The Weight of This Feeling

Why is it always the weight you cannot measure that feels the heaviest?

My lungs feel too large to fit in my chest, yet they are compressed into nothing with the magnitude of my worry.

No, worry is too weak a word, terror is more accurate—and that terror weighs a tonne.

‘...He was in an accident… they have taken him into surgery… It’s too soon to tell…’ Clippings of the phone call play on repeat in my mind. Not knowing amplifies every terrible feeling.

It's debilitating. I can breathe, but the air feels wrong, and I can feel my heartbeat in my eyes. I know the whites of them are red from tears, both the ones I've shed and all the ones I’ve held back since. They sting from the sweat and are dry from the irritation of it all.

My hands are shaking. They look even more pale in this light, as if only hours in fluorescence equals years without the sun. The silver of the ring on my finger feels dull, the words ‘Us against the world’ orbit my knuckle as I twist the metal in an absentminded fidget.

To wandering eyes I would be swallowed up by the background, my cream jumper and sweats combo blending in with the cool-white of the walls and the glint of surgical steel.

The only colour in the room is in the monitor that writes the script of your heartbeat across its tiny screen in vibrant green. The sound it makes has become more prominent than my own thundering heart.

How long can someone remain in a state of panic before it is lethal? I wonder to myself. At least four hours and thirty-eight minutes, I reply, glancing at the time yet again.

I squeeze your hand, the only way I can say the words that I can’t speak out loud. I pray that you understand.

Come back to me, I beg, my fingertips pressed to your palm.

I’m here, your heartbeat reassures, blinking in peaks across the screen.

It's not enough. I squeeze harder.

I’m breathing, the air reminds me as it whooshes. I’ve watched your chest rise and fall for hours.

Through a damn tube. My thoughts are bitter. You barely look human.

My jaw aches from my gritted teeth. I’m angry. Not at you, not at anything, but also at everything. My eyes ache with the absence of tears, I have no more to shed. I'm too exhausted, too empty.

I’m just so fucking—ergh. It's the only way I can categorise how I feel.

Your hand is limp, fingers curled slightly around mine where I cling to you. The joints have started to ache from the strain but I won’t let go. I won't let you go.

Still, you don’t squeeze back.

I’m here, but I’m also not. Your stillness tortures me.

My heart is heavy, forced to pump blood that feels too thick and acidic with my panic. It feels like I am running, though neither of us move.

My head is heavy, stuffed with cotton that weighs more than lead, making the muscles of my neck strain just to hold it up.

For the first time ever it feels like my soul is pressed against the inside of my skin. It's an uncomfortable reminder of my own damn fragility, a warning that if it breaks, I do too.

Please, I chant in my head, over and over. I don’t want to do this without you.

I place another kiss on your brow. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve done so since the doctors let me in to sit by you.

I love you. I love you. I love you, I say with each one.

I make promises between each breath. I promise to worship Gods I've never called upon if they would only grant me a miracle. I promise to be better, to do more, to ask for less. I promise my own soul in place of yours. I promise things I cannot give, for a person I cannot lose, in a world I cannot stand to face alone.

My promises are filled with everything I am but I would understand if the universe only saw them as empty.

Another hour ticks away as I worry the back of your hand with my thumb.

The sun has started to melt across the bedsheets when something in the room changes. It's slight but after hours of the same droning nothingness, I notice immediately.

I glance at the screen but the numbers mean nothing to me, the line still peaks and drops as it always has.

I frown, wondering what phantom drew me from my numbness.

Then I feel a pressure on my fingers.

If I was strapped to my own machine the waves would map a symphony of pandemonium.

I squeeze your hand. Please be real.

You squeeze mine back. I hear you.

A sound escapes me; it's a bark of relieved laughter that shoves out the sorrow.

Your eyelids flutter and peel open, your gaze meeting mine. I'm here.

My soul retreats an inch as hope begins peeling the layers of my fear away. I can breathe a little easier.

Your eyes are full of confusion and pain. Full of questions.

What? Why? They dart from side to side to take in the room.

Where am I? They settle back on me for the answers.

What happened? I see the words etched between your brow.

I have no words to answer you as I bury my head against your chest and sob, chanting the only answer that matters in my mind.

You're okay. You're okay. You're okay.

When I meet your eyes again I try to say a million things. My mouth is poised to spill it all, the ‘I love you’s and the prayers that are more curses of relief than actual piety, but the words are stuck and in their place is air. It is a messy, shuddering, heaving sound.

You're okay.

If terror weighs a tonne, relief makes my heart forget about gravity.

The air is sucked in so quickly with the weight removed that I start to breathe so ragged I see stars.

Our eyes are locked, both blurred with tears but they say it all.

I'm okay.

There are too many words and none of them are good enough for this moment.

Everything that could be said is done so silently and all within a heartbeat that lasts forever.

I love you. I love you. I love you.