Jonathan lay on the bed, eyes closed in the darkness. He could feel the heavy weight of the thin blanket atop him. The sharp spines in the springy mattress below. He felt his bones grinding smoothly across each other, his lungs barely gulping air. He opened his eyes and looked across at the clock on the bedside table. His head rolling to the side. Two o’clock. In the morning. There’d be no-one for hours yet. He closed his eyes and thought of sleep once more. His mind drifted, to the embarrassment he’d made of himself in school, something so minor that likely no-one remembered, yet he had changed his whole personality to try avoid again. He thought of the missed opportunities, the failed chances, the passed risks, his mind forced him through every mistake he had ever made. He opened his eyes. Three o’clock. In the morning. May as-well still be midnight. A painfully relieving sigh. He closed his eyes. He thought of everything he could have done, everything he could have changed, chosen, or done. Every life may have led, every step he could have taken. Every decision he could have made. He opened his eyes. Five o’clock. In the morning. He closed his eyes. A long ways yet. He thought of everything he was. Everything he could have been. Everything he wanted to be. He thought of everything. He thought of nothing. He looked around at the darkness surrounding him. The world behind his eyelids. The world with no colour. No light. No movement. At his time of the morning, no sound. No little vibrations through the walls. The air tasted of nothing. The smells were absent. Missing in the void that is the mind. He seemed to float, to hover, to drift. Moving purposefully. Wandering aimlessly. Everything he ever was splayed before him. Not as sight, sound, touch, taste or smell. But memory. He could never tell what piece of his past he would relive, but he knew what it was every time he stepped up to it. He could never see, but he knew every time he drifted closer. He could never hear, but he knew every time he found himself there. He looked down at his hands. He looked down into the darkness. He shivered at the thought. Numbingly mindless. The darkness left. The light dimmed. The sound was banished. The noise grew. The touch faded. The contact emerged. The smells drifted. The scents wafted. The taste was lost. The feel returned. He opened his eyes. He closed his eyes. He opened his eyes. Eight o’clock. He looked at the top of the digital clock. Saturday. He looked at the foot of the bed. The door to the side. A seat between the two. A person sitting. Their black hair a contrast to the white walls. Their black top a compliment to their pale skin. Their blue eyes sharp and calming. The vase of flowers behind the clock. Blue tulips like their eyes, green stalks that clashed. He looked up from bed into those deep blue eyes. At that pale skin loose skin, that pale black hair. Jonathan looked up from his hospital bed.

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“Goodnight”

He closed his eyes.