TAKEN

[18]

Eighteen people were dead.

Three nurses, a doctor, and six police officers. Everywhere was rowdy, with people crying out for help. Police cars were littered outside the premises.

Ambulance services and volunteers were helping the wounded. Yes, many people were wounded. It was even a surprise that only eighteen died because the attackers came very well-prepared.

On the side, another eight patients died during the attack, increasing the number to eighteen. I just couldn't keep their battered, dead faces off my head. Whenever I closed my eyes, there they were, lying helplessly on the floor or partially covered in debris.

Outside the hospital, pools of blood were patched freely on the ground. Fumes of gunpowder, terror, and death filled the air. Right in the ward where I was, most doors had been ripped out of their hinges and many machinery and hospital supplies littered all over.

"We are still trying to get the wounded to the intensive care unit. Please, if you are strong and able, kindly help our overworked staff get critical patients to the ICU." The chief Medical director was now speaking.

His voice and countenance seemed rushed as his eyes wandered everywhere. He was done as soon as he started, departing immediately after taking over from the officer who was originally taking questions from the press.

"Thirteenth teenage girls?" I tensed as the words rolled out of my mouth. Flashes of how and when I was taken filled my mind and I shook it off, hoping that those girls, unlike me escaped. 

I pulled my gaze away from the Television in the hospital common room and focused it on exhausted nurses who were hauling patients into the room.

Most of them were disheveled just like myself, their faces and bodies were all dusty and clothes shredded by God knows what, although, their cuts and bruises were not life-threatening.

My neck craned to view the rest of the room where I was now seated, Patches of debris were all over the place. Domestic workers were busy trying to clean up the place and mop up the floor.

One could see most of the building structures had been threatened by bullets and homemade bombs, which made silently question the integrity of the structures.

This room particularly, had some bullet holes and broken down wall paints. Chairs and tables were in disarray, flipped upside down and some broken even.
Papers of different sizes, broken computers, and hospital supplies lay helplessly on the floor.

I was still in my bloody torn clothes, seated patiently on a white plastic chair and nursing the pain in my now bandaged shoulder. Some survivors sat in the room watching a small flat-screen TV absent-mindedly.

It was still early morning, 6 am maybe. Workers were still outside scouting the area, on a mission to find people who went into hiding during the siege. It was the same group that found me in the laundry room.

With all the deaths around me, I didn't want to come out of hiding, even when I heard their voices shouting, "Is anyone here? Can you hear us?" I pushed myself further behind the laundry machine That'd been keeping me safe.

For what it was, it could be Mama and her people. My heart almost stopped beating while I waited for them to search the entire laundry room.

But when Nurse Dima's voice broke into their fervent calls, I knew it was time to respond. Instead of screaming out for help, I whimpered an answer from where I hid.

By the time they found me, I was all bloodied up, clothes soaked by my blood and maybe others. The bad news was that it ran into my clothes and dried off, sticking to my wounds, and making it difficult to move my body freely.