Dazzling White

The Accident (Adapted from "In the Outback" and double-adapted from " A prayer for Blue Delaney" by Kirsty Murray)

"Colm!!!" Bill woke up crying Colm's name. Looking around he found himself lying ina a clean white hospital bed in a room painted in a dazzling white. Th esun was just shining down on him semi-veiled by a small cloud. Everything was just like normal. His dog, Rusty, lay at the end of his bed in front of the window. Bill smiled as good as he could for he had scraped up the corner of his mouth. Then he suddenly started to remember the accident with the wild boar he was involved in. And what was the most important thing: "Colm!!!" The one he left behind...

Under great efforts he managed to seize the post of his bed rising himself up leaning on the wall when a sharp pain shot into his leg. There was a bandage soaked eith his blood wrapped around it. Bill froze until the pain softened and eventually died away slowly. He supressed an outcry of pain and focused on his memories from the terrible encounter. Everything he remembered was Colm taking his gun and firing at the boar. Then he fell unconscious. What if the gun had misfired?What if Colm had missed? What if Colm didn't make it? What should he do? What could he possibly do with one useless leg rigidly sticking to his side? What if he became alone oncemore?

Bill was interupted in his thoughts when a nurse came into the room opening the windows. She carried a heavy smell of alcohol used for disinfection with her. He hastily blinked back his tears.

"Was there a teenage boy with me?" he said addressing the nurse who now was checking his blood pressure.

"A boy? Never heard of one but you are recovering quite good. If your leg has healed completely you will be discharged from the hospital..."

"The boy! He is very important to me!"

"I did'nt think..."

"Sorry I didn't mean to yell at you..."

After the nurse had left Bill started to think of his youth. It wasn't an easy one nor was it by any means happy. He was born into a large middle-class family with far too many children. All in all he had five brothers and two sisters. They were all treated the same. Not one was prefered and moved out on his 18th birthday with only a few dollars in his pockets. Bill used to drift with the crowd stealing a few dollars here and a little money there. Never too much. Just enough to be able to eat half a roll everyday sleeping where there was a little fire on the streets. The days dragged on this way. A day became a week. A week a year until he decided to make a new start in Australia. He had never liked anyone particularly, but it changed on the day he turned fifty.

There was this boy. Colm. There were tears in his eyes, but he let them have their way this time. Scalding tears ran down his cheeks. It did Bill good to shed a few tears.Oncemore the old man struggled staggering to his feet. Rusty woke up and barked loudly, but when the alarmed nurses and staff members came into Bill's room they found it completely clean and tidy without any trace of human or even animal presence...