The Power of love — Diary of the Victims
Day 4,
If I said I was the happiest man under the sun at that moment, it would have been an understatement. She has been my breath ever since the moment she walked into my life. Today is different though because I finally dropped the knee. I whispered rather than spoke because emotions crowded my tongue
“Claudia, from the moment my sight caught your gorgeous hazel eyes across the room, I was entrenched. Totally captivated by the beauty and love you sowed into souls that touched yours. Engraved into the essence of my being was the joy I felt when I stole my first kiss. I knew then, that you had to be mine forever. So now standing here at this moment where the sun meets and greets his moon in the presence of the waking stars. I ask you, Claudia Starborn ‘love of my life’ will you marry me? “
Her scream aroused everything in a 10-kilometre radius, as bird and man turned their heads in query at her screams of ‘YES’. My happiness spilt in a cascading pillar of joy, I leapt taking her in a bone crunch hug, as she surrendered in my hands.
It’s been three months, four days, five hours, six minutes and seven seconds since she said yes. My happiness isn’t diminished, rather I smile foolishly impatiently waiting for the time when we would become one. Time and distance drove me mad with cravings because she was the nectar I never knew I starved for until I tasted. This weekend all my dreams will be satiated, today I marry the woman who loves me at my worst and glows at my brightest. Today, I marry my moon.
Time drew to a stop, seconds seemed to hang in eternity. My mouth was wide open yet no words flew out, I felt as air flowed through my air and I saw my hand grow wings as I was thrown aloft from my soaring car. It felt like eternity vanished in a blink of an eye as I noticed the ground flying towards me at breakneck speed. I tried fleeing but I was petrified in fear, I watched wide-eyed and unbelieving as brown earth crashed into me. The memory of the kiss I shared with my lover flashed right before my eyes before darkness claimed me.
I awoke under a fog, drifting in and out of lucidity. My environment was strange, even stranger I was lying in a foreign bed being stared down by a stranger in scrubs. I reasoned I was dreaming, but the incessant pounding of my head and the pain that crawled all over my skin proved otherwise. I tried moving and my limbs felt like lead, someone told me to relax and have some water but the voice sounded scrambled like a spoilt cassette. Pain flared in my hands and I turned to see a nurse changing my drip and giving me a blood pack.
It dawned on me, that I was in a hospital but why I was there eluded me. I rummaged through my thoughts for a reason and slowly the dots began to form together into my greatest nightmare. A scream tore through my throat as fear laced my soul, the attending nurse must have thought I was in great pain because she increased the morphine and injected me with sleeping drugs. Little did she know that my pain wasn’t physical but the uncertainty of what had happened to my lover. As I drifted off, I made a simple prayer to God to keep her safe.
I couldn’t tell how much time had passed but I felt better due to the sea of morphine I was drowning in. I saw eyes stare down at me but theirs weren’t the ones I wanted to see, turning my head around I found her hazel eyes hiding in the shadow of the door. A defiant tear escaped my eyes as I saw tears flow down her face, I wanted to get my arms around her and placate her pain but I couldn’t move. My love roared and I called her to my side, she ran into my waiting embrace defying the cries of the doctors. She rained kisses on my face and I felt a thousand times better, she took my breath away drawing my attention from the pain and worries of the world.
Someone cleared his throat drawing me from my reverie, hand entwined we turned to the voice. I saw a man in a white coat which I deduced to be the doctor and behind him, my parents stood. The expression on their face was ghastly, I knew something was seriously wrong and what I was about to hear might unhinge my life but knowing she was there gave me strength. As the words left the doctor's lips I felt the world drop from beneath my feet, I was never walking again he said ‘’Your spine’s severely damaged beyond known medical repair’’.
My heart skipped a beat, my mouth ran out of words and my head shook in unbelief. Deaf to their pleas I pushed with all my strength trying to stand but I felt no sensation within my legs. Defiant I rolled only to face plant myself on the floor, there on that cold unforgiving floor, I wept. Like a newborn, I wept letting all the waves of my emotions flow into my cries. There was nothing to be said for despair dominated my thoughts. I wailed until all my tears were expended and I drifted off from exhaustion.
My brain failed to believe what my body said, it kept giving instructions willing the legs to move yet nothing happened. A week passed before it dawned on me that life had dealt me unspeakable cruelty and I was going to spend the rest of my life in a wheelchair. She remained by my side through it all, little by little she pulled me out of my self-pity walking through the dark side of each morning. The first few weeks after the accident was the worst and most difficult because I had to relearn most of the basic things in life but the worst was the fear that she might abandon me. I went to bed each night scared that when I awoke she would be gone, but she proved me wrong night after night. Finally, she told me one morning “in case you ever foolishly forget: I am never not thinking about you”. Since that morning my doubt ceased and a smile came back because even though I doubted she kept her promise and loved me.
Punch: The plight of the foppish and reward of the careless. Lord of surprises you hold no schedule but seize the hands of time. You engender the most horrendous acts of life, sowing unspeakable cruelty in those who seek your anger. The trepidation of the impatient, you steal in when the heart least expects robbing smiles from the people's faces while stringing harmonics of despair from their lips. You disperse brute justice, forcing a man to either re-emerge and learn or capitulate and die. You who truncated and reshaped my destiny, I am but your latest victim.
Blanc.
