Realms

 

Three times I have been to the casualty lobby of a hospital. Three times I have seen people being wheeled into the hospital with their limbs suspended on their frail bodies by a thread of skin. Their bones crashed into smithereens. Clenched teeth, biting against each other to numb the pain. Shrieks of agony. And blank expressions that betray despair. Sometimes family members, or some good Samaritans, flanked these people who had both their feet on the two sides of the thin red line that separated life from death. Staring timidly into the deep dark abyss that bore their graves. Then there were those who were wheeled in solely. No one to pat their backs and whisper bitter-sweet words of affirmation. No one to heckle at the indifferent nurses to attend to them. Just them, and their God. 

Two times I have been to the casualty lobby because of a knee ligament injury. I acquired both injuries while in a pursuit of a football. I have been carried to a jalopy dubbed ambulance. The contraption laboured ponderously up Ngong' road in a cacophony  of squeaks and rattles towards Kenyatta national hospital. The jagged aluminium in the upholstery poked my ribs and the empty oxygen cylinder swang precariously above my head like a crucifix affixed on the rearview mirror of a speeding car. In retrospect, I would prefer limping on one foot to KNH. 

One time I have been to the casualty lobby of a hospital as a casualty of a road accident. Before that day, I had known road accidents as abstract and distant things that only happend to other people. I had heard encounters of accidents with which I couldn't resonate. I never imagined tepid automobile metal eating into my flesh, or a helmet bludgeoning my head. I was admitted with two gapping wounds and a cracked right occipital and maxilla. A berserk biker had jarred my left foot with an unpleasantly extended front axle, and bunt my head with his helmet. For several weeks I had to contend with doctors and quacks giving a prognosis of brain damage, if I didn't go to the ICU 'as soon as possible.' For several weeks, my own short life flashed before my conscience in beautiful hues of blue and green, and baleful black. 

There were times I was under, and times I floated among the clouds. When I was under, I envisioned the bloody eyes of the grim ripper, licking the blood on his scythe with a bifurcated tongue. Standing on a pile of human skulls. Among the clouds, my soul levitated into a realm of feathery orchards ramified with paths of snow. 

On the day after the accident, with a prognosis of internal bleeding in the head, I woke up at home. Except it wasn't the home that I knew. This home was a bleak room filled with a hazy grey colour. This home had no objects, just a blank grey cloud emulsified in the air. I tried to stand up but nothing. I tried to call out to someone; nothing still. I was lying static, trapped in an ominous cloud of grey. Panic-stricken I screamed my mother' s name. No sound escaped my lips. I was gone. Into a realm of emptiness. I felt my soul detach from my body and hover dismally  around the room. A succinct reel of the people I've loved and the people I could have loved played in the void. Then suddenly I felt my toe twitch. I sprang off the bed in a daze. 

Three more times, I drifted into the realm of grey. Each of the times, things around me progressively took shape. I became more aware of my surroundings. But I became less aware of my being. I was detached from life piece by piece. It reached a point my mother's chapatis tasted bland. My favourite mbuta (nile perch) turned into an insipid mound of flesh and bones floating in flavoured water. I became destitute of hope. Every morning I anticipated an unceremonious dispatch to the land of milk and honey. Until I ran into a thread on X about sleep paralysis. 

Hitherto I have one question. Why would I experience sleep paralysis for the first time on the morning after an ostensibly 'fatal' accident, with a prognosis of internal bleeding in the brain? Please allow me to pin this on the devil, because I don't subscribe to the notion of coincidences.

I have learnt that death is never far away. It lurks in the closest dark corner waiting to strike. Anything can happen to anyone, at any time. I have learnt that it is the uncertainty about what will happen the next second that makes life worth living. Otherwise how would you live knowing everything that will happen in the future? Life would be without flavour. That navigating life's hurdles is the icing on the cake of life. I have learnt that family is the foundation of our being. Now I know that I have to cherish each moment. And imbue kindness to others in this realm. For there is a realm that has nothing but emptiness and lackluster grey.