A Date with the Night

That was my first night in the hospital. The evening was pleasant with visitors visiting their friends and relatives bringing fruits and breads. The LCD in the hall played some local comedy series that people were occasionally looking at. By around 10 pm, the lights were off (and I cant say everyone went to bed as everyone there is on bed). 

I wasn't sleepy (can anyone be at 10 pm?) Instead of honking trams and grumbling Air Conditioner compressor, I was there to try my luck to sleep between agony filled groaning, cough, beeping blood pressure machines. 

I looked around. A slanted white light from the pathway was making all the white bed sheets everyone was covered with glow. All around me laid the warriors who had just retired from another busy day battling with pain, hopelessness and waiting to get up to see every morning as a new day.

I was tossing and turning in pain. My body had become a slave of pain-killers. A slight movement in the body required an effort of a lifetime. 

I kept groaning in my bed. Like an injured lion. And it bothered none. I realised I was a new stranger amongst the old strangers in this pain-struck land. I tried to shut up myself but I my body had disentitled me. 

And then I took this usual harsh decision- I'll face the pain. I'll see how far can it go and whether it can kill me. Pain, after all is just an unpleasant sensation.
I sat on my bed and rested my head on the table and looked outside the window. The lit up city of Hong Kong was as shimmery as ever.

I started to get dissolved in the silence. The last thing I wanted to do was to look at the time. My lower body had started to become numb by this time. That night, I saw that their are 4 stages of pain- 
(1) Pain-->(2) Unbearable Pain--> (3) Numbness--> (4) Pain is a myth

The still silent night bore no words of its own. It was as black, as wordless, as identity-less as ever without the city lights. It was all full of patches...some dark areas preceded by lighter dark ones and some perpetually thick jet black holes. 

The shades of the night kept changing. The darkness from its naval rose like an unstoppable fountain of glory, and a couple of minutes later, I saw its wings melting. I saw it clustering, vaporizing, struggling and calming itself down. I saw it playing, sobbing. crying, laughing, turning, tossing, running in a circle, walking back, moving forward, turning back again. She hummed silence. 

I don't know if I fell asleep or blinked or she suddenly disappeared . She left without a trace. As if she took back the cloak she brought and had quickly unwrapped everything. 

There was no Sun but some light on the ground. The roads were busier and the black leaves started to appear back- green. And voice of her foot steps becoming fainter with every passing second.