Yuri POV

 

April 12th, 2011

 

I was an artist once that painted the world.

 

I hashed lines of color, dazzling blues and greens, covering everything I was and everything people believed about me.

 

I wore colors of fury and poise, perfect and serene like a chameleon.

 

No one really knew the girl I was.

 

No one knew about me because it wasn’t important.

 

Neither my family nor my friends paid attention to the yearning in my heart or the skill I developed.

 

They didn’t care that worlds lived inside me.

 

They just cared that I performed in this one.

 

As long as I was the perfect child, friend, lover, with a perfect smile, perfect walk, and stunning eyes, then it was okay.

 

I was okay.

 

But, was I okay?

 

When I traded a paintbrush for a scalpel, when I became a masterful artist at deceiving death, I fulfilled their dreams for my life.

 

Instead of bringing to life creations, I brought back God’s work from the reaper.

 

I used lances and medication as a palette to whisper drops of magic into other’s veins.

 

I whipped arcs of electricity from my fingertips, rending jolts through people’s hearts.

 

The only parallel between the two was that I existed in the moments between moments.

 

It was where I lived and breathed.

 

Where I breathed until breathing wasn’t enough.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Breathe.”

 

I pump my hands up and down, throwing all my body weight into the compressions.

 

I feel ribs splinter under my hands.

 

“Breathe.” The inflation of the bag sounds like a wheeze.

 

I replace my hands, and start again.

 

1, 2, 3...I push down, my eyes fixing in determination on the cardiac monitor beside me.

 

With every depression, I see the peak.

 

I see it go flat.

 

I won’t remit.

 

I have slammed hundreds of blows into his chest, but I won’t stop.

 

Everything burns, my legs, my back.

 

My arms threaten to crumble.

 

I’m panting as I stop. “Breathe.”

 

“Should we call time of death?” The nurse beside me gives me a nervous look.

 

“No.” I keep going, feeling the sharp bones under my hands as I press into the void of the chest before me. “Where the hell is the crash cart?”

 

“Here!” I hear the contraption squeak into the room and I move off the bed, stumbling awkwardly as my body uncoils.

 

I’m out of shape.

 

I haven’t done this in a long time.

 

It feels like I’ve ran a marathon and my knee groans in protest when I knock it against the bed rail.

 

“Doctor Kwon, charged at 300 joules.”

 

I grab the paddles, ignoring my pain because somewhere this young man is fighting a tougher battle than I.

 

The nurses spread conductive jelly on the chest I’ve broken to pieces.

 

Hands positioning automatically, I glance around. “Clear!”

 

The sound that rips through the air, the tear of lightning released by me, makes my hands numb as the form under me arches.

 

All eyes turn to the monitor, to the wobbling line.

 

His heart is quivering.

 

It’s trying.

 

I put the paddles back as the machine beside me hums.

 

I pray.

 

I pray that when I send arcs of electricity through him that his heart will fire.

 

That he will open his eyes.

 

He is a young kid, too young to go.

 

He is too important to stop fighting for.

 

“Clear!” He has to fight.

 

Fight, damn you!

 

I scream silently as I crush another wave of light through him.

 

I suddenly hear it, the little blessed beep.

 

When my eyes fix on the monitor, I shudder a breath.

 

The small bounding peaks persist.

 

I stare at them, ready for if they stop.

 

I’m ready to pull him back again if I have to.

 

I have always been ready to fight for someone’s future.

 

 

 

 

But I will not fight for my own.

 

That is someone else’s job.

 

I have waged war for the world one person at a time.

 

I have held life in my hands both figuratively and literally.

 

I have walked the noble path.

 

I’ve sacrificed everything for others, for ghosts to walk in skin and persevere.

 

My future isn’t my fight.

 

I just don’t have it in me anymore.

 

The repressed romantic within me expects that if I fight for everyone, someone should fight for me.

 

So when I open my eyes, I have nothing left to give.

 

I don’t even care if I’ve been brought back from the brink.

 

If I have been salvaged from the grave, then the doctor that has done it better have a world of fight in him.

 

He’ll be making up for me.

 

So, he damn well should come with a truck load of epinephrine and adrenaline because I’m not working with him.

 

I’m not trying.

 

I won’t do it.

 

He can’t make me!

 

If he wants to bring me back to a world where my wife and child are gone, then he will do it without my help or consent.

 

I fist my hands.

 

As a matter of fact, I will fight.

 

I close my eyes and will myself to fall back into the abyss.

 

I hold my breath, slowing my heart.

 

I fade back against the magic that has rendered me to life.

 

This world can’t have me, won’t have me.

 

And how dare it try?

 

How dare this godforsaken place bring me back?

 

The world spins and my body betrays me by forcing me to breathe.

 

Breathe and exist.

 

“God damn it!”

 

When I hear my own voice, it shocks reality into me.

 

Silence encircles me aside from the sound of my own rapid breathing.

 

There is no beep of a cardiac monitor, no commands being shouted, no...anything.

 

I sit up quickly, slamming my knees into my chest.

 

I don’t even feel it.

 

I’m in a bed, not a hospital bed, but a queen size bedroom one.

 

I look around, unable to make out anything in the watery darkness.

 

Where am I?

 

When my eyes finally focus and I see a window frame decked in curtains across the room, I stare at it blankly, puzzle over it.

 

It looks familiar, like the millions of windows I have seen in my life and yet more intimate.

 

It’s more meaningful because it’s something I stared at every day, I know it.

 

Shadowed objects materialize and I’m not sure if they were there and I didn’t notice, or if they are being manifested.

 

My eyes move around in circles as I study everything, my dresser, my mirror, my desk.

 

They are absolutely benign, but represent a horror I can’t verbalize.

 

These things around me shouldn’t be.

 

The dresser was broken in a move years ago.

 

The desk was given to a family friend’s child.

 

All of it should be dust in the wind of my memories.

 

I should be dead.

 

I should be wiped out of existence.

 

But this isn’t heaven.

 

My mouth freezes in a silent scream as I realize where I am.

 

I’m in my childhood bedroom and it is exactly the way it looked when I was a little girl.

 

I pat my hands over myself, checking to make sure I’m solid, corporeal.

 

“It isn’t possible.” I say it as I think it and every fiber of my being literally stands on end.

 

My heart pounds, my mind races as I search for the logical conclusion because the alternative doesn’t make sense.

 

I must be dead, I must be in heaven.

 

This has to be heaven.

 

I pause.

 

Or hell.

 

The silence is disorienting and I struggle to hunt back through my memories, find order in the chaos of my mind.

 

I was dying in the living room, and then I was standing in a void, now this?

 

I’m almost afraid to move, as if something lurking in the darkness will grab me and haul me into another twisted setting.

 

I look down at myself, measuring the white silk nightie punctuated against the tan of my shoulder.

 

I trace the spaghetti strap and with a shaking hand I poke it.

 

I don’t know what I’m expecting, maybe for it to wind around me and drag me into myself, or pull me inside out.

 

It feels like a cotton and silk blend, nothing demonic at all.

 

I let go a ragged breath.

 

When my eyes focus on my skin, I realize how smooth and youthful it looks.

 

I look up at the mirror and toss off the blankets.

 

I can’t be that young, since I’m wearing a fairly y nightie, but when I see the tone and tan of my legs, I freeze as it wipes all thought out of my mind.

 

The blankets slide off the bed and out of my view.

 

I stare at the place where a jagged scar should be on my right knee, but smooth skin meets my gaze.

 

I cover my mouth with my hand as emotion builds up and chokes the back of my throat.

 

It’s not there ; there is no painful reminder of my senior year of high school.

 

I move my leg slowly and lean back as I lift it, bending at the knee.

 

There is not a single shot of pain, not a grind, not a pop.

 

It’s the first time in over half my life that my knee moves smoothly, perfectly.

 

Just to test it, I swing out of bed, doing a half round off the double stuffed mattress onto the hardwood floor.

 

It doesn’t hurt.

 

So I lunge, holding my balance with my arms outstretched.

 

I watch the muscles flex, watch the vastus medialis and rectus femoris bulge as they pull the patellar ligament attached to my knee.

 

It doesn’t threaten to unseat, it doesn’t make me feel like if I breathe my knee is going to crumble.

 

I stand up straight again, letting my hands fall limply to my side.

 

This has to be heaven if my knee is fixed.

 

No devil would do this for me, ma