When Favour opens her eyes again, the world has changed, turned forever into something else.

          She is lying down, peaceful and still and free of all sensation. She knows right away that she is lying in the middle of the street. She is not confused, not disorientated, not even surprised; Favour is lying right in the middle of the street, and she is just so very comfortable. As if she has been lying there forever. In that brief and quiet little moment, Favour belongs. She can still sense a distant part of her mind trying to object, looking for reasons, scrambling to place a timeframe for this whole lying-in-the-middle-of-the-road business. How long have I been here? She knows not to pay this any heed. How long–that doesn’t matter. She knows time has slowed down so much that it is no longer a reliable measure of anything. Instead, Favour turns to things that do matter. Like light. Since she was a child, the first thing Favour would do upon waking up would be to instinctively turn towards the light. Taking care not to move–why disrupt this moment’s peace?–, through the corners of her eyes she can spot a great source of light somewhere. At some incredible distance way up above her, the evening sky is still proud and blue, and what scattered clouds there are disperse a rosy glow of such incredible warmth that Favour finds them moving beyond description. Moments like this come by so rarely, she is determined to hold on to this one. Favour closes her eyes.

         When her eyes are open again, she finds the clouds have slipped further down along the horizon. Some of their tips are now orange, about to catch fire. The colours of the sunset are so perfect, it feels to Favour more like a sunset she is remembering rather than one she is actually seeing. She can sense other lights, lesser ones, moving around her, but Favour still hasn’t found a good enough reason to move. With eyes still pointed towards the sky, she unconsciously follows bluebirds as they fly over with such great ease. At least she thinks those are bluebirds–that’s what her sister had told her they were. As Favour lies down on the ground with the whole blue sky beneath her, she allows herself to believe she is just as weightless as those bluebirds. Without being aware of it she tries to spread her arms as if they were wings. Gently, she thinks, the way bluebirds, or ballerinas– 

           And that’s when the first stab of this excruciating pain strikes her. A searing, blinding flash of pain that is so unexpected and cruel and so close to her brain that Favour knows it will become too much, and right away it does. Favour slips into blackness.

          Unconsciousness doesn’t offer a break from the pain, however. She’s back to right away, it feels like. As if no time has passed. Or maybe it feels as if no time has passed because the pain just didn’t cease while she was out cold. Not even for a second. Nor is the pain confined to her arms.

              No.

          It’s everywhere. It’s on her chest. And her head. And her legs. And parts of her body from which the pain comes to her quicker than their actual names do. Every inch of her body is screaming out in pain, and Favour can do nothing but observe as panic creeps in. She knows she has been hit by something, but she can’t think of any details. Favour tries to take a deep breath in, but her chest feels like it has collapsed in on itself. The best she can do is let in quick, sharp breaths before the agony blinds her. She hurts in places she didn’t think she could. She can feel her eyes pushed out of focus from the pain. Fog starts falling on the edges of things. 

          It would be so much easier if she were to simply faint again. But this time she. Fights it. This time she fights it. She fights it and manages to hold on, for now. Favour is still awake and hurts and immediately regrets fighting for consciousness. Her eyes jump around quicker than she would like them to. They pick up disjointed images all around her. Like a collage that a child has put together: Holborn Underground Station. The number 25. People looking down at her, their hands covering their mouths. Cars somehow persisting, pushing past only a few feet away from her. 

          With every breath her chest feels like it is being beaten down and broken, then put back together just enough for it to be broken down again. She finds a way to lessen the pain this causes her. She takes very quick, short, successive breaths; she also breathes from further down: from her belly, not her chest. There is a buzzing inside her head that comes and goes every few seconds, and sometimes when it comes she can stand it, but other times she can’t. Very quickly she learns to fear this. 

          She doesn’t dare move around anymore; she tries to stay as still as humanly possible. With every last trace of conscious effort, she fights to stay as still as she can. Her breathing is constant–tiny breaths in, tiny breaths out, many times each second, but she still feels that it’s not enough. She fears that at some point in the very near future she won’t have enough oxygen and she’ll be forced to take a deep breath to compensate and then she’ll have to endure her chest collapsing in on itself all over again. She does her best to hold on. The buzzing comes back and this time it is much stronger than she expected. 

          Favour feels like she is waiting for something but she has no idea what. People are standing as still as columns around her, out of all focus. They seem so desperately away. Some hold out their mobiles as if they’re taking photos. Favour wants to cry out of the incredible distance separating them from her, but she realises she already is. Tears feel warm as they roll down her temples. She then grasps that what she really wants is to be able to cry more, but that’s not possible. 

          The pain feels brand new and ancient at the same time; it has an unbearable intensity that she knows she hasn’t experienced before, and yet she has this strange sensation that this pain was always there somehow, that it was always lurking in the shadows, and it was only ever waiting for the right time to come for her. And the time is now, Favour knows–not because she wants to know, but because this horrible piece of mortal knowledge has been forced on her. And there’s no taking any of this back now. Favour passively observes as she sinks in a dead puddle of desperation, in the knowledge that there is nothing she can do but suffer through every last drop of this horrible pain. And no, there’s no taking any of this back, none whatsoever. What’s done cannot be undone. She remembers these words the way one remembers an old lullaby, comforting words that had always been deeply imbedded in her, but only now does she finally understand them. Because this once, just this once, instead of in her mind, the words seem to be forming within her body somewhere, as though her body is spontaneously forming the words in an attempt to comprehend what this pain really means. It’s almost as if she is birthing them.

          What’s done cannot be undone. 

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