The Green Eyes In The Gloom

The Only Purpose Left.

-GASP-
I pant and pant like a dog in midsummer. I spat onto the road. My phone pressed against the handlebars constituted my headlights in the slowly diminishing night. I would eventually use it to call my estranged mother but… that was for later. I had been cycling for nearly an hour full pelt. There was no space in the ambulance and… Well… I didn’t think I could have gone in there. I inflicted this injury on this thing of beauty. It’s my fault that she’s lying in the back of an ambulance on her way to A&E. WOOSH: another lorry goes past at 70mph, the slipstream nearly knocking me straight off. But I kept going. Eventually I got there at 4:30 AM, the tired receptionist looking at me wearily, head on her hand, dark circles around her eyes. I would have felt sorry for her, if I had the brain space to spare. But I didn’t. I go up to the desk, and I must have been quite a sight- this dirty, sweaty, 14 year old boy in a hospital at 4:30 in the morning on a school night- as the receptionist quickly snapped out of her oblivious stupor and sat up straight. I cleared my throat and said in a quick voice
“That girl who came in by ambulance recently with the head injury; I need to see her”
“She’s… she’s” the receptionist takes a huge yawn “She’s upstairs. But I’ll need to know your name first, and what the hell you’re doing in a hospital at half four in the morning”
“Not important” I snapped back “What ward is she?”
The receptionist gave her best ‘I really don’t give a fuck’ face and yawned “fine, she’s in orchid ward”
Without pausing to thank her I run to the nearest map of the hospital and see she’s on floor 4. I run over to the lift on the other side of the room and smash number four. As slow as that receptionist without her coffee the doors creak shut, and the lift trundles upwards like a granny on her way to the corner shop. Eventually I get there and I run out and find the door labelled “Orchid”. I run in and see all of the beds occupied, most with privacy curtains drawn, and I can’t see her. I go around all the curtained beds, no longer caring about courtesy and manners. Eventually I get to the last bed nearest the window and rip it open, and what I saw would come to haunt me for many years.