Lumiere

I wake up with sweat beaded and gathered on my forehead.  What time is it?  As I lift a hand to my head and feel my hair, I can tell that it’s drenched—slicked into a frame around my face.  The bed is a source of infernal heat, a spread of hot, glowing coals that scorch my flesh.  I want to kick the blankets away, to remove these binding sheets and their searing grip.  Instead, I cling to them.  I cling to them because I can’t stop shaking.

The symptoms had been there for days—subtle but present.  Of course, he noticed immediately.  According to him, my glow was fading.  My skin was tinged with the same sickly sheen as the moon.  I continued to deny it and he was forced to side with my disbelief.   I could feel a tiredness that made my muscles heavy and tightened my joints.  Aches ran through my body as if tiny pine needles had been sutured under my skin.  The symptoms had made themselves known, and I ignored them.
            
Now, I could feel a frigid arctic wind swirl in the hollow depth of my chest.  Nestled there, the wind ravages my body.  As it whips through, chilling my blood, my veins and arteries become glacial rivers.  They’re working against me, spreading the cold.  I shake.  I shake with the strength of a renegade ice floe.  I shake with the intensity of a falling sequoia.  I shake with the violence of crashing thunder on a calm summer night.  I shake, and he holds me. 
           
While I was enclosed, wrapped in his protective embrace, I notice the lights—the northern lights.  An imperfect wave of greens and purples.  A cosmic splash of reds and blues.  They seep into the room, filling it with their eerie and intricate patterns as they dance on the ceiling and walls.  I don’t know why they had come or where they had come from but I welcome them.  I had always wanted to see the northern lights but never had the opportunity. Here they are. They found me.  Lying there, looking up at the lights, feeling his pulse as he presses his body even closer to mine, I feel safe.  For the first time in a long time, I feel safe.  It’s strange, to feel so free.  Even though my skin still burns and rains.  Even though I can still feel the wind rush through my body.  Even though I still shake, I feel safe.  With the lights.  With him. 
           
I am jolted suddenly from my dream; a dream about my favourite films.   Elle ne se rapporte pas à d'autres personnes. Elle a toujours été un enfant solitaire.  “She doesn’t relate to other people.  She was always a lonely child.” Loneliness—I remember the feeling.  But I’m not lonely now—he’s here, right beside me.  We’ve found each other.
           
It’s strange how I don’t speak French but still remember fragments.  I love French films; they are my escape.  I could listen to the language, watch the actors speak forever.  I don’t need subtitles; they’re too distracting.  I sit in the dark and watch these films in a language I don’t know.  Somehow I still understand.
           
The lights are gone, leaving behind an empty darkness in the room.  The wind has finally died down, releasing me.  The heat remains and I need to escape it. Gingerly, I untangle myself from him.  I don’t want to leave but a drought has replaced the barren arctic terrain of my body.  I am desperate for water.  Where is it? I search frantically, but it is impossible in the darkness.  Where are the lights?  Where is the water? C'est triste à s'endormir. Il sépare les gens. Même lorsque vous dormez ensemble, vous êtes tout seul.  “It’s sad to go to sleep.  It separates people.  Even when you sleep together, you are still alone.” Sleep was separating us; darkness was separating us.  Would he be able to find me?  I can’t let my mind wander—I need water.  My bones were drying like bark in a deprived savannah, begging to be quenched.  Water.  The wind has returned.  I realize that my skin is encased in ice, freezing my limbs.  I need to get back to the bed—to him.  The lights have abandoned me.  I am lost; the darkness swallows my body. 
           
When did he realize that I was lost? That he needed to find me? I imagine him reaching over in a sleepy stupor and noticing the emptiness of the bed.  Becoming alarmed when he couldn’t find the warmth of my skin or the beat of my heart.
           
Someone is wrapping me in a blanket.  No I don’t want that—we’re in the Sahara.  No, take it off, I don’t need it.  I claw at the fabric, struggling to fight it off.  Someone says something—he says something, “you need it, we’re going outside.  It’s cold”.  He found me.       
           
Fumbling with keys and cards as he zips up his jacket, I am confused.  Where are we going? No answers are given and, instead, he picks me up and opens the door into the unforgiving winter night.  He places me in the front seat, as he tries to warm up the car and scrape furiously at the ice on the windshield.  He joins me in the car and reaches over.  I can see the anxiety on his face accumulate; my familiar pulse is foreign.              
           
The lights are speeding past, but they are not the same.  These ones have an artificial orange glow; the kind that eliminate the beauty of the night sky as they extinguish the stars from view.  He looks scared.  It doesn’t suit him.  Normally he is so calm, so sure.  I am the one who worries.  I am sure the lights—the real lights—will return.  He just looks at the road.  Running red lights at vacant intersections.  Driving so that the snow banks lining the streets blur together.  My eyelids open and close, obscuring the light and images outside the window.  Such a delicate motion becomes increasingly hard to perform.  Sometimes they close longer than I want them to before I force them open again.  But it is nice to have them closed, for just a little while anyway.          
           
The triage nurse examines me as he struggles to fill out paper work.  I don’t remember coming to this room.  Just hazy fragments and shadows of rooms and people.   The sounds of doors slamming and people whispering.  Maybe a phone ringing.  I look at him, with his pen hovering above the page.  I don’t blame him; we’ve only been seeing each other a few months.  Here and there I croak out a few lines of information.  The 12th not the 10th.  My mother’s name is Susan.   
          
I am whisked away.  Down corridors, through swinging doors.  I don’t know where I am going.  The fluorescent lights overhead are harsh and blinding.  He is here, grasping my hand; whispering in my ear.  It’s going to be okay.  He doesn’t need to say that, I know it’s going to be okay.  The northern lights are going to return.  The wind will finally stop blowing.  The fire on my skin will stop blazing.  He doesn’t need to say anything.  But I listen to his voice for as long as I can; soon he is gone.            
           
He’s gone and an army of people are undressing me.  Poking me.  Injecting me.  I want to scream but all that comes out is a low beastly growl.  I’m not even sure where he went.  I want him back.  The room smells of sanitizer and chemicals.  It incinerates my lungs with every breath.  The toxicity.  I want the warm, mossy smell of his skin.  Where is he?  Now, there is a nurse, an older woman.  Maybe not even older, just very tired, whispering things to me.  She doesn’t seem to understand that I need him, not her.  And that’s when I see them again.  The lights.  They returned, just like I knew they would.  They trickle in, removing the essence of the florescent lights.  They shower me with a warm, comforting radiance.  The doctors and nurses continue with their work, taking no notice of the brilliance that encompasses the room.  They don’t understand.         
           
I am glad the lights found me.  If they found me, then he will see them and know where I am.  He will see the prisms of colour leaking out of the room, guiding him to me.  He’ll find me now.  He’ll see the lights.  Good.  I’m glad.  I’m glad he’ll find me.  Toutes ces années, j'ai été à la recherche d'un amour impossible.  “All these years I’ve been looking for an impossible love.”   An impossible love.  Have I found mine? I don’t know; I just want him to find me.  For now, he just needs to find me.

The lines in French were taken from the following films:
Amelie. Dir. Jean-Pierre Jeunet. Claudie Ossard Productions, 2001.
Breathless. Dir. Jean-Luc Goddard. Les Productions Georges de Beauregard, 1960.
Hiroshima, Mon Amour. Dir. Alan Resnais. Argo Films, 1959.

Emily McWilliams is currently in her second year at Western, pursuing a degree in film studies and writing.  This is her first published story; her writing experience at Western includes Professor Claudia Manley’s “The Naked Writer” and she is looking forward to Professor John Smallwood’s “Expository Writing” in the winter 2012 semester.  In her spare time, Emily enjoys a cup of green tea accompanied by a good book or movie.