Somewhere in the midst of the coma came a momentary lull of relative silence. The weird thing is that most people think it's like sleeping; that the shutting down of facilities and functions renders stillness, but really, its a miasma of noise.
Voices clash with other voices. Some I could decipher as being in proximity while others, more distant, resounded with thousands more, not all in the same language. Pain convulsed my body—not only my own—as did joy, ecstasy, relief, and sorrow. Emotions that had no consciousness to the scale we processed when lucid now coursed through my pulse. And noise like no other pounded in my head, even while outside of me there was not a sound.
In the couple of months I was apparently dead to the world, relief came rarely when the noise would recede and a single voice was speaking.
I heard all these voices all saying the same thing. First it was just one. The most familiar one, saying in a sad, defeated but resigned tone, "You need to move on."
Then other voices joined in, not in sync but disjointed, yet all saying the same thing: "You need to move on." The voice of a friend who usually spoke in a joking tone but was distorted with concern. Another voice this time with a sigh. A bored voice. An exhausted voice. Voices of all shapes, colours, and dimensions. These voices found each other and the murmur grew like an incoming tidal wave, climbing higher gaining momentum and power.
In this stillness I heard another sound. A systematic beeping, right by my head. It caught the rhythm of the chorus of voices and with each line "you need to move on," I found myself floating closer to a stranger shore, each pulse pulling me closer and closer, like I was buoyant upon a moving tide which was tugging me in, pulling me out. The beeps, too, seemed to waver and slow as the chorus seemed to fade.
If I moved on, where would I go?
Someone later told me that's what I asked as I opened my eyes.
