Behind The Mask

What Candy Saw

---CANDY'S POINT OF VIEW---
(THE DAY RAJA CHASED SHADOW)

Raja had been gone for almost two hours. What was going on?

It was getting late. I sent out two orphanage girls, Zoey and Riley, to look for her.

Fifteen minutes later, they returned, faces red and scared and their breathing was heavy. They had just run quite a ways.

"Where is she?!" I cried, knowing something bad had happened.

When they got out that she was a block away from the alley between the grocery store and Jazz House Hotel, I knew.

Shadow.

👤👤👤👤👤👤👤👤👤👤👤👤👤👤

My footsteps pounded in my ears. I was running faster than I'd ever run before, and it was hard, coming from a 45-year-old who doesn't exercise vigorously.

When I saw Raja lying on the curb in a pool of blood coming from her cracked-open skull, I thought she was dead. But she moved her arm slightly and I knew she was alive...... For now.

I take out my cell phone and dial 9-1-1. I kept checking Raja's pulse for the seven-point-three minutes it took the ambulance to arrive. Yes, I was counting the minutes.

We rushed to the hospital and arrived in six minutes and fifty-eight seconds.

The doctor came into the emergency room calmly and looked Raja over for three minutes and forty-two seconds.

I'm sorry, when I'm nervous, I count.

"This is an orphan at your orphanage, correct, Ms. Crete?" he asked.

"Yes," I replied.

"And is she taken care of? Food, water, warmth, clothing, medications...?"

"I try, and they never go hungry or thirsty, they go to their check-ups for both doctors and dentists, and they each have two layers of blankets on their beds."

"Very good. You are one of the better ones, Ms. Crete."

I nodded.

"Who is your usual doctor?"

"Dr. Maria Waters."

"Over in the east-side hospital?"

"No.... West."

"Thank you."

He was taking notes. Meanwhile, a nurse was putting a special breathing mask on Raja. She stirred.

"If she wakes up, she dies of pain," the nurse said to the doctor under her breath. "Very well," the doctor sighed.

He turned to me. "We must act quickly. Does she have any allergies?"

"She's allergic to cherries and mango."

"Then we've got nothing to worry about." The nurse injected Raja with four different shots and she was asleep again. They made me leave so they could stitch up her head.

Please, God, let her live.