on the next spring | ✓

9

Yawn - Seventeen

"Aplastic anemia. It's a disease in which the patient's body stops producing enough new blood cells. It left you fatigued and you're prone to infection including uncontrolled bleeding, which was what exactly happened to your friends. Another main symptom of the disease is that the patient suffered extreme dizziness and headache, resulting her to fell on the stairs."

I didn't know what I heard. I didn't know how to react as I stared blankly towards the male doctor. He sighed to himself. "In other words, your friend lost lots of blood, and that she couldn't produce new blood cells in such short period of time. That was why we're manifesting her for a blood donation."

"What's her blood type?" 

The doctor shot me a look. He took off his glasses and wiped it on his coat. "Aren't you her friend? I supposed you know better."

I bowed my head, examining my own palm and chuckled to myself, almost mocking. My vision went blurry, and so I looked up to the ceiling, trying hard not to let the clear fluids escaped my eyes. "I guess - I'm not that good of a friend." I really wasn't.

My gaze shifted to room 5. From the small see through window, I could see a tiny figure lying on a white bed, body covered with white blanket. Her expression was rather calm, as her eyes were shut and her lips sealed dry. I wasn't used to it just yet. I watched her lying down there for as long as I could remember, from that very evening till half past midnight. 

I hadn't cried since I reached the hospital. I hadn't expressed any emotion since I learned that she needed to be admitted for blood loss and that she didn't wake up from the moment she was sent there. I didn't know how to react, as I felt confused, blank and on edge, yet I didn't leave the hospital even for a second. I didn't know what I was feeling, but I was just there. 

The doctor told me to leave for home, since she couldn't take any visits from her acquaintances just yet. He told me to come again the next morning for a blood test if I wanted to donate my blood for her. 

But I didn't. Instead, I stole a blanket in one of the empty patient's room and made my way towards the hospital's playground. There was no one there. On summer night, the temperature is rather bearable, so I had no problem putting the blanket on one of the bench and lay myself on it. I watched the sky, guessing each stars into constellations, counting them into bundles. Hoping the night would pass that way. Hoping my eyes would be shut by the time my count hit a thousand, and woke up knowing that was a dream.

But by one thousand, warm fluids that I was holding since that afternoon escaped my eyes. It ran down slowly, staining the blanket I had under my back. At that exact moment, fears crept into my mind, scaring the hell out of me. My mind went wild thinking about each possibilities. What if she couldn't wake up? What if she would lie down on the hospital's bed for all her life, what if she wouldn't open her eyes again? 

I remembered how she got mad that morning. I remembered how she pushed my shoulder, telling me that she didn't want anything to do with me, telling me to mind my things and telling me that indeed, she knew I didn't really see her as a friend. And that I told her I was fine with that. 

But when I saw her drenched with blood, eyes closed as if it had never looked at me, lips sealed as if it had never laughed with me, I felt a knot in my chest. Tightened that I felt suffocated, too strong that I felt like I forgot how to seek for oxygen in a few seconds. Too scared that I didn't dare to cry, too terrified that I didn't know how to express those fear that I ended up fell on silent the whole day. 

Now that I was all alone, I could felt those suffocating feelings flew in thin air, untying those fears that it let out in tears form running on my cheeks. Too much that I didn't even realize I started sobbing the second the thought of losing her crossed my mind. Why was I so affected by her? Why was I so scared to lose her, eventhough she was just another stranger I wasn't really fond of?