it feels like i'm watching my life happen
through a fuzzy television screen.
i feel far away from this world.
almost foreign in this body.
as if every happy memory has been wiped clean from the bowl of my mind.
i close my eyes and i can't remember what happy feels like.
my chest collapses into my stomach knowing that i have to get up in the morning and pretend i'm not fading away all over again.
i want to reach out and touch things.
i want to feel them touch me back.
i want to live.
i want the vitality of my life back.
How can the world spin while his eyes are closed? Does the sky not miss its human equivalent? How does time continue when everything stopped for Thomas. The world stopped when Newt stopped living. His ears missed the sound of his voice, of his laugh. Everything that was Newt, his personality, his smile, was gone.
Every time he looked at the clock, it was always 11:25. Time stopped at 11:25. It stopped for Thomas, it stopped for Newt.
Thomas slept at the hospital. He ate at the hospital. His life was at the hospital now. He didn't want to leave, so Brenda came to him. When she could. When she wanted. She was never very patient with him when it came to Newt. She understood of course, that he was sick and dying. That he wanted to be there for him while the times were so difficult, but she would never understand the longing he felt. The ache in his chest when he stared at his friend laying still in the hospital bed. Even when he wasn't in the hospital, which was hardly at all, he saw him. There were so many tubes, so many wires that Thomas didn't even know the function of, sticking out of his body.
Everything was so hard for him to understand. But he knew that Newt's time was more limited than he had expected. He could live for a couple more days, or a couple more weeks. Maybe a year if he was lucky. Two years if he was extremely lucky. For some reason, Thomas didn't think Newt was lucky. He hadn't been in the first place after all, because he was sick.
Even now, as he watched Newt's chest move up and down purely from the power of the machines he was hooked up to, he wondered if he would live until tomorrow. His stomach aches and he forced himself to look away from Newt's pale face. When was the last time he ate? He couldn't remember really. He had a couple cups of coffee that morning, and a couple more the day's prior. The nurses had been kind to him, they set up a cot for him to sleep in the room with Newt. They even persuaded him to go home sometimes, more often when Sonya was there or Newt's mother. He didn't like to leave him alone. Even if he would never know of he was alone or not.
"Thomas." He looked up when he heard his name. It was Sarah, one of Newt's nurses. "You should go home. You'll be the first call of anyone changes."
"That's not true Sarah. You'll call his mom first." Thomas said, running his fingers through his hair in attempt to tame it.
"Well, you're in the top five." Sarah said. Thomas just laughed humorlessly. "Seriously, go home take a shower. See your wife."
He was sure he had surprised the whole hospital when Thomas brought up that he had a wife. They all thought that he and a Newt were something more than friends. Maybe they were. But he remembered the confused looks on their faces the first time Brenda had shown up. The looks on their faces were even better when they figured out who she was. The wife of a man who loved his dying best friend. The great tragedy of the hospital. He felt like he should be on some sort of reality television show or something.
"I'm only in the top five?" Thomas asked, ignoring her jab at him. "That doesn't seem fair."
"I would say it's quite fair, since you're not direct family to the patient." She said, typing notes into her laptop. "No change. Just like yesterday. Go home, take a shower. Do something besides sit here all day, Thomas."
