So Long, and Goodnight

10. Stitches

Chapter 10
Stitches

POV - John

Everything hurt, but it wasn't as bad as I was expecting it to be. It didn't feel like it had before. It was like everything had been dulled.

I wouldn't call it a pleasant feeling, but it didn't make me want to scream out in pain.

And there was this incessant beeping. It was steady, which is a good thing I guess, but it was very annoying.

Why won't it stop? I thought, opening my eyes; only to shut them again as I was blinded by the lights overhead.

Groaning, I tried to open them again; only to get the blinding light again. Only this time, it didn't hurt my eyes as much as it had the first time.

There's nothing worse then being blind... Well, there is, but at this moment I didn't care about the other worse things. I just didn't like being blind.

It was a couple more minutes of rapid blinking before I was finally able to open my eyes without light spots appearing in my vision.

This defiantly isn't anything like where I was before, was the tough that came to mind when I was able to focus on my surrounding. Overhead lights, white walls and a thing blue blanket covering me.

"Ah, you're awake." Somebody said from somewhere.

Awake? Why would they be worried if I was awake or not? I thought, a little confused. I was in some sort of other world, wasn't I?

"You've had a lot of people worried about you." This person continued, "They'll be glad to know you're awake."

It seemed as though my voice had decided not to co-operate with what my brain wanted it to do. I wanted to ask where I was, and why wasn't it my mom who came to see me.

Work, dammit. Work!

"I'll go and get a doctor. They can check you over."

There were footsteps that got fainter the further they got from me, but the beeping remained constant.

That seemed to be the only constant thing to stay with me. First mom dies, then dad seemed to be absent all of the time, Alan mad at me... I don't think I need to continue, do I?

A few moments later the footsteps started returning. Hallelujah! Finally, someone who can tell me what the hell is going on.

"How are you feeling, John? You had us very worried when you came in yesterday." They asked, leaning over me and using a penlight to check my eyes.

I groaned again, and instinctively snapped my eyes shut. What is it with people and lights today? Is it gang up on poor John day?

"Pupils equal and reactive."

"Where's my mom?" My voice was really croaky, and it actually kind of hurt to get those three words out.

The brown haired doctor, and the peroxide blond nurse, looked a little surprised at my sudden question, but they should surely know where she could be. But then again... shouldn't she already be here, waiting at my bedside.

He consulted his tablet for a few seconds before he answered my question, a look of mild shock on his face.

"You're mother died in January..."

"I know that." I interrupted him, "But isn't she here? I would've thought when her son died; she would've been here. To welcome him to the afterlife."

Concern was then etched into the doctors' features.

"You didn't die, John." He told me, "You're alive, and you're in Kansas General; recovering from a drugs overdose and self-inflicted wrist wounds."

That couldn't be right. I died. I was in some sort of purgatory when I first came to. Shouldn't they have come up with their answer by now?

But then again, why would they need a doctor to check on me if I was dead?

The only plausible answer was that I had been unsuccessful in what I had attempted to do. That I was still alive.

And with that realization hitting me like a ton of bricks, I turned onto my side and started to cry.

~oOo~

I don't know how long I stayed like that – absentmindedly playing with the white cotton bandages that covered my wrists – but I must have started to dose, because the next thing I knew, I was being wheeled to somewhere else.

They had tried talking to me and asking questions, but I hadn't wanted to answer them, so I didn't. Eventually, they'd just left me alone; but kept someone by my side the whole time. I could feel their presence, even if I couldn't see them.

And I didn't want to. I didn't want to see anybody. I didn't want to acknowledge that they were there at all.

It was just all so confusing for me. I didn't know what I wanted. On one hand, I was happy to be alive, but on the other, I wanted to be dead – in the land of the free, with mom and Grandpa.

All I wanted was for my family to go back to the way we were... To be happy, whole and carefree. I wanted to have family dinners again.

Why did this situation have to be so foreign to me? Give me a physics question and I could answer it easily, a fact about the stars, space or anything related tot that was a specialty of mine, and a maths problem – no trouble at all. But dealing with emotions is not something that I am used to.

So I just continued to lay on my side – still fiddling with the bandages – as they continued to wheel me around in one of the hospital beds.

Where were they taking me? If I were being discharged - which was unlikely - they would probably just have dumped me in a wheelchair and taken me to whoever was here to collect me.

No. They were obviously moving me to a different ward. Somewhere where I was somebody else's problem. Typical. Always dumping me on someone else.

I huffed out a breath. It had always been the same, even when we were younger. Being the odd one out, I was always left at the sidelines when we played contact sports, or I was left to my own devices and read with mom.

My bed suddenly slowed. I had been so engrossed in my own thoughts that I hadn't realized that we had almost got to our desired destination.

Sitting up, I came to the realization that this ward looked exactly the same as the one I'd just been moved from. The only difference being lots of empty beds - only a few of them were actually occupied.

As soon as the bed came to a standstill, the two nurses and the doctor left; handing a file to somebody sitting at a desk.

That's it? I thought, You're just leaving me here, with no explanation of what's going on or what's going to happen to me?

"Don't worry. They normally leave the introductions to me."

Turning my head to the side, I saw a ginger girl standing beside the bed. She was probably just under or over five feet, and she couldn't be any older than me; maybe just a little younger, but not by much.

But what really made me stare wasn't that she was wearing a very baggy NASA t-shirt... It was the fact that her ice blue eyes seemed to stand out on her pale face, only because of the purplish, bruise like bags under them.

"They call me Jane." She continued, "And welcome to the SWW, the Suicide Watch Ward - your home away from home, until they see you fit to leave."