Burn, Baby, Burn by Michael Seale (Chapter 23)
Chapter 23
My little buttercup
On the fifth day they, the team deemed to my care, allowed me to leave the hospital. It had been a painful and horrible experience. Not only had I endured the pain of the burn, but skin grafts and the odd psyche evaluation or ten. Doctors and nurses came and went in a steady flow. They changed the horrific bandages. Each time I felt as if it burned me new. Although the burn was healing, the pain was to leave. I suppose it was more the sensation of the burn, now not the actual burn. It felt as if I was constantly on fire. The meds they gave me were great, the pain was greater. The ever-burning throb that ebbed and flowed through each every finger drained my strength.
I hadn’t looked at my hand since it happened; I didn’t want to know how badly I had damaged myself. Everyone asks the same question. What had I been thinking? The thing is, I don’t remember it was as if I wasn’t there. As if someone else had taken the controls and forced me to grab hold of the white ash. I remember the fire dance and the flames of flowers floating in the wind. I remember the warmth that baked my chest and face. And then there was nothing, as if a force had banished me into the blackness.
No one understands this, or believes this. They, the doctors, think that I am crazy. They only repeat the question. What had I been thinking? Why had I done it?
I felt like screaming; it wasn’t me. I didn’t do it over and over, hoping someone might believe what I was telling them.
But I had done it. I don’t know why; I don’t know. As if I had no control of what I was doing. It was as if someone else had controlled me at that point.
***
My apartment is just one step away from being dreary. The sofa, a stained beige beast that I had bought secondhand, was comfortable enough, but today it didn’t offer me any sanctuary. I scanned my video collection. Nothing, I hadn’t watched less than fifty times already. I didn’t have cable, so I only got the five local channels. Nothing but news on three of them and the other two were boring.
The hand, as I called it, because it wasn’t my hand anymore, I didn’t seem to have control over it. Because well, let’s face it, no one in their right mind would reach into a grill that had been burning for the last four hours and try to grab a handful of white-hot ash. The hand still felt as if it was on fire. The pills they sent me home with were absolutely useless.
I needed to call work, to find out when I could come back. I needed to go back. Most of all, I needed the money, and I needed to make sure I was sane. Looking at my phone, I had unplugged it awhile back and never plugged it back in. I still wasn’t sure if I was ready for that.
I keep the curtains closed, mainly because of the neighbors, they always look in. But also, I am just lazy. I mean lazy. Today the sunshine outside was too much for me to bear. I didn’t want to know that there was an outside world. I wanted to wallow in my self-pity.
“Ah, fuck it.” I said to know no one. I plugged the phone in.
I hadn’t spoken to any of them from the restaurant since that night. Well actually, I speak to Kimber every day, but she won’t tell me anything that is going on there. That worries me.
“Verdura, this is Bill,” he had picked up on the fourth ring.
“Hey, Bill, it’s Mike.”
I could feel Bill holding something back. Every word was strained. I got the response I was most afraid of “we need to talk.” Everyone knows what that meant. It meant that he would fire me.
Slamming the phone down. What the fuck am I going to do, I wondered, no savings, barely money in my checking. I need this job. I needed to get my head straight. I needed a drink.
So, that’s what I did, I drank. The beer didn’t last long in the fridge, there were only three bottles, but the bottle of bourbon that I had gotten as a present helped me along. After the second beer I decided that a movie would be better than nothing, so I settled on something that I knew would at least make me smile, The Three Amigos, a classic.
The bourbon made my head spin. The pills lessened the throbbing. The combination of the two made it impossible to stand. Chevy played the piano and Steve danced.
I forgot the hand, forgot my job, forgot the hallucinations and forgot my past.
I forgot to unplug the phone.
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