I hadn’t given much thought to what it would feel like to be dead, other than what I had longed for—blissful oblivion.
That wasn’t what I felt as my body was floating, freefalling through nothing.
Except…
There.
I heard something.
A voice.
I couldn’t understand it, but it calmed me. Forced me to focus on finding my limbs, wiggling my fingers and toes.
A sudden heaviness tugged at my hand, pulling me towards a blinding light that was bleeding into the darkness surrounding me.
“Can you hear me, baby?”
My heartbeat was loud in my ears. Fast. Strong. Still beating.
Alive.
“You’re safe. I’m here.”
Enoch.
His hand gently squeezed mine and I pushed with the last of my effort to force my eyelids open. It took me a moment to get my vision to focus, the lights too bright above my head, but I realized I was staring at a whiteboard. A clock on the wall above it.
I couldn’t read the whiteboard from this distance; everything was blurry still. What I thought had been my heartbeat in my ears, was actually an electronic beeping coming from my left.
“Baby?” A hand cradled my face, and I slowly turned my head.
Enoch.
His facial hair was the longest I’d ever seen it. It covered up the dimple on his cheek as he smiled at me.
“Hi,” he breathed.
His browns eyes turned glassy with unshed tears, and his thumb stroked my cheekbone.
Why is he crying?
I opened my mouth to talk but there was something in my throat. My hand went to my face, but Enoch grabbed it.
“It’s okay. It’s just a tube.”
An overwhelming nausea had sweat breaking out on the back of my neck and I tried to swallow, but I could feel the tube, and it only increased the nausea.
I gagged.
“Shit,” Enoch abruptly pulled something from the wall and a bag was under my chin.
The action of vomiting sent a dull throb across my back and shoulders. I spit out of the bitter taste in my mouth and leaned back into my pillow, trying to breathe slowly but I could still feel the tube in my nose, and it hurt.
“Can we get a nurse in here?”
I watched as Enoch held some sort of remote looking thing to his face as he spoke.
“What’s the problem,” a staticky voice replied.
