"Am I real?" I asked myself.
My voice came out, lower and rougher than usual, which was fine, that was normal. The words themselves were less normal.
I turned my hands over, looking at the lines on the palm, the faint scar on the left thumb from a rope accident two years ago.
I pinched the skin on the back of my right hand and watched it settle back into place.
"While I was unconscious," I said, to nobody, to the ceiling, to the walls, "there was something warm. Holding me."
I could still feel the shape of it somehow— not a memory exactly, more like a physical impression left behind, the way a blanket left warmth on skin even after you removed it.
Somebody had been holding me while I was out. For a long time, from the feeling of it. "And damn. What the heck."
I paused.
"Why do I talk like this now," I said. "'What the heck.' That's not— I don't say 'what the heck.' Where did that come from."
I sat with this for a moment.
