Cold Winds

1

I don't remember how I got here.. why everything is so blurry. My face hurts... my body hurts.. everything is in pain. I'm not sure, there's bright lights and voices. Some of them are angry, some of them are sad. So I opened my eyes the rest of the way. I realised that as I tried to move my hand over my eyes, there was something in my arm. I looked down only to see little tubes underneath some sort of tape, and suddenly someone grabbed my hand. I looked over and there was my brother, Lukas. I was starting to wonder if everything was ok, if I was ok. That's when I remembered it. When I remembered what happened this morning, I could tell where I was. I recalled walking to school, and I wasn't paying attention to where I was going. Someone had grabbed my wrist and dragged me off of the path. For once I hated living out in the country. Sure, I loved walking to the bus stop every morning, but today made me hate to do it. My memory is a bit blurry on what happened when he dragged me off into the trees, but I remember getting away from him and trying to run. But from what I can tell, I was hit in the back of the head by what I think was a tree branch or a metal pipe.

But that's the last I can remember from that until now. Lukas tells me that someone found me on the side of the road with blood just pouring from my head. And they brought me to the hospital. It was a neighbour so they knew who I was when they brought me and called the house phone to let them know. By now I could see all of the rest of my family there with me. Not so much family though, as friends. Lukas's boyfriend, Mathias, and their friends Tino and Berwald. But I've always referred to them as uncles, and Mathias is like a brother to me. So I very much appreciate him taking care of me the way he does.

One thing I noticed was that Berwald's son's weren't there. One of them, the older, Peter, is adopted. The younger one, Isak, was from his ex wife. At least that's what I've been told. He showed up at the house one day with his son's and Tino, I was eight when that happened. They've lived on the farm ever since. I can't believe it's been seven years since that. I had been really happy that my favourite uncle was moving in with me, but he also had his kids to take care of, and not a lot of time to talk with me. I've always liked talking to Berwald, since he doesn't talk much and usually has nothing to say. But he's always been a good listener and that's what I like.

To me, there's alway something about your classmates finding out you're in the hospital that's annoying. Because you know none of them care about you, and yet they still say cheesy things like, "we all care about you!" "Hope you get better soon!" But it's all a lie. They've never cared about me. I have a couple of friends, I guess. Leon is probably my best friend. There's a guy in my grade level named Marco too, we don't talk much, but his crush, Marie, has invited me to play cards a few times. I've joined, and Leon has come with me, but she wins every time. She says her father raised her in the slums of France. I can believe that.

I fell asleep. Only for a couple of hours but I did. When I woke up, Peter and Isak were here, and they immediately ran over and jumped up onto the bed with me. Tino tried to stop them but they were already shooting a million questions at me. It was funny, so I just held up my good hand, my other wrist being sprained, to stop them. "One at a time, Peter goes first, then Isak.." I told them. They went back and forth for almost an hour before Berwald picked them both up and sat down with them so they would stop pestering me. I enjoyed that.

On the topic of classmates, I've already seen it on social media. People are making up fake stories about what happened to me. Got hit by a truck, tried to kill myself, my parents beat the shit out of me, I got kidnapped. None of those are particularly true, but I'm not going to make a call out post, or whatever. If someone who knows me wants to go and tell these people off I won't stop them. I don't even know how this got to them. Maybe someone called the news station and told them what had happened, and they were trying to find the man without any information on his appearance. It wasn't like I could really remember, most of the blows were from the back and I didn't bother trying to see his face. I was too busy trying to get away from the guy to concentrate on how he looked.