I awaken staring up at a white ceiling hung with fluorescent fixtures. I try to look around, but the instant I move, an aching pain the size of all the emptiness of the space above me rushes into my head and fills it up. I lie perfectly still for what must be at least a full five minutes with a loud low sound buzzing everywhere before the sharpness of the pain begins to go away...

***
When I am my normal non-understanding self again, I cautiously begin to move, barely without motion, each muscle, each micrometer of movement, felt, measured, until I sit upright on the side of an all white bed, head throbbing painfully...

The huge room in which I lie, the bed, more like an emergency gurney than a bed, to one extreme side, echoes white light like marble echoes words. A few small white metal tables sit against the walls, here and there, but most of the wide floor space is empty. I try to remember why I am here, but there are no memories and time stretches back into eternity. I sit still, aching all over, but the pain in my head mercifully prevents me from concerning myself with any pain but the pain in my head...

***
After a long time, I slowly remember coming to this place. An image of landing and sliding a spaceship along concrete and into an outside wall next to a wide double glass door entrance dominates my thoughts for a long while. A nurse (I assume she's a nurse. She wears all white) looks up from her desk in an alcove far off to the side of my bed after I turn my head toward her and stare at her for what seems like a very long time, but it may have only been a minute. When she notices that I'm looking at her, when she sees, I guess, that I'm awake and sitting up, she gets up immediately and walks toward me. It takes her a long time to reach me across the wide expanse of space.

"How are you feeling?" she asks as she at last arrives beside me.

She places a cool palm across my forehead, and it feels so good.

"Oh, you're still burning up," she says. "You should lie down."

She puts her hands on my shoulders and guides me back down into a lying position, and she leaves her hands on my shoulders for a moment longer after I lie back, to keep me down, I think. Her hands feel so cool and firm on my shoulders. I can feel their coolness soaking through my white shirt. This is the first time I notice that I am dressed all in white too.

She removes her hands.

"You lie still for a while," she says. "Do you want anything? Anything to drink?"

I only realize I am extremely thirsty after she has said it and I respond by shaking my head no. I shake my head before the thought that I am thirsty registers in my brain, and before the pain dictates that I stop moving it. The pain is in my brain.

"Well if you want something, call me. I'll be right over here."

She walks away. I stretch my neck up and look down at my feet. They're hot. I see that I wear white booties. I try to kick them off, try to pull each of them off with the other foot, but I can't do it. They're tied on with drawstrings around the ankles. I don't want to be wearing booties. I lie my head back down and instantly I feel the soothing relief of my neck muscles relaxing as blood rushes into my head and pulses violently in my ears, throbbing with the pain so that I have to close my eyes and try to gasp for breath. I miss the coolness of the nurse's touch...

***
I open my eyes. The nurse is bending over me, straightening my sheets. I am covered, and I am so hot. I feel the coolness of the sheets beneath my hot hands. My palms lie flat on linen.

"Oh, you're awake again," she says. "Do you want anything?"

"Wa..." I try to say water, but my throat seizes up. The noise I make makes it begin to burn, a dry parched burning, the burning desert sand of the dry planet I am from. "Wa...er," I manage to say, as I try to lift my head but let it crash in pain back down onto the pillow. The softness of the pillow tears into the back of my head like a lump of concrete.

"How about some ginger ale?" the nurse asks. She lifts a can up toward my face and inserts a straw between my lips. I suck, even though it fills my head, throat, and chest with an enormous hurt, and I am rewarded with the most soothing nectar I have ever tasted, but then quickly it starts to burn in my throat and I have to stop drinking. I close my eyes and feel hot tears run out of them down my burning face. She wipes my tears away with her bare cold fingers. My brain screams, "Touch my face. Touch my face. Lay your cool, cool hands over my face like you did before." But she doesn't do it. Only my brain screams it. I can't make my voice come out of me...

***
Surrounded by darkness, millions of stars so far distant, stark and bright with no atmosphere to distort them, I speed through nothing, as if I don't move at all, spaceship velocity relative to nothing is nothing, until I land screeching metal across concrete, desperate to get somewhere where people can help me out of the darkness...

***
I open my eyes suddenly and the whiteness of the light makes me close them suddenly again. I open them slowly. No one is around, I can feel it. I try to get up, slowly. Music is playing somewhere. White music. I don't want to listen to white music. I'm sick of white. I have a white sickness. I turn my head. The nurse is not at her desk. I struggle to get up. I stagger toward where she had been sitting. My headache is not so bad now, but each step makes it throb. Each step makes me gasp for breath. I walk slowly, teetering, afraid I will fall over, over toward the alcove where the nurse's desk is. The music is coming from the nurse's desk.

It takes me forever to cross the white emptiness of the space between me and the nurse's alcove. I look down at every step ache gasp I teeter take, and then I look back up and I am no closer than I was a step before. I am crossing an infinity of space. When I have gone halfway, I remember Zeno's paradox and calculate that I will never get there. Half the distance, half the distance, half the distance...

***
I arrive at the alcove, at the half wall that separates it from the large emptiness of the room. Zeno was wrong. They proved that, I think. I proved that. They think. Now I can hang onto the half wall and move faster. I get into the alcove, past the nurse's desk, and I see it, the CD player. And stacks of CDs. I lift each CD, look at it, and put it down. I thought CDs would not be so heavy, each one white music, one after another. And then I see a green one: Debussy. Debussy said, "Music is the space between the notes." Space music! I want to play the space music. I think, "How will I ever get all that way back across space to my white bed before the green music is over. I want to lie down and listen to the verdure of Debussy. I don't want to waste Debussy walking across the infinity of Zeno's space.

I hear a noise behind me. I try to turn around fast in case another ship is coming up on me from behind, but I can't. I have to turn slowly, a tiny teeter ache gasp side step turn at a time as I hear, "Oh, what are you doing over here? What are you doing out of bed?" It's the nurse's voice I am turning to see, her, and hot tears burn down my face, eyes on fire, and I haven't even turned all the way to see her yet, I can't remember what she looks like, when she comes up beside me, takes my arm, steadies me, and I hand her Claude Debussy.

"All right," she says. "I'll put it on, but you're going back to bed."

She fumbles with the CD player behind my back, and then she returns to take my arm again, and she guides me away out of the alcove, moving so speedily like we're going to crash-slide along the slick tile floor like concrete, except that she holds my arm so tight against her and presses the side of her breast against it, and that makes me feel cool and secure as the room begins to spin green and we fly on color over toward the bed.

Zeno shot an arrow into the air...

My nurse fumbles with me at the bedside. She tries to guide me onto it. I want to tell her she's moving too fast. Doesn't she know what happens when you fly too fast, speeding along near the speed of white light? It's okay when you're out there, but when your so close to concrete--but I don't tell her, because when she touches me, my aching goes away, and she touches me all over, trying to get me into the bed, pressing her white thighs and breasts against me, and finally I am lying down again. She rests against me for a second.

"Thank you," I manage to say. My throat is hoarse and dry.

"Oh, so you're finally talking."

The greenness of the music intensifies.

I try to say, "Don't play any more white music," but all that comes out is "D--own..." and my voice cracks. I laugh. She laughs. She fixes the sheets around me. And then she stops. She looks at me.

"I saw your car," she says.

I don't know what she means. I stare at her.

"Your car. Your Trans Am. I saw it sitting out back. They're getting ready to tow it. I didn't see it before. I come into the building at the front."

My car. I stare at her.

"Isn't it lucky you wrecked it right outside?" I try to speak. I open my mouth, but I don't have any words.

I want to tell her to touch me, to take the pain away.

"You made a long gouge in the concrete."

The concrete. Oh, the concrete. She saw the concrete. She understands.

8-6-96