Daze

The world went quiet, too quiet. I rise from my bed, my head feels like someone is walking around on my brain and kicking every once in a while. I stumble to the bathroom and open the medicine cabinet. It’s empty. Not so much as a Q-tip. I shut it and back out of the bathroom and pull open the door to the hall.

There is nothing there. Literally nothing at all. Just a gray-white fog. No floor, no ceiling, no walls. I turn to look at the rest of the room. The walls are there but not much else. All the clothing is gone. At least the walls are there. I should look out the window.

I walk over to the window and look out.

Outside there is a … well my feet and legs.

“Mr. Hicks? Mr. Hicks are you back with us?” a polite, feminine voice asks.

I mumble something as I attempt to focus on my surroundings. I am in a bed. A hospital bed. I close my eyes and I am surrounded by cubes. All of them brown except two, which are blue. One is at the foot of my bed and one to my right. I open my eyes.

“You are cubes!” I say. Did that come out of me?

“HA! I’ve never been called that before,” says the anesthesiologist standing at my right elbow.

“Me either!” a female nurse laughs.

“Ah, yeah. What … oh, cardio-version. So I am back to normal?”

“Yes, arrhythmia all cleared up.”

“How do you feel?” my wife asks. I didn’t see her before.

“High as kite. No pain,” I answer.

“Good. You were laughing like a loon a little bit ago.”

“I don’t remember that at all.”