Clara glanced out the window of her hospital room. The colors of autumn where already beginning to form on the tips of treetops. She didn’t know whether to smile or frown at that sight. It had always been her favorite time of the year, the only problem was that for the last two years she had been spending it stuck indoors the entire time.
The wires that laid across her chest and arms were nothing compared to the tingling sensation of a midnight fall chill. The bed that she was constantly in wasn’t nearly as fun as sprawling out her limbs in a pile of fallen leaves. Ice chips didn’t warm her up like the chamomile tea she drank out on her front porch, wrapped in softly knitted quilts and taking in the view of the golden-orange mountains in the distance.
Clara felt her heart skip a beat as she remembered the lovely smell of freshly baked apple pie that the wind carried in the fall. She could almost see that birds fly through her memory as they soared across the sky on the journey south for the winter to come. She could feel her fingers running over the pages of a romance novel as she sat in a red and yellow park, the autumn silence being the perfect setting to read in.
She reached for her neck, the absence of a sung scarf making her feel nostalgic. She usually dressed warmly for autumn. Thick coats and long scarfs were all she could ever find herself wearing in the fall. Clara tore her eyes away from the window. Now all she could wear were hospital gowns that made her feel bare and exposed. These dull walls and stern-faced people made her crave the outdoors even more.
“If only,” she sighed. “I could go outside.”
Clara did get to enjoy the fall that year, only it was more from a birds-eye view from the clouds.
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