I spent fifteen days confined to a hospital bed after the car accident—fifteen long days that blurred together beneath harsh fluorescent lights and the constant, rhythmic beeping of machines. My body was injured in ways I didn’t yet fully grasp, and my voice was gone, trapped somewhere between pain and medication.
The doctors told me I was fortunate to survive, but it didn’t feel like fortune. It felt like being suspended in a still, empty space where time kept moving forward without me. My children lived far away and couldn’t come, my friends drifted back into their own routines, and the hours stretched endlessly, with the nights being the hardest of all.
