It was originally going to be called “Symphony in Red." The winning piece…

-the emergency room is awash with light - bubbling with bodies.

Nothing has ever hurt so bad.

The air is morbid with the scent of blood and the chemicals used for sterilization. Poisonously clean. I almost swoon from dizzy nausea, feeling the light pass away from me in phases.

The shadows settle, swamping mine, like a heavy blanket thrown over my head. I’m abducted and dragged further into the darkness.

As the first rush of the painkillers bleeds through my system I lose touch with my surroundings, almost convinced I’m standing in a vast emptiness, watching the clouds blot out the sun, and submerge me in sticky black. Sweat glitters on every inch of unbroken skin, and pools in places I didn’t know I could sweat, saturating my hair and running down my face, into my eyes.

It’s washed out by a scorching bright- pure white, with spots of noxious neon.

The endless hum of over-bright. LED. electric lights. sings in my ears like a chorus of skittish cicadas, fanning their wings, as if they’re desperate to escape. I can’t blame them. Trembling like a miniature earthquake. My body tries to make sense of this cataclysm that’s left my world seeing stars.

My head spins again, turning bodies topsy turvy. Smearing faces into the paint. Baptized with blood in the white space. I’m not even sure when I woke up or how long I’ve spent lying here, staring at the walls or the ceiling. My senses are all scrambled. Am I facing the left or the right? Am I hearing or feeling the voices crashing around me, a barrage of nervous wrecks? I swim in the excruciating sensation, almost blacking out. I feel as though I'm hanging from the rafters by my hair, and the pressure in my neck only increases with every crash of my heartbeat. My mouth defies me as I try to call for a nurse - my jaw is locked tight as if it’s been screwed shut and it's stubbornly set on staying that way for the moment. The whole thing fills. With bitter bile. I can’t swallow. And I try desperately not to drown before somebody finds me.

A thousand blurry nurses swarm every which way like a nestful of lady ants in brightly colored emoji scrubs - various states of worry and hurry. 

Amongst the tumult I recognize the sound of Kattar’s mother, weeping and mumbling phrases I can’t make out through the insufficient quantities of morphine stirring the universe into a slurry before my eyes. How and when she got here is beyond me. Most likely while I was still unconscious. She whispers hurried prayers in a mixture of English, Hebrew, and Spanish, all slurred together into a homogenous, trilingual sob. I catch my name amongst the others “Alicia. Kattar. Jesus.” So steady it’s almost a chant. An incantation. The room swims again.

I can feel my legs, but I don’t want to. An overwhelming burning scalds me from the outside in, like the Styx took up residence in my skin-

“His ribs are broken-” I hear someone say. Kattar’s face is as white as a specter. I’ve never seen him without his mouth moving, let alone asleep - if you could even call it that. The expression on his face is frighteningly angelic as a burly nurse gently yanks the long tresses back from his forehead to reveal a river of blood.

“Cuncussion” someone else yells.

Gurnies crisscross through my vision as Kattar vanishes into the white light at the edge of perception. One bears a stranger, the other driver no doubt - his face a massacre of bloodied flesh. I can’t tell if he’s young or old. Alive or dead.

“He was stinking drunk,” a nurse says. But so was I. And I can’t help but think that if it wasn’t for Kattar, this accident might have been MY fault...

“Careful! We are looking at severe spinal damage here!”

The prayers turn into a smothered wail, gentler than silence. 

She’s going to lose her only son. I think to myself. And she’s going to know it’s my fault. 

She’ll hate me for the rest of one of our lives.

“You’re one lucky girl,” the burly nurse tells me, as she props me almost upright, relaxing the pressure on my head and neck. My lungs fill reflexively as if I’ve been trapped underwater for ages. I notice a young-ish girl with a high ponytail clearing away the shreds of my red dress and tights. For the first time I realize that someone must have changed my clothes - cut the old ones away to prevent their sealing into the jagged blood clot I can feel extended across my shoulders and back. I can’t describe the sort of horror that washes over me at the thought. I try to swallow the gag rising in my throat but choke instead. The burly nurse wipes the dribble seeping into my collar, shaking her head in a motherly way.

“If your boyfriend hadn’t turned the car like that you would have been struck head-on. It’s a miracle he reacted so quickly.”

“He’s a stunt driver,” I wince, gritting my teeth against the pain.

Something halfway between a gasp and an “Ohhh,” thick with pity comes from one of the nurses on my left side, and too quickly, I realize the reason. Feel my heart sink.

The wailing has stopped. Like someone flipped a switch. A pin-dropping disquiet settles in my lungs. I lock eyes with the burly nurse as my vision comes into focus, but she looks away quickly.

“What’ll he do now?” Someone whispers.

40 Celsius 

I find myself in a quiet river. Floating on my back. Half asleep. The laughter of the water on the rocks, splashing into the grass, lulls me into a trance, like a daydream. Peace. The sun wobbles in the sky - a great clementine in oil pastel. Just a few smears of red and brown make up the idea of my painted face - my dress burns red on the surface. Afloat. And everything is so simple. It’s almost sinfully quiet. Late spring. Summer. The river is surrounded by a halo of regal trees. Cherry, orange, plum, and wisteria, all growing together for some reason, despite logic. The blossoms sift softly like snow from the branches and freeze in an instant upon contact with the grass. The frost spreads like water across the green canvas shifting the hue. From green to blue. Perfect white. The ice. Licks the river bed. Flecks the landscape with a spray of diamonds so bright I have to close my eyes. Suddenly I feel the chill, pinprick my skin like a thousand frigid needles. I try to make my way toward the shore but end up face to face with a wave, the size of a skyscraper collapsing onto me with a pressure that steals my breath. I'm forced under the water. Feeling my fingers and toes growing stiff with cold. Just as my head breaks the surface I catch sight of a car. Speeding through the dark. It skids across the frozen grass with a sickening cry. And collides with the body in the river.

Demons in War Paint

I wake up in the hospital bed, soggy with sweat, my dark hair streaming over the sheets like an ebony waterfall. Shadows striped with long lines from the streetlights shining through the glass reach across the room like demons in warpaint. The curtains become apparitions standing sentinel at the window, just in case I was daring enough to try to make a run, or rather - a jump for it. I don’t even know where I am for a minute, and that’s terrifying, but not more terrifying than the moment when I remember.

Cars flash by outside, on the highway across the parking lot, the headlights reminding me of strobe lights as they hurry across the walls. I flinch without meaning too, and the stitches in my side reprimand me. I try to stop shaking.

It’s almost three in the morning, but there are always nurses around, and like clockwork, I hear the footsteps outside my door, before I’ve been awake five minutes. My nurse, Layla, makes her way to my bedside and checks my temperature. Apparently, I had a slight fever, earlier in the day, just after the surgery, but my temperature has gone down significantly since then.

“You’ll be better in no time,” she smiles. And though I can tell she’s telling the truth, not just patronizing me, it doesn’t make me feel any better. Her smile falls a little, and I feel guilty about that, but I can’t fix it either.

“Get some sleep, darling,” she says softly, in a tone that reminds me of my mother, as she prepares to close the door to my room.

“I’m not sleeping well,” I let myself admit before the door clicks.

And she says, it’ll be better, once the fever’s gone. And the stitches heel. And I go home. Go back to normal. But I don’t believe her.