Beep

            The thing about the beeping is that it’s relentless.  When the room is dark and quiet I can feel it, and it seems even louder.  Sometimes during the day I can hardly notice it anymore because it blends in with the rest of the noise.  The conversations of the day, the television, phone calls… it fades behind the sounds of life.  But at night it haunts me louder and louder, until I can hardly stand it.  I can’t sleep anymore with all this beeping.  Sometimes I cry out because it hurts so much to hear, like my ears are drumming through my head. 

            In the mornings it’s not so bad, because I know that it will slowly fade away as the sun rises.  I can feel it in the morning, but I know that it doesn’t own me.   I’ve made it through another night, and for that I’m eternally grateful.  It becomes the rhythm of my life, just a sound that I hear softly.  It’s a steady bump and a bump.  I enjoy my mornings after a long night of the sound.  But the beeping is still there, it’s always there.  I’ve given up believing that I can ever get away from it.  The sound follows my life like a soundtrack, and it’ll follow me until I die.

            I miss the mornings in the afternoon, because I know that my day is always getting closer to ending.  And when the darkness comes and the rest of the world goes quiet, the drumming in my head picks up.  The gradual decline to faintness of the morning reaches almost nothing by lunch.  This is my ecstasy.  But then it picks up, beat by beat through the rest of the day.  At dinner I eat my food with the rhythm.  Spoonful of peas… beep.  Small piece of meatloaf… beep.  I love me some pudding… beep.

            But then the darkness falls and I’m alone with the sound of my life.  Breath in to the rhythm, breathe out to the rhythm.  It’s how I know that I’m alive.  Beep.  It’s the sound of living, and I get scared when it’s dark and quiet.  It’s louder and louder each and every night.  When will… beep… it stop… beep… oh Lord… beep.

            I’ve been in this hospital room for weeks now, breathing in and out to the rhythm of my heart.  I’m tired now.  I’m afraid of the dark, I’m afraid of the beeping, and I’m afraid it will stop before morning.