Impressions by Daria Panarina

It was so quiet
in the ward that Nathan for the first minutes didn’t even realize he’s already woken up. The place was not familiar to him, so he sat up and looked round. It is not that he really wondered, what was going on here (or anywhere in the world), but did that instinctively.
In fact, it was nothing to look at: a small bedside table on the left, a neatly made empty hospital bed on the other side of the room and a picture on the wall in front of him. “Thanks God there is no one else here. Only was it a crazy psycho that I lacked to be completely happy!”, the boy thought.
Nathan didn’t want to be awake and, it would be worth adding, to be alive anymore. So, as he couldn’t realize the second wish, he closed his eyes. But the painting… He knew the scene. The famous “Impression” by Monet. “Who have put this thing here?” Nathan opened his eyes. “A piece of fabric, painted in dirty greenish gray, it looks as if it had been laying for two years under the sun, faded and eaten by moth. Everything is blurred but the fishers. Men who seem to have all their miserable lives painted in that grey. No joy, no happiness, just dirty faded grey sky and water every morning and grey fish in their hands. Hopeless lives. So is mine. And an accent – irritatively red sun. Red like blood, like the sweat and blood spilled by those fishers.” The door opened and nurse came to give him his medicine.
It was 7 o’clock in the evening when he woke up, the sun was setting. But opposite another sun was rising. “The red forever rising sun. What could be more inspiring then this. A splash of hope that breaks through cloudy sky. And where is all the ugly green I’ve seen later?” thought boy, looking at the sky getting pink and bringing desire to live this day.
“Mister Redington N. is feeling much better now. He told, that the sun at painting, I brought in his room healed him and gave him new hope. I said it should help”, reported the nurse to the doctor.
“The sun, the hope…ha-ha… The pills! They all are just addicts. Depression – pill – depression – more pills. Ten years won’t pass by the moment we all will talk about the hopes and love to life by swallowing another pill and blurring in a synthetic smile”, replied the doctor.