Shall we dive into our new monthly challenge? Here is my first 20-minute free write prompted by a line from a book.
“I woke up lying naked in my own bed.” The Samurai’s Garden, by Gail Tsukiyama, p. 53.
* * *
I woke up lying naked in my own bed. Well, almost naked. Pretty stripped down. Not dripping with sweat, as I had been earlier in the week, but chalky, covered in a salty frost bloom that was the remembrance of past drenchings. I stared at the ceiling. The same black drywall nail the paint had flaked off long ago stared down at me like a single star in a photo-negative sky. Mustering the energy from who knew where, I grasped a steepled paperback half-nestled beneath the wrinkled sheets and flung it at the nail. The book crashed down again and I had to roll away to avoid it, covering my face with the palms of my hands.
Imagine living your life in a prison cell, I thought. Even a spacious one like this, painted some sunlight-catching Sherwin Williams shade called “fawn” or “buttered bread.” Even one with a four-poster bed and 800-thread-count Egyptian cotton sheets. Even one with a flat-screen TV tucked elegantly into a framed white bead-board recess in the wall. Even one with light-blocking curtains and central air. In the end, no matter how well-appointed the cell, you wanted to leave. And you couldn’t.
I had been lying in that bed for the better part of two weeks. Criminals on TV received sentences of 30 years to life. I wondered how they managed it. Perhaps, if asked, they would tell you the first two weeks are the hardest. After that, you find God. Or you lose him forever. You come to terms with things.
Do the electrical impulses in the brain that signal a desire to be free eventually stop firing, I wondered. Do they sizzle like a licked-finger-pinched match? Or do they just lie dormant, like a blossomless orchid, dry and forgotten on a windowsill but with creeping air roots still blindly plumbing the space all around for nourishment?
I wasn’t going to find out. Nelson had spoken with the doctor, called ahead to check the emergency room wait times. I was going to the hospital. It was Christmas Eve.