In Morpheus' Embrace

by Andy Finch

  Amnesia swims around his head. His brain threatens to shut off again as the pulse in his shoulder spikes an angry pain. He doesn’t dare move. Instead, his eyes gaze around, spying a whiteboard in front of his bed, hanging against the bland walls. Draven Williams, big red letters read on the top, Duramorph, Doryx - 120 mg, reads the smaller words underneath. His eyes roll in the back of his head for a moment before they release. A man stands at the pastel purplish lavender curtain Draven forgot to look for. The blue scrubs paint him as the nurse working on Draven, but his brain still refuses to work properly to make this conclusion. He still wants to hope that this was a dream.

  The nurse wears a smile on his chiseled face. His skin was the marble that the most talented sculptures had used. He was Greek—at least, Draven assumed so by the way the man’s nose refuses to curve. The man walks over to the IV bag hanging in a glass cage, and the olive tint to his skin. Draven’s eyes follow his careful footsteps, but he is sure to squint his eyes to give the appearance of sleeping.

  The nurse has a dirty gold glow weaved into the tufts of his hair. His curls were tied taut in a bun, they writhe to be freed. Draven wonders how long they’d flow. He would like to think that they touched his shoulders, some locks overflowing and tickling the skin on his back.

  “Who are you?” Draven suddenly says, his guise of sleep no longer present. He isn’t sure where he found the strength to speak. As soon as the words leave his lips, the crash following the past adrenaline comes cascading upon his body. It hurts to even think of words at this point.

  The nurse’s forehead wrinkles. A place where wonder lives. The crease melds back into the dough of his skin, but he refrains from saying anything. Instead, his attention goes back to the bag in the cage. A set of keys jingle in his fingers as he turns the lock. With practiced movements, he removes the bag from the cage and adds a new one. The bag faces Draven now. Morphine sulfate.

  The throb in his shoulder dulls as the liquid drips with a formed pace into his veins. His body gave no resistance. It didn’t have the strength to object. An orgasmic wave threatens his body. Draven’s lips hang in a silent o as the nurse directs his attention to the monitor beside him, opposite of the IV. If he had the strength, he would allow himself to curl in a sensuous bow, but he doesnt. So he lays, trapped in the hospital bed, hooked up to monitors and IV's, wearing only a cheap medical gown to cover his manhood.

  There was still an ache somewhere in his body. He’s forgotten where it was, how it got there, and all the questions in between. He still feels it, pulsing, pulsing, pulsing. But the drug now flowing in his system tricks him into not caring. It freed up space in his mind, allowing his brain to flood his system with even more feel-good chemicals. A slump of his shoulders signals his release. The nurse locks the cage. The silent thud almost stirs Draven from the come-up of his opiate-induced high.

  “You should go back to bed,” the nurse says, his voice deep and thoughtful, sinking in a Mediterranean accent. There was an absence in him. The way his words soak into the walls, hitting every target except Draven. The blue of his eyes fogs up, creating a misty color straight from a dream. Draven thinks the color suits him well, “it will do you some good.”

  The beep on the monitor evades him. The whole room seems distant. Dark and unmoving. Recorded at a speed below what reality was playing in. It was like he was watching a movie, he was not here. Draven half expects a monster to lurk in the shadows, but he couldn’t care if it were true. Maybe he was dreaming. Heavy eyes blanket and enforce the artificial sleepiness that came with the drug. Then the world was silent and black as dreams bombarded Draven’s sleep ridden brain. But his head, unrested with too many questions, begins to fight off the effects of the drugs.

  It takes concentration to force his eyelids to open back up to the blinding light. Once again, they scream bloody murder to his brain, but the cloudiness surrounding him blocks out their cries for help. He swallows the blinding lights, digesting them. Eating the lights so that his brain can better piece together the colors and lines that work together to form the stage of the room.

  “What happened to me?” Draven asks. His mouth, eyes, and chest were the only things that moved. Everything else either hurt or refused to care. Too much to even consider moving. Or maybe it was the morphine finally settling that coaxed his extremities to stay sleepily in their own sinewy homes. He liked it. The immobility. The heavy feeling in his fingers and toes. It would be perfect if it weren’t for the itch beginning to prick all over his skin near the IV’s needle. It would be even better, too, if they shut up that nagging beep still coming from the monitor by his side of the bed.

  Where was Geneva? He asks himself, another piece to his past was obtained through the hands of his mind. She was there, in the latest memory before the hospital. She would be here, she should be here. Unless you were really fucked, Draven.

  “You got in a pretty bad accident,” the nurse says. He hovers over Draven; his skinny fingers pull back the hospital gown draped over him. He removes the bandage covering his shoulder, blood and gore pull back with it. No emotions existed on his features. No happiness, no grossed-out-weirdness from the bile seeping from the wound. Draven tries to study the hollowness in his eyes, “You gave the EMTs a bit of trouble, too. You don’t remember?”

  The memories continue to dance just outside of his grasp. He thinks he remembers; he thinks he knows what happened next, but the nostalgia and reminiscences laugh and stick their tongues out as he tries to catch them. His recollection is void. Empty. A weird state of mind, full of nothing and everything all at once. Where did he go wrong? What put him here, in this too-thin, too-cheap bed that accentuates his lankiness? An accident, he thinks, was he driving? Was he robbed? The coos of morphine continue to enthrall him, begging for him to drift away and forget the stress still plaguing him.

  The nurse rubs an ointment on the wound before dressing it back up in fresh cotton bandaging. It sizzles with the beginnings of infection, but the morphine does its job and keeps the pain at bay, “No,” Draven says, “I don’t know where I am,” he’s coasting along somewhere in a dream, he thinks. Caught between the doors of life and death. That sweet place where reality was forgotten, “Where am I? Can I go home?”

  Home. Ian would take you home, right? He’s coming to pick you up, right? Right? A panic somehow weasels in through the rummage of morphine. Ian, his boyfriend, was probably there in the common area barking at the staff to let him in. He had to be. He must be.

  “You’re at University Medical Center,” The nurse puts the bandage on just too tight, pulling the skin in directions it did not want to go, “Our EMT boys said this was where you wanted to be taken,” satisfied with his handiwork, the no-named nurse steps away from the hospital bed. The gloves on his hands (which Draven had no noticed yet) come off clean in the nearby biohazard bin hanging from the wall. A faint ruby color covers the tips where the fingers would go, “It’s going to be awhile, you know, before you can go home.”

  Draven tries to paint a picture of the inside of an ambulance. In his head, the world is dark and cruel. Streetlights pour in through the tinted windows of the ambulance. Maybe there would be a faint glow of moonlight or stars. The more logical, down to earth, side of him tries to argue that it was broad daylight when he went under. He doesn’t listen to that. For a moment, he wonders if he would be shown on Nightwatch. Again, the civil part of him tries to speak reason. It squashes what he would consider his five minutes of fame. For now, he gleams at his imaginary cameo on the television show.

  “Where did I come from?” Draven asks, his eyes stay shut now, still casting gentle strokes of imagination. He’s barred the notions of home from his memories. He’s tongue-tied with his own thoughts. Even the words he just said come out jumbled and loose. Held together by a broken ligament of wobbly thoughts. If Geneva was here—which he was sure she wasn’t. The hospital room would be bustling with her hot-coil temper—she’d laugh at how stupid he had sounded. Point out the slu
r in his speech. Or maybe she wouldn’t say anything.

  I wish someone was here. Someone I fucking knew.

  “I… don’t know the answer to that question,” The nurse stifles a laugh coated with nervousness, “I just handle the nitty-gritty. Cleaning, writing down your vitals, pumping you with pills. Does it look like I’ve got time to know the logistics?” The insincerity returns to his eyes. Draven would almost consider that he was speaking with a living statue, “I know you probably came from your mother’s womb, eh?” He waits to see if Draven would laugh.

  He doesn’t.

  The nurse cocks a brow, his smile turns into a smirk. Draven wants to laugh, truly, but his chest hurts, but not from any physical strains. An imaginary pain. An imaginary fear. He smiles, though, the wrinkles by his eyes crumble together. The grin fades away, soon, as the morphine continues to seduce him into sleep. One last time, he tries to fight it. He wins, granting him just enough time to say:

  “Am I dreaming?”

  The nurse apologetically smiles down at him. Then he turns and begins to walk to the door, flicking the lights and covering the room with the gentlest blanket of darkness. Draven can’t see the sympathy shown in his eyes as he leaves, or the nod he gives in response. The door shuts with a silent click. Draven was alone in the nothingness, pulled towards the dreamland in his head. There, he does not need to worry about the accident unfolding hours ago, or his friends’ worries that would soon drive out the creep of death that sat in his ICU room.

  He was free.

  2

  Right there, right there.

  He’s dreaming, but he does not know it yet. The space of mind where he was had Ian and their bedroom, cloaked in velvets that did not cause his fingers to swell. Ian’s wavy, white-boy curly hair was grasped by Draven’s thick calloused fingers. It was the only thing keeping his tethered to the world in his dreams.

  Come on, come on.

  Ian peppers kisses along the ebony of his skin. The trail touches his stomach before continuing down. He stops, the cloudiness of his eyes stares up at Draven, then he continues with his barrage of lips. It touches the place that would flood his body with feel-good chemicals. It stops again. Ian is teasing him in this dream. Draven hates it.

  “You need to wake up.”

  It wasn’t Ian’s voice, no. Upon closer inspection and the golden tufts of Greek curls intertwined in his fingers, Draven realizes that it was never Ian. Whatever pleasure had built up in the place where butterflies live in his stomach was gone now. Replaced with disgust and shame as he realizes it was his nurse leaving kisses on his skin.

  “Wake up, Dray,” now it was Ian. The last few hints of the nurse wash away, leaving only Ian and his sharp-edged face near the split between legs and torso of Draven’s body.

  He wakes up with a groan, wishing the dream would continue with Ian.

  “Wakey, wakey,” Geneva’s honey voice interrupts Draven’s dream. Her fingernails grace the sensitive skin of his inner arm, “Breakfast is here, doofus.”

  The hospital is frozen with the vice of fear, pain, and the overlooking shadows of death that hang in every crevice. It was the pain hiding in these walls that shrouded the building with quiet stillness. The only excitements came from the emergency departments and L&D wards. The ICU’s were the worst. Deprived of feelings other than pity. Silent. Anguished. Draven can see it in the eyes of the nurses who come around. The dark circles bring memories of patients into the room, their suffering grows like mold in the forgotten corners. He hates it here. The loneliness here is only missed when he is alone. The silence of an empty room calls forth the bad memories lurking in the shadows.

  He opens his eyes, a tray featuring clear soup, fruity colored gelatin, and tea finds itself on the desk right beside his bed. A wave of nausea flushes his body, he waves off the food, “Not hungry,” he says, “You can have it.”

  Like she’ll even eat it, anyways.

  “Does it look like I want any of that?” Geneva rolls her eyes. Her hands grasp the plastic cup full of gelatin. It was the only appealing thing on that tray.

  The smell of alcohol has dissipated since he first woke. That beeping, though, hasn’t stopped. It sticks its tongue out at his nausea-induced concentration. A thought comes to mind, now. The man, the nurse. He would have something for nausea. Or maybe Draven craved to see him again. He was the sun. Draven would not—could not—look up at him, but he drank the golden honey the nurse gave off. When he was gone, Draven would weep; but when he was here, Draven wouldn’t even notice. He was the sun. Forgotten in all the best ways.

  “Where is… he?” His voice is a shell of what it normally was. Cracked, broken. It was brittle in the ventilated air. His finger digs into his temple. A headache grew behind the walls of his skull. Words try to form in the, usually, endless pit of his vocal cord, but today they were silent. Melancholy no longer clings to the shadows here. Draven hates it.

  “Ian is trying to get here as fast as he can.”

  Ian. The name sits in the front of Draven’s head for a moment. Then another. Fuck, he thinks, Ian is going to kill me. Ian was, and for as long as Geneva can remember, Draven’s live-in partner. A short white boy who adored Draven with every fiber of his little body. They were opposites, really. Draven was a photographer who lived for creativity, and Ian was a contractor who liked to keep things set in stone. Draven was large, plump, and black; Ian was short, skinny, and the whitest of white.

  Draven can already hear his worried ramble about how reckless he was. The wave of grief and worry would hit first before Ian steps in. Then his rosy cheeks, flooded with tears, would illuminate the room like a grease fire. His untempered personality would shine through the floodgates of his insecurities. Then, maybe, he’d reach down and kiss Draven. Or his bone-thin fingers would tangle themselves in Draven’s wiry hair.

  Or maybe we could reenact that dream.

  Thinking of the dream sparks a swirl of resentment cast towards Geneva, though she would not know it. Now he sits, unfulfilled and hurting in this damned hospital bed that did everything it could to emphasize the aches and pains living in his system. He softens, eventually, only now noticing he has missed the cue to respond. Geneva says nothing, her lips drawn in a flat line.

  “He’s mad, huh?” Draven lets a chuckle rumble in his throat. Ian was the epitome of worry and stress. Things in his life, things Draven would never hear of, have shaped him into a worrywart. It was better than not caring, Draven had decided many months ago, “I didn’t… mean him. I meant the… the… the nurse.”

  “Miss Olivia?” Geneva cocks a brow, “She’s on break—”

  Miss Olivia came around after the curly-haired, statuesque nurse had left. She tumbled with the IV bag, checked the bandage, recorded some vitals, then left. She spoke no words upon her entry, and none when she left either. Draven likes her, but not as much as the no-named nurse.

  “No, no. It was… It was a guy. He had curly hair and—”

  He tries to piece together what he looked like, but he already seems like a distance memory. The nurse’s face becomes blotched in his remembrance. Only the well-proportioned chisel on his skin was clear enough for him to remember. His forehead creases as he tries to sew the little bits of information still lingering in his brain. It was no use. The fog of amnesia creeps in from the bayou.

  “Dray, what are you talking about?” Geneva hesitates almost, but her hesitation evaporates as she swallows as much gelatin as she can in one slurp. Her black brow knits together in a practiced fashion. She turns her eye away from Draven only for a second to examine the other not-so-delicacies on the tray.

  “There was a guy. He changed the IV.”

  “You’ve been asleep since yesterday,” Geneva confirms. Her face further twists with confusion, “I think maybe you were just dreaming.”

  Dreaming? He shakes his head mostly to himself. His eyes cast askew towards the prison of morphine hanging beside the saline drip, the IV bag stares back at him. The black
letters detailing the drug held in that cell tickle his curiosity. No, it had to be true. He huffs, allowing the air to puff out through his nose. If only that nurse would step back in.

  “They gave you some strong shit,” she points to the imprisoned IV, unmoving in the glass cage, “Think that’s why you’re a little brain dead.”

  She had no idea about the ecstasy coming through that glass cage and leaking into his veins. She could not feel the ease of mind that poured in like a Trojan horse. Nor could she see the absent wrinkles of stress, they've packed and moved out. She wouldn’t notice any change, except for the fact that he was stuck here in the hospital when he should be downtown, working in the newsroom. Today, he would’ve given his boss the photo of the mural. Today, he would have to tell Geneva that her piece was “liberal garbage.”

  She snorts, her curly hair dangles in front of her face. A quick flick of her fingers brings the strand back behind her ear.

  A knock at the door vibrates the room. Both sets of eyes go to stare at the wooden frame. It opens with a creak. There, in the doorway, stands Ian. His naturally rosy cheeks lay stained by the rivers that leak from his eyes. Just as expected, Draven tells himself in his I-told-you-so voice in his head. Ian mumbles incoherently under his breath as his legs carry him to Draven’s bedside, the blabbering chants for the sorrow and pain hiding from Geneva to come forth and embrace. Draven wishes Ian would get a grip on himself. The faucet in his eyes turns on again and the river floods. Geneva grabs his shoulder before he can touch Draven.