litlinks 2020

A Separation of Mind and Body

by Asha Patterson, Daramalan College

They gave up months ago, forcing themselves into believing that I was only a shell, an empty husk of a person. A man encased in a tangle of plastic serpents and beeping monsters. Caught in a personal mental asylum, bars that appeared to warp and distort, solidifying at any attempt to grasp at reality. I was trapped, imprisoned in my mind, unable to speak, move or acknowledge the world around me. A conscience locked in a tomb of flesh and bone. A corpse with living eyes.

Slurred speech, dragging limbs and an all-encompassing numbness had pulled me into this paralysis. Ruptured veins, the precious elixir of life flowing meaninglessly through destroyed streets. My brain was gasping for air, withering away as the wiry carpet pressed into my cheek. Heavy boots and green hems, flashing lights and sterile air, a state of nonexistence.

“… a vegetative state, yes.”

“… devoid of mental consciousness and physical feeling…”

Fractured marbles of stormy water, the ocean itself spilling down her mottled cheeks. A crumpled frame shuddering over me, her raw pain swirling around the room, sweeping away the tubes and machines. My wife was breaking. She needn’t cry. I was right there.

“please wake up…”

“come back to us…”

As if stuck in a dream, a realm between wakefulness and sleep. Willing my muscles to move, my mouth to speak, a sign that there was still a soul behind the cold body and sickly sheen. A small squeeze of her hand, enough to restore hope. Enough to bring back colour into her face and energy into her veins.

“You ladies should come over for dinner at mine this weekend. Bring the kids over.”

“I wish I could, but I’m on call this weekend…”

The nurses would speak through me as if I were a pane of glass. Not a person but an eerie spirit, a distant memory of what once was. A bundle of bed sheets, as lifeless as threads of cotton. Painful pinches and rough handling, a pincushion, a rag doll. A man locked in his mind wasn’t worth expertise. A man ‘devoid of mental consciousness and physical feeling’ wasn’t worth professional care. Screams echoed inside my skull, seeking a way out into the unknown, bouncing off solid barriers, retelling the story of my hopelessness to the only ears that could hear.

“I know it’s an impossibly difficult situation, but we need to consider shutting off his life support…”

“…He’s shown no improvement in four months, it may be cruel to continue…”

Disassociating. My soul snapping free of its tomb, lifting out of a drugged haze. The body and mind separating, attached only by a dreamlike cord. I was looking down onto the bed where my frozen body lay, an unusually calming experience. The conscience was a strange place, to be locked in the body for months, ascending at the acceptance of death. The darting eyes and plastic organs, a cyborg of sorts, it wasn’t me. The alcoholic sting of sanitiser, painfully fluorescent lights and limp flowers had sucked all saturation from my being. Existence had become too painful.

My wife was clinging to my soulless body, waves of pain refracting in the air around us. Yearning for an altered reality, distraught over what she must do. She too could sense that I had moved on, sensed my aura of acceptance and calm. I was drifting, floating through the walls of actuality to escape this physical world. Passing through people like ghosts, hovering down grief-stricken hallways. Absorbing the atmosphere of the streets for a final time. Observing the network of people tangling together, humming as they kept the city alive. The connection between body and soul was guiding me, pulling me towards my final destination.

The heavy blanket of isolation was thrown over me at the sight of my home. Not nostalgia, nor bittersweet hurt but pure emptiness. Melancholy fog settling into the cracks in the floorboards, filling the space I once occupied. Marks I had left on the home already beginning to fade. The true implications of my situation settling into a dull ache. Loneliness coming to get its revenge for my ignorance. The lives of those I loved diverging from mine, fate writing a future without me.

The connection was tugging me, a warning. As I was pulled back through all I had known, the numbness sank further into my soul. A surreal sensation of both acceptance and alienation, so far removed from the human experience that I couldn’t distinguish between them. Hovering over the now crowded and claustrophobic scene, I watched as the room filled with salty tears. Looking into my own blank eyes, I wished things could have been different. The sword was unsheathed, the room reflected in its cool blade. With one slice, the connection severed, the silvery filaments dissolving away, and a single moment of peace before I was swallowed by the unknown.