I swim into consciousness slowly. The world shivers into focus: white light. A pale yellow curtain. Brown eyes. I begin to hear voices in the background and the impersonal beeping of the machine telling me I still have a heartbeat.

I can feel the tape pulling at the fine hairs where the plastic tubing enters my arm and the stiffness of the starched, white sheets folded across my chest. They are perfectly sqaure and unrumpled, as if no one is beneath them.

Brown eyes. His hand on my cheek, tentative and gentle, is the only thing that seems real.

I had nothing until I read this last one, and coupled with Steph's surgery one, (thank you Steph and Kristin!) made me realize I do have something to write about that has to do with someone lying down and someone standing up. I hope it works.

Resurrection

Let me close my eyes against this.

Murmuring sounds the call and response. A tugging--catch, release--parts my body from itself strapped to a crucifix beneath fluorescent sky. The instruments sound a faint tympanum and the congregants make bright chatter while I flinch.

There is someone holding my hand, vaguely felt through the buzzing of the puncture in my spine. Someone exhorts, "Look up! Look up! Let me see your eyes."

A baby body swings past my tilting vision and is gone, soundless. The punching begins. And ends, and I am made different, undone.

Let me close my eyes.

Oh Deena, that's beautiful.

Thanks, Kristin.

What I like best about these drabbles is that all of you are making me feel brave enough to write what I think without the filters I normally employ, trying to be safe and socially acceptable. It's something I've wanted to do for a long time and haven't been able to cut through the crap and do.

Oh, man, the medical memory drabbles you people are doing are so damned fine.

I'm not doing hospital drabbles. I'm tired of thinking about how often I stand by a bed with Hubby in it, attached to things that beep at me.

That was exquisitely powerful, Deena. I know what you mean about filters, and it's something I've always struggled with. Part of the reason I'm writing very commerical stuff, in fact. Which makes me sad when I think about it too much.

KristinT, I love "The world shivers into focus" and the machine being the thing that tells her she has a heartbeat. Oh, and the little detail of the tape pulling at the fine hairs on her arm. It really achieves that floaty, not-quite-here feeling of waking up in a hospital bed.

The drabble that came to mind for this is very weird, in that I have no idea why it came to mind, and I haven't actually written it yet.

The medical ones make me shiver. Atavistic fear, powerful.

Okay, here's mine. No title.

Challenge #7 [one person lying down, one standing]

He wasn’t supposed to be here. The priests were certain to scold if he was seen. But he couldn’t help himself—watching the man on the curious scaffold was his temptation. Coveting was his only sin.

Silently, he skirted the far wall, moving closer. The enormous chapel breathed like a sleeping beast around him, the artist’s brush stroking its skin as it crouched above them both, dreaming, the late afternoon light spilling through the windows, pure gold.

This was what he craved—this holy transmutation, his own soul spread out in such color, such grace, guided by his own hand.

I feel like I'm intruding on such great writing with, well, my less than great, but feel the need to delurk in this thread anyway for this challenge...

He paced back and forth before the old green couch.

She knew he was talking mile a minute, running on about the dishes in the sink and the cat hair in the carpet, but it was all just noise. The worn pillow against the arm of the couch cradled her aching head as he told her all the important things that really needed to be done "around this place."

"I know you're tired, but maybe you're sleeping too much. This is the one thing you need to do, all day, is keep things in order around here. I just don't understand how-"

The monitor crackled to life with two sniffles and a wail, and she was upright immediately. She paused only a moment, wishing she had time to remind him exactly what she did all day, but then without a word was bounding up the stairs two at a time.