The Unlucky One

Chapter 2

My eyes flutter open slowly, and meet a painfully blinding white light from above. I was in a hospital room, in a hospital bed. I also had miscellaneous tubes strapped to my arms. I let my eyes adjust, and then everything came flooding back to me.

She's gone.

I nearly started to sob until I noticed my mother was in the room, sprawled out onto the couch to my left. Her hair stuck to her tear stained cheeks, her eyes puffy and red. I did this to her. She was expecting me to come home with groceries, and also my sister. But I never came back. And now Emma is gone. Screams from most likely a patient came from outside of the door, waking up my mom. Her head immediately shot up, her entire body rising from the couch in one swift motion as she noticed I was awake.

"Oh, Elodie." She cried, collapsing onto me. I sat up slightly, enduring the pain of my stomach and wrapping an arm around her to pull her closer to me. "I've been worried sick. I just don't know what to do." She said in a muffled matter, sobbing into my shoulder. "The police say she was taken, but they can't tell me who! Why can't they tell me who!" She sat up and looked down at me. "Jesus, this is my baby! And she's missing! They should be doing everything in their power to help me, not keep things from me!" She yelled, now angry. She stood up and paced the room.

"And YOU." She growled after much pacing, pointing one of her perfectly manicured fingers my way. "What did YOU do to help save my baby?" She demanded, raising her voice even higher. I opened my mouth to speak, but nothing came out. I froze, unable to go back to what happened. I sat there as she impatiently waited for an answer. Hot, and unstoppable tears once again pricked my eyes as I started to shake. All of this was my fault. "I can't deal with one of your little panic attacks, these are in your damn head! What happened to my baby Elodie?!" She screeched. My clammy hands firmly gripped the bedsheets until my knuckles turned white. I then pressed my eyes shut and desperately tried to regulate my shaky breathing pattern. Here's a perfect example of my family. I'll go into detail now.

My mother, if you haven't noticed, is a tad bipolar. She's also a recovering alcoholic. The entire reason why my dad cheating on my mom, and ended up having a divorce is because he couldn't deal with my mom any longer. I don't blame him for feeling so beyond enraged towards her, but what he did wasn't right. He up and left my mom, Emma and I for a twenty five year old college student, training to be a nurse. My own father, left his wife of 20 years for someone seven years older than myself. My dad had severe anxiety, and lack of self esteem. Unluckily for me, that was passed down from him and handed off to me.

My parents used to get into these fights, nightly. My mom would have the best day ever, no complaints at all. And all it took was one thing to set her off and then, boom. Hell on earth. My parents would argue hours on end, and when it came to fighting with my mom, my father gained some sort of entitlement, and had no trouble listing every single thing that he hated about my mother.

Sometimes these arguments got so bad, that I'd leave the house to sleepover at a friends. I'd take Emma with me, but that was when she was even younger than she is now. Sometimes we weren't as lucky, and had to sit and suffer through it. The worst was when either my mom or dad would scream at me, telling me to pick a side right then and there. Of course, I never did. I tuned them out and imagined that I wasn't there. Pressing my eyes closed and covering my ears until they stopped. Luckily for Emma she was young, and doesn't remember a thing.

This was the first time. The first time in a while that my mom had come undone. She was doing so well. Three months without any outburst of anger, or rage. Even though Emma is four years old, she's still my mom's "baby" and I understand that. She won't admit it, but she favors Emma. Up until this point my mom was great, I had almost forgot how bad she can be. But an incident like this has sent her somewhere she's never been yet, and she free falling towards me as a landing strip.

"Of course Elodie! Just like your father! Speechless! Move on from that and tell me, what the hell did you do to help your sister?" She screamed, her face now bright red in rage towards me.

I finally found the words.

"What did I do?" I croaked, staring her down from my bed. I looked at her through my blurry and teared up vision, my body quaking. She placed both hands on either side of the railing that ended at the foot of the bed. "I was punched in the face, broke bones, spit up blood, and was shot twice! It wasn't until I was bleeding out on the floor that I realized my time was up, and that I was close to death. Maybe you should be a little more considerate, glad that you still have one daughter, who in fact did try her best to save her sister." I yelled. My eyes nearly bulged out of their sockets at how angry I was toward her. This is the first time I really spoke my mind. This time I didn't sit quietly in the corner, letting my mom yell. I told her straight.

"I love Emma mom." I mentioned softly. "I tried my best, but they got away and they took her. I couldn't do it. I'm sorry." She shook her head, rolling her eyes and speaking. "If you would have tried your best, she would be here with us." She scoffed. She exited the room, slamming the door behind her.

I ran a panicked hand through my hair, shakily letting out a few painful breaths. I wiped away stray tears, rubbing my eyes in defeat. I should have tried harder to save Emma.

The door opened slowly, revealing a woman in white coat and a stethoscope draped off of her shoulders. "Elodie? I'm Dr. Michaels." She said softly, shutting the door behind her and making her way towards me. "I was going to come in early but I... I heard the yelling and waited it out." She mentioned. How do I respond to that? "Oh..." I trailed off, nodding my head.

"I'm immensely sorry for what you have been put through, I can't imagine loosing someone I care for, especially in this way." I nodded at her comment again. "I just wanted to let you know, it's not your fault. You tried your best, and that is enough. We have many cases of missing people because of this grocery store robbery, you're not alone. People all ages have been taken, and even more wound up here in the ER, like you."

Her words comforted me a bit, knowing that I wasn't going through all of this pain by myself. "Do you happen to go to Ridgemont High?" She asked politely. I nodded. "I start there in a few weeks."

"Well, there's a teacher who is new to the school, and apparently he was with a friend. He witnessed his friend being shot down and killed, and now he's recovering here, just like you. I believe you two are the only youngsters at the school who've been affected." She said solemnly. I bit down on my lip softly, thinking about how hard that must be to see you friend die in front of you. I felt sorry for that guy.

"In other news, I'm not sure if your mother mentioned anything about your condition..." She trailed off and I shook my head, fighting the urge to roll my eyes at the mention of my mother. I still couldn't get over how she was reacting to all of this. Do you see me screaming and pointing fingers? Nope.

"Well, while you were out we performed a very successful surgery. We removed the two bullets that entered you through your stomach. We've also examined your rib cage, and two were broken. That explains the shortness of breath." As she said this I took in another shaky breath. I've never broken a single bone in my life, until this day.

"We're prescribing you medications to help the healing process, also you will need to stay about a week in intensive care, just to be safe. But since you are eighteen, and your condition isn't the worst we've seen in here today, you can be released after further instruction on how to take care of your bandaging and medications." I simply nodded at the older woman's directions. I was definitely going to take a chance and go home, hopefully I could calm my mom, and maybe even myself, down from everything that has happened. I watched Dr. Michaels turn and reach the door knob.

"Thank you, Dr. Michaels. This means a lot." I said, raising my voice slightly so she would hear clearly from across the room. The sudden intake of air in order to raise my voice made me regret my actions as I literally felt my rib shift slightly. Won't be doing that again.

Dr. Michaels shot me a soft smile and added, "Don't worry, they'll do their best to find your sister." And with that she exited the room. I'm sure she meant for her comment to help me cope with everything that has happened, but it only made me think more. My best didn't save Emma, it resulted in me getting the shit beat out of me. It also resulted in being shot twice.

I only hope the police's "best" efforts were ten times better than mine.