The Premises of an Ideal Life and Additional Poetry

Chapter 5

ONE MONTH LATER...

Aria is rushing off her feet through the hospital’s corridor. The revitalized girl is wearing her ironic smile and dainty eyelashes, which crawl up and down her forehead to form the well-familiar humoristic faces when enraged. Holding her slender and grinding hands, is the minute, sweaty, thick, and clean lines of Olivia’s hand, fingers embracing the older one’s.
Olivia and Aria sprint toward the under part of the hospital’s entrance counter, both of them shooting out belly laughs from their mouths and trying in vain to restrain the remainders of sanity they have. From under the furniture, the troupe can glimpse Stevan’s feet, the little girl’s older brother, slithering in their direction. The teenager exposes them with one swift movement of the wrist, bringing the colorful cloth covering the counter up and making Olivia run away in an uninterrupted screeching series of shrieks.
“Olivia is so out of hand today. She can’t even deal with a hide and seek game. I’m fagged out for today, too much screaming in twenty-four hours”. Stevan proclaims with his sarcastic tone, flushing out the drops of sweat from his eyelashes and looking upward as if in a plea for provident help.
“You’re such a drama queen, or should I say ‘proud of self-preservation’, in your own words?”. Aria looks down at Stevan’s hands placed on his hips and eats her nails up for sheer provocation.
“Aria, you have finally got me. Maybe I’ll order a cake so we can put up a party for such a memorable day in the history of Saint Paul's Hospital.”
“You’re ridiculous Stevan”. The teenager cries out when Aria picks at his side and nips it. Aria rushes in Olivia’s direction, not looking back at the dreamer, mere 5 feet behind her, the boy who admires and is often baffled by her fierce struggles and healing miracle.
While hunting for the electrified child, Aria mirages the outskirts of Laura’s cobalt-blue scrubs, whose voice never fails to calm her turmoil feelings and knock off rocks in her road, which is already crowded with worries.
Leaning closer to where the pyramidically built old woman is standing, narrow ankles growing up to her broad shoulders, Aria salutes the nurse with a slight wink.
“Hi Laura, how are you doing?”
“Hi, babe! I’m fine, thank you for asking. Why are you so agitated today? What have you been up to with the Gregories and this dido smile?”
“Oh, I was playing hide and seek with them in the corridor, only distracting Olivia a little, or trying anyway, from their mother’s spreading cancer, you know?”
“Yes, it’s a tragedy all that they are going through. I don’t think Silvia will last for long now. That’s so sweet of you though, to break the tension. You for one appear to be progressing every day. You don’t even need the assistance of crutches any longer!”
Laura notices the far-off countenance of the young woman facing her and sees Aria’s pupils focused on the future, eyes ajar and wrestling in the exercise of visualising its problems and variabilities. There is determination there as well as…  pain.
“But there’s more to it than only the nervousness of looking after Stevan and Olivia, isn’t it? You’re uneasy today, daydreaming if you know what I mean.” Laura snaps her fingers on Aria’s face and, as if coming back from her trance, the girl answers:
“You know me so well Laura. I have a job interview this evening. I know, I know, companies aren’t expected to have hospitalized employees, but there’s a school in the outskirts of the metropolis that needs a teacher’s assistant for the kindergarten in four-months time. Before the accident, I used to dislike kids and their annoying habits, but after meeting Olivia- the cutest youngling I’ve ever crossed paths with- I changed my mind.”
“You’re aware that not all kids are as fruity and smart as Olivia is, right? The very minority of them are actually, which is nothing bad, just different. So be sure to get that!”
Looking at her feet, Aria gives a heavy breath of impatience and annoyance before saying:
“I do Laura, trust me. They’re unique in their own way and all of that. Just for the record, I must have been the grumpiest kid in kindergarten of all time, which means, I can pick those lessons up for myself.”
“I’m sure you can, Aria. I was only giving a reminder because we can all easily forget about it.”
Bounding to the nurse’s wired ears, the nineteen-year-old girl whispers in a smooth rhythm, as if in a hushed tip-toeing voice, trying to quietly bail out of the previous rude tone.
“Oh, I’m sorry Laura. I didn’t want to sound like a hypocrite, I’m just too nervous for the interview. What if they ask me about past jobs and life prospects? Frankly, I have none. I’m literally trying to stay awake and to swim faster so as to not sink in the pool of errors I’ve put myself in.”
Saying more to herself- in a hushed and skirmish tone- Laura says:
“And the girl is poetic today too. Just kidding, calm down. I won’t tell you not to worry, darling, because I know it’s of no use, ever. What I will say though, is for you to tell the truth, always, to talk about any experiences you have that might interest them, and be patient. Your experiences can sometimes be masked by how you react to their questions, how you behave, and sound like. So be ready to act as a kindergarten teacher would.”
Laura encloses her patient’s hands inside her own coat pockets, like protecting the fingers and nails of a dusty and rusty porcelain doll. Nonetheless, Aria cracks a smile, analysing Laura’s plaintive conviction in her, a reaction from almost every person she’s encountered since the accident. Apart from her mother, whose heart is insipid, dark and not at all vibrant pink like the usual. Rotten.
“What needs to happen will happen; be kind to yourself and be faithful that you are a promising young woman. As you are all Shakespeare today, I’ll tell you this: you have been peeled anew by your own faults, and you have to shake your speare too.” Laura is on mid- chuckles at the inside joke when the wrist on Laura’s cloth pockets go slack and her head rigid when seeing the rotund body of a woman far away in the corridor, brown hair splashed in white stripes of oldness. Aria’s voice goes cold, like she’s just drunk a cup of icy tea, detached and ripped.
“I trust you, Laura. There’s only one person I’d like to receive back up from but doesn’t give it to me. That should show real love and unfathomable zeal, but is just another ghost amidst the many in my past. The one I hoped to find a well of certitude to drown my small bucket in, but I find it rattling in an empty hole. My mother”.
“Oh dear, don’t say such things, you’re being overdramatic. She has suffered a lot with your almost passing away, the poor thing couldn’t even close her eyes at night. You’re being unfair Aria. Everyone has their demons.”
Laura is an inch from dragging her look from Aria as the latter inclines her head forward in the attempt of scrutinizing her mother. Nonetheless, the nurse knows the girl isn’t concentrating on Claire now, but picturing Laura in front of her, disgust for the nurse inscripted on her face. The nineteen-year-old buries her head deep towards the soundless floor and whispers at a speed the nurse had never thought possible.
“Am I being unfair? You have no idea how I’ve tried all these years to act according to that woman’s wishes. You have no idea how much she manipulated me, denied my freedom to have “her daughter for herself alone”, dispersing the people around her in the attempt. Am I the villain or the victim in this story?”.
Not wanting to hear the answer, Aria begins to flee, like a wild camel finally free with a baggage-free hump. Laura reaches for her and ends up having to grasp her spacious hospital gown, giving Aria a flashback of the ghosts that grazed her dress sides during the coma.
“If you’re so uncertain, why not ask her? As far as I know, you haven’t had a decent conversation since the car crash and, based on what you’re telling me, maybe you’ve never had one! There’s no need to take your disappointment on me. Besides, you have to loosen up for your interview, no one likes a crabby kindergarten teacher’s assistant...”