That swift Georgia breeze carried my resentment with it. Reaching into the depths of my closed mind, I can’t tell you why I possessed such quantities of hatred for the one person who had the guts to love me the most. My fingers made their way through the flawless blades of golden brown wheat as I pondered what existed… and what didn’t. I couldn’t tell anymore. It was like reality was woven into what wasn’t.
One day, I decided, maybe I’d understand the purpose of my existence. But then, in that Southern field, with the tapestry of stars stretching into the horizon, I couldn’t put a finger on my purpose. I lifted my head up to the sky, feeling the cool breeze play lazily across the planes of my face.
I continued to sit there in solitude. Sighing, I slowly unfolded my legs with ease and moseyed my way up from the ground to my rusting but loyal ’83 Chevrolet pickup. My painted fingernails found their way to the key and revved the truck up. The engine answered back to me with a resounding murmur of a greeting. Of course, the old pickup couldn’t do much, but it was enough for me. My mind glazing over, I merely sat there, letting the engine run, in one of my states of contemplation once more. One thing, and one thing only, is ever able to jerk me out of my deep trances, and that thing is myself.
“Hello, again, Mel,” he said. I slowly turned my head over towards the passenger side of my Chevy, where he had appeared like always.
“Reed,” I greeted with reverence, holding back a smile.
“Let’s go home now, Mel,” he cooed soothingly. Knowing I had to get to my quaint home soon unless I wanted to be grounded for breaking my generous curfew, I put my foot on the gas pedal and drove away from the most cherished place in the world for me. That field, the field that had no name, was a place where I could willingly escape, from everyone, from everything, and immerse myself in the hurdles of my life with no interruptions or distractions.
My Chevy creaked to a stop like the old veteran it was, waiting for the light in the town square to switch robotically to the stale green. There usually weren’t many cars at this time of night in such an isolated town as mine. I gingerly reached for the beaten radio dial and turned up the crashing and resounding noise that resulted as loud as it could go, letting the beats and smooth rhythms laced with complementary harmonies overtake me. That’s when the turning point in my life occurred. Oblivious to my surroundings, I began to enter into one of my contemplative trances that I can only come out of when I wish to, usually through Reed, who was at this point singing along with all of his might to a song that just began blaring over my favorite tattered speakers. I couldn’t hear him. My foot pressed down slightly on the gas pedal, but at that moment, I wasn’t paying attention to the road around me. All I could think about was my life, my existence, my being, and the music around me. At that moment, the light was red, and my rusty truck and I were inching forward into the black intersection. A car was charging toward me unknowingly, placing their life in my hands.
I only managed to squirm out of my state of thought and daydreaming in time to see headlights coming straight toward me. Reed’s insane screaming he liked to call "singing" ceased, as did everything around us, and I became one with darkness.
There was no pain. There was no fear. There was nothing. That was who I was for the three days that I was in a coma… until I woke up. The first emergence of life into my void of nothing that was a coma was the feel of a warm hand gripping mine like it was the only piece of fabric in a field of needles.
Sounds whirled in my head, blending with each other to form contradicting blends of sensory, increasing my state of confusion.
“She moved!” Familiar voices rang like distant chimes in my head. I wasn’t thinking much at that point, for once in my life, until I remembered somebody else was in the car with me: Reed.
“Where is he?” I slurred incomprehensibly, not recognizing my own voice. Hands began to sweep over my body as tests were run. Excited phrases of happiness at the expense of my awakening filled the room.
“Where’s Reed!” I asked with more force, and this time, I was able to open my eyes and squint at the harsh lighting that was blazing with no mercy into my infantile, newly opened eyes. The face of my mother was staring back at me, hope filling every wrinkle she had acquired with age on her delicate face. She appeared fifty years younger just with the sheer joy that I had woken up.
“Momma? Where is Reed? Is he okay? Tell me where he is. I’m getting worried.” I asked with dread, knowing the answer but not wanting to admit it to myself. Reed was on the side that withstood the impact of the truck first. My mom’s joyful expression fell a bit, replaced with a look of overlaying confusion. She glanced nervously at my father, who shrugged dismissively.
“Momma? Where is he?” I asked persistently, my voice growing more recognizable by the second. This question startled her even more and the look of shock gouged away the joy in her face.
“Melanie… Who is Reed?” My mother asked hesitantly, glancing at the medical staff swarming around me. Doctors racing around the room stopped their frantic movements and stared at me with interest and shock.
“What? You’ve got to be kidding!” I chuckled, “That’s real funny, Ma. Reed? You know Reed! He’s the boy that dropped out of the local High School that stops by the house every day?” I whispered in her attentive ear, “I kind of like him,” deciding to confide in her my secret for the past six months.
“Sugar, as far as I know, nobody visits you everday. You’re always holed up in your room, talking on the phone, maybe you talk to him then? But, nobody visits you,” stated my mom apprehensively.
“No, Ma, I talk to Reed in my room! He does visit me every day, you know he does! You had to have seen him. Stop it, Mom. Pa, you know that Reed visits me, right?” I asked my father, wanting to settle this joke as soon as possible. I wasn’t in the mood for games.
I was beginning to feel insane. My hospital room was still as the eye of a hurricane sweeping over broken and submissive land. The only noise I could hear was the steady pulse of my heart monitors as doctors and nurses alike stood in confusion, staring tentatively at my father.
“No. Nobody visits you,” murmured my father frankly and subtly, his tone expressing his confusion. I glanced about the stark room, nurses and doctors staring at me like I was an animal with a deformity. My gaze fell upon a chair in the corner of the room, where a boy slept soundly, his soft brown hair falling over his invisible blue eyes. Reed was here! Everyone was trying to trick me, obviously. “Guys, stop fooling me. Come on, Reed is right there!” I pointed excitedly to the chair in the corner. Reed awoke at the mentions of his name and smiled and waved.
“See? He’s waving right now,” I said as-a-matter-of-factly and mustered the fraction of strength I had left to wave back at him, grinning from ear to ear at the sight of my purest affections.
The doctors and nurses slowly backed out of the room mumbling muffled words of assumption, eying me suspiciously, all the while judging me with their beady and merciless eyes. My mother glanced at me, then at the chair where Reed was, then back at me, and began to sob quietly in my father’s arms. My father looked at me with surprise and shame. Finally, after minutes of being clueless as to why my parents were reacting so strongly, my mother lifted her petite head of red curls and stared me in the eye.
“Honey, there is nobody sitting in that chair,” stated my mother, and the expression on her face held more truth and candor than I had ever seen residing on another person’s face in my life… that is, except for on Reed’s.
