Awake by Ashley Tunnell

Awake by Ashley Tunnell

Her name is Rose, and there are no thorns guarding the heart that she wears proudly on her sleeve. She has been the nurse on duty during each of my prior visits, and she is my nurse today, too. During each visit, she greets me like I am a long lost relative. She is a southern woman, perhaps old enough to have invented cornbread, grits, or placing the letter “H” in front of the letter “W” when she spoke. The room we are in is sterile, and it smells of rubbing alcohol and bleach. The dichotomy between the uncontaminated room and the thoughts that pollute my mind is palpable. I fiddle with my IV tube as I listen to Rose speak. There is something calming about her voice.

“I hate that ya’ll had to get a hotel,” she says. “I’d put ya up at my place if’n we weren’t in the middle of a pandemic.”

The unorthodox invite takes me by surprise.

“We really don’t mind,” I say. “I would have hated to put you out.”

“Not putting me out at all!” says Rose. “You’re the ones who drove all this way.”

The surgeon comes into the room. He is holding a mask in front of his nose and mouth.

“You about ready to get this show on the road, kiddo?” he says.

I am far from a child, yet in this moment, I feel like a child. I am terrified, and I cling to the thin blanket like it is a teddy bear--or a lifeline. The hospital gown is sticking to my back.

“It’s so hot in here,” I say. “Why am I shivering?”

Rose’s eyes dart to the machine monitoring my heart rate, and at that moment, it is steadily increasing.

“Let’s go ahead and push some Ativan,” says the surgeon.

“Rose,” I say. “I’m scared.”

“Nothing to be scared of, honey,” she says. “You’re just going to take a little nap, and when you wake up, this’ll all be over.”

“What if I don’t wake up,” I say. “You have to make sure I wake up. Please, Rose. I have a daughter.”

“Don’t even think like that,” says Rose. “You’re just going to count back from ten with me. I promise you’ll be video calling with her before you even get down to eight.”

“But what if-” I start to say.

“None of that,” says Rose. “Come on, now. Ten.”

Rose looks at me expectantly.

“Nine,” I say.

Eight

I am freezing. Heavy pressure is forcing me further into a snowy avalanche and burying me. Perhaps it is pushing me deeper into the darkest, coldest part of the ocean. I hear a steady beeping, and I notice it is keeping time with music. It is classical. Vivaldi, I think. Maybe, if there is music here, I can suffer this cold, wintry grave. I open my eyes and find myself not at the bottom of an ocean nor buried under an avalanche but sitting at a table in a restaurant. It is fancy--the sort of place where I would only eat on special occasions. The table is adorned with pristine white tablecloths and silver trays. The surgeon sits across from me.

“This thing is completely shredded,” he says. “Take it.”

Something wispy and dark red passes by my field of vision and plops wetly onto a silver platter. I watch as our waiter vanishes with a metallic clatter.

“What is going on?” I ask.

“She’s fighting her tube,” says the surgeon.

“What tube? Where are we?” I reply.

“I got vocal cord movement,” the surgeon says. “I need her put back under, now, or I am going to end up cutting her vocal cords.”

The surgeon sounds irate. I feel guilty and intrusive—the uninvited guest crashing a fancy dinner party.

“I’m sorry,” I say.

“Put her back under, now,” says the surgeon.

“Working on it, doctor,” the waiter says as he refills my wine glass.

“No,” I say. “I don’t want any more.”

I try to lift my hand to cover my glass, but I am unable to move. The steady beeping accelerates.

“Hey,” says a waitress.

It is not a waitress. It is Rose. I can see her nametag as she moves into my line of sight. The fluorescent lighting of the restaurant frames her head like a halo.

“You’re fine,” she says. “This ain’t real. You’re dreaming.”

I am fighting the heaviness in my eyelids, as a blur that smells like latex passes over my face.

“Why are you doing that to her hair, Rose?” says the surgeon. “She can’t feel it.”

“Because the poor thing looks terrified,” Rose says.

“She’ll be fine,” the surgeon says. “She won’t remember this.”

Seven

Blood Mountain is alive as I navigate its sharp twists and turns. The flowers are in full bloom, and the trees are verdant green and heavy with dew. The burning in my throat and the thick layer of pollen coagulating in the corners of my windshield make me wonder if I remembered to take my allergy medicine before leaving home this morning. My phone rings, and I take a moment to wonder how I have a signal before answering.

“Hey! Can you hear me?”

It is my husband.

“I can hear you,” I say. “What’s up?”

“Oh, wow,” he says. “She is really out of it.”

“Her vitals look good,” a voice I do not recognize says. “She’s just taking a while to wake up.”

“No, I’m awake,” I say. “I can hear you. Can you hear me?”

“Her calcium keeps dropping,” says the voice. “We need to keep her overnight.”

“Okay, what room are we staying in,” my husband says.

“I’m sorry. You won’t be able to stay with her,” says the voice. “Pandemic restrictions.”

“What do you mean, I can’t stay with her?” says my husband.

He sounds irritated and worried.

“It’s fine. It’ll be okay,” I say. “I hear a baby. Whose baby is crying?”

My husband’s next words are muffled, and my phone beeps and dies. Vivaldi plays through my car’s radio, and I reach for the bassinet beside my bed.

Six

The sun sits at the highest point in the sky and watches as the tide washes the coast with seafoam. My shoulders are stinging, and I wonder if I am wearing enough sunscreen. I can smell the barbeque from the grills at the center of the island, and Vivaldi plays softly from the speakers set up beneath the tiki torches. The sand burns my feet as I approach the waves gently lapping the shore. The water is cool and refreshing, and I can taste the salt on my lips. The sounds of the island fade as I swim farther out to sea. I am floating lazily above colorful schools of fish chasing each other. I have never seen water this clear.

A glint on the ocean floor reflects the sunlight and catches my attention. Taking a deep breath, I dive beneath the surface. As the ocean floor rapidly rises to meet me, I hear a voice.

“Calcium levels are dropping.”

The voice is muffled by the water, and it is not one I recognize. It sounds close enough that I stop swimming for a moment. I twist my body in the water, expecting to see someone swimming nearby; however, there is no one else here. I am alone.

“Her oxygen is still low,” says the voice. “Blood pressure is holding steady.”

There are lights above and below me now, and I can no longer tell which one is the sun.

“I need to get her tube out,” says the voice.

“Hello?” I say.

A cloud of air bubbles billow in front of me. Some rise, and some fall. I do not know which to follow to the surface. My heart beats rapidly in my chest as my lungs fight against a natural urge to draw a breath. The ocean pulls me deeper into its warm embrace, and I attempt to relax my body and float. I am uneasy as I discover that I am already floating, yet I am neither rising nor sinking. My body is weightless as it moves through the still, black waters on an invisible current.

Five

The woods are weeping scarlet and orange. Appalachia is on fire this time of year, but I notice none of it. I am fifteen and feigning apathy as my English teacher introduces the class to Shakespeare. The classroom is warmer than I like, but the familiar smells of pencil shavings and books are comforting. Music is playing softly in an old CD player on the teacher’s desk at the front of the classroom. Vivaldi, again.

“Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow! Creeps in this petty pace from day to day, to the last syllable of recorded time. All our yesterdays are lighted fools. The way to dusty death.”

She is theatrical, and her enthusiasm is infectious. I lean forward in my seat despite a passion for classic literature being a high school social faux pas.

“We’re such things as dreams are made of, and our little lives are rounded with a sleep,” she says.

I am too engrossed to take notes, and I wonder what part of this will be on the test. I do not like speaking in front of people, and I hope the English teacher, who has a flair for the dramatic, does not make us present a monologue in lieu of an end-of-year exam.

“But it is not time for you to sleep,” she says.

She looks at me, and I meet her gaze. I realize I am not a timid high school student falling in love with Shakespeare. I am an adult. I have a family and a career. I pay taxes and argue with insurance companies. Yet, I am unnerved as my old high school English teacher considers me with the same half smile that she would wear while she was waiting on a student to arrive at the correct answer to a question. I do not know the question, but I think I know the answer. My stomach rests uncomfortably against my desk. I have outgrown this classroom. I have outgrown this memory.

“Where am I?” I ask.

“You need to wake up,” she says.

She claps her hand together in front of her, and my eyes snap open.

Four

“Well, there she is,” says Rose.

She is untangling the mess of wires beside my bed. One of the remotes clacks against the railing on the bed. It sounds like a pair of hands clapping together.

“These dang things get all tangled—hey!” Rose says. “You need to keep that on. That’s your oxygen.”

I try to speak, but I am unable to force the words out around the oxygen mask and through the pain in my throat. Fortunately, Rose seems to understand.

“You just came through surgery,” she says. “You’re fine, but we need to keep you because of your calcium levels.”

“I heard a baby crying,” I say.

My voice sounds weak and raspy. I gratefully accept the ice pack Rose gives me and press it against my neck.

“You sure did,” says Rose. “We can’t go to the post op floor or the ICU. There are too many pandemic patients there. You get to recover in labor and delivery.”

Rose examines one of the machines I am hooked up to and taps the keys on the keyboard of her computer. She hands me a remote with a red cross prominently visible among the blue numbers and gray arrows.

“This is your call button,” she says. “Now, I want you to use your call button. No being stubborn and thinking you can do things on your own.”

“Yes, ma’am,” I say.

A look of understanding passes between the two of us. I understand what she is saying, and she understands that she will be picking me up from the floor later that evening when I try to take myself to the restroom.

“Rose,” I say.

She stops, one hand resting on the doorframe of my recovery room.

“Yeah, hon,” she says.

“Did they get it all?” I ask.

“They did,” she says. “You rest, now.”

Rose leaves the room, and I try to take in the rest of my surroundings before I surrender to the exhaustion threatening to overtake me. There is a glass vase full of flowers on the table next to my bed. I reach over and touch the papery pink and orange petals. They are fake. Sometimes, I think the world is full of fake flowers. Thankfully, the glass vases make it quite easy to spot the roses. There are plenty of those, too.

Ashley Tunnell is a writer from Blairsville, GA. She is completing a bachelor’s degree with a teaching pathway in English from the University of North Georgia, and she intends to pursue her master’s degree in the same field with a concentration in creative writing. Her work has been published in UNG’s literary magazine as well as the Southern Literary Festival’s anthology of poetry and short stories. When she is not reading, writing, or studying, Ashley enjoys spending time with her family and singing in her local community choir.