember or forget; it all felt so unimportant, when all she had to do was keep on walking. Her eyes adjusted to the darkness. This was the final place. The feeling was certain. 

She sunk slightly into the floor, each movement was sluggish, like running through a pool of molasses. She was on all fours, crawling through a tunnel with carvings of letters and numbers that made no sense at all. As she reached the end of the tunnel, she began to see a color that reminded her of the taste of cinnamon, sweet but dangerous on the tongue. 

The floor was up to her neck and she had already given up on trying to catch her breath. The walls were growing closer and the music was growing louder and she began to see a rip in the reality she had grown accustomed to knowing altogether.

Beep—Beep—Beep!

She went through door, after door. Perhaps she was searching for a friend. Or for herself, or her original destination. It meant all the same, as there was nothing here, nothing in the void. Yet there was everything to remember. She began to pick up her pace. She needed to run away from the song, she leapt into a rabbit hole, winding down a tunnel that sandwiched her thighs, squeezing her stomach–she was holding her breath….

Beep—beep—beep…

She was right back where she started. No, No, No! She ran to the rooms she met before, she’s been here before! 

“Please don’t take my…” She saw a hole in the wall, a piece of chipped paint began to peel down, like skin, exposing the body of the beast. Her insides started to scream, demanding her attention, demanding her agony. 

All that was left was the doctor’s counting– “Three! Two! One! Push!”

Ruth began sobbing as she stumbled into the hospital room again, this time seeing a frozen She climbed through the belly as her eyes adjusted to the room as doctors poked and prodded her body. Void of any life, despite what the machine screams. She saw her blood soaked body, frozen in grief. 

They were all frozen, like a sick game of dolls. Ruth rubbed her wrist, remembering the scratch of the paper bracelet. How she left it on for weeks after. When they took her sunshine away. She remembered now. The walls crashed all around her, but she remembered. A tornado was tearing apart her body, but she remembered. She remembered the storm that day. She remembered the screaming, the tears. The grey. How the baby sank in the sheets, quiet–without a sound. 

She stared at her thirty year old self, who despite being frozen, like a statue, the figure watched her, glaring through a fountain of tears. She ran away, hearing the wailing of her past. She wept and wept, her tears guiding the path down the flickering hallway. 

One, two, three, four…Ruth hopped across the stairs as she ran up the escalator, feeling her face peel back as she lost herself within the mall. She ran past broken down signs and stores with sales that mean nothing anymore. Just like everything will soon mean nothing at all. Her name. Her pain. Her baby. She went higher and higher, up the stairs and up the stairs. 

That’s when it hit her. This place was not empty. She passed by kitchen tables, Christmas trees, and nurseries that never got to hear a baby’s cooing, or Ruth’s lullabies. Blues and pink flashed past her eyes as she began to slow down. When the world finally let her mind catch up with the rest. She could make this place her own. A smile carved across her face. 

The final room. It was white. It was empty. With slow, cautious steps, Ruth found her place in the room, when suddenly she found it. Her baby. When she picked up its limbs, frozen in time, frozen with the reddish stain of labor, she hugged her tight to her breasts. That’s when the place began to speak to her. 

It whispered the images of every room she’s ever seen before–the hospital tiles, the rectangular lighting, the smell of cookies and cinnamon and alcoholic sprays. She felt the pain and joy, the emptiness and uncertainty. She felt everything and nothing all at once, wilting her into a broken figure, frozen in place, too. She belonged here. 

The sun peeked through the hospital blinds as the seventh day whisked through Ruth’s lungs. The machine let out its final groan as Ruth sank back to her secret room. Where she could find her secrets, her memories, and her past locked away, frozen. She was ready to join them. She was finally still.