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Tomorrow
Tomorrow
I remember dreaming, but I don’t remember what. I do remember a sound. A beep. I think I still hear it, a beep… beep. Where is it coming from? Am I dreaming? beep… beep… How do I turn it off? Beep... I feel the sunlight on my skin. Maybe, I should open my eyes now. Where am I? This isn’t my room. Oh God! What is that? Is that a heart monitor? Am I in the hospital? But… why is my Rolling Stone poster hanging on the wall?
I see my poster. I see the heart monitor. I see a desk… my desk! This is my room!
‘Carl?’
An old woman is at the door… my door. Somehow she looks familiar; too familiar. ‘Son?’ she asks and quickly approaches my bed. She looks at me ecstatic.
‘Oh my son… you are awake! I thought I lost you!’
‘Who…?’
‘Oh Carl… I’m so sorry. You had an accident. You’ve been in a coma.’
‘But… what? Oh God, are you my… mom?’
‘I know I look old’ she says and unconsciously arranges her hair ‘but well… it has been 30 years.’
OK. That’s it. I am waking up from a coma 30 years later to have a heart attack and die.
‘Calm down, Carl. Everything is going to be fine.’ Fine? How can it be fine? Oh no...
‘Where are they?’ I ask, fighting the tears in my eyes.
‘They’re fine. You will see them tomorrow. But you should get out of bed. Lord knows you’ve been there long enough. Come and eat breakfast with me.’
Before I realize it, I am downstairs with my mom. I remember her checking the machines. I remember her telling me something, but I don’t remember what. I was in shock. I’m still in shock. I remember panicking in the mirror after she left. I remember crying my eyes out. I remember being consumed with despair for all those years lost. But then I remembered tomorrow. I will see them tomorrow.
‘Margaret opened her own restaurant six years ago. We can go there tomorrow, you will love it’
‘And my baby?’
‘She is not a baby anymore, darling. She turned into a lovely woman. She comes to visit you a lot. Oh… and you should read her writing! It is as beautiful as yours. I’ll show you tomorrow.’
Suddenly she stood up. ‘Oh darling, I forgot I had an appointment. I’ll be back soon.’
I couldn’t comprehend what she was saying.
‘Sorry darling, it is really important’ she says before I can say anything, she is gone. Without a chance of saying any word, I find myself lonely and comfortless.
Time goes by quickly. I’m still sitting and for some reason I’m unable to stand up. My mind tries to slowly arrange the puzzle that once was my life. My brain can’t seem to process it all: the accident, the coma, my awakening, my mom, my grown-up daughter…
I suddenly feel an impetuous urge to capture my thoughts into paper. I need to write my ideas in order to seize them all.
And so, I rush to the nearest pen and paper. I write every single thing I can. Descriptions of the house, feelings and even all I had done since the morning. I am not sure how many pages I wrote, nor how long I sat there writing. The sound of my mom’s car outside interrupted me. I look out the window. It’s dark already. I turn to my papers. There are too many! I need to hide them, or she will think me mad! I ran towards the nearest drawer.
Oh God, how I regret choosing that drawer, for inside resides the truth. Inside reside more papers, papers with my thoughts, each one with a different date but the same story, a story of a man walking up from a coma. My story. Today’s story. Desperately, I read them all. All until I find one dated 25 years ago where the story is not today’s. Is a story of a man who had an accident, an accident that lost him his family and memories; a man that suffers anterograde amnesia.
‘I’m sorry, darling.’ I hear my mom’s voice behind me. ‘It was just too difficult. Too difficult to tell you every day what you lost.’
I turn to look at her, my mind numb ‘but… I’ll see them tomorrow?’
With her face full of sorrow, she smiles and says ‘Yes darling, you’ll see them tomorrow.’
Written by Ana Lucero and Luis Prieto
