Girl on Fire

Here's something dark for you to chew on: I've been thinking about angels recently, especially when I was in the ER the other day. The triage nurse asked what brought me in. I told her that my stomach was on fire. She laughed. From then on when they came into my room to check on me, they called me not by my name, but by my rage. Where's the girl with her stomach on fire?

The doctor said that nothing was wrong with me. That all my tests came back normal. He left the room and I saw through the glass window in my door an insane woman locked in the room across from me, banging furiously on the door with a cheap shoe.

She looked strung out. Mouth open like she was rabid, red eyes, dirty, matted hair, teeth that could have fallen out if you just reached out to touch them. I wondered if the fluorescent lights in the ER burned her eyes alive. They say people on m*th can't stand bright lights. I wonder if the nurses in the ER had a nickname for her, too.

I'm willing to bet it wasn't a nice one.

I was still thinking about angels, about how there are two kinds of people in this world. Those who are fine with reality as it is, stone cold sober and happy to merely exist, seemingly never questioning the space they take up. Then, on the other end of that spectrum, are the others: those who will obliterate their entire physical body to match the chaos inside their minds.

Maybe it's religion that makes the difference, why most people seem alright to wait this life out and when something bad happens to them, call it god, no questions asked. Or maybe it's luck. Maybe it's being hugged and told that you are loved. Why was that woman screaming and locked in a room, when across the hallway, I was also enraged, the only difference being that my demons stayed shut up inside myself, and I had never been out after dark with strangers willing to sell their souls for one more hit, one more ounce.

The second kind of people in this world know that angels don't exist, because they themselves have been outside of their bodies, leaving earth, stuck somewhere between heaven and hell at all times, with no one worshipping them or even really noticing their presence, unless it suddenly bothers them or they are paid to do it.

If it is known that angels ascend into heaven, the bright place shot through with light, m*th heads would never want to enter it, because it would set them on fire.

I stared into the glass window on the door of my hospital room, a looking glass that showed not my reflection, but the reflection of a woman entering hell, her eyes not seeing the reality she was so desperate to escape from, clawing at her skin because it was a prison and probably felt enflamed, like it was on fire.

When the nurse came back into my room, she said, "Ah, the girl with her stomach on fire!"

I said, "No, you're blocking the view. The woman on fire is in that room."