Beating Death

Chapter six

Song of the day: Killer – The Ready Set

When I woke up  I was still as I was before,  in the warm garden. The sun had  almost set, and I realized just how long I had been there. When I made my way back to the living room, I felt cold, and I pulled myself under the blanket that had appeared on the couch, and curled up in its warmth. I curled up on the couch, and let out all the tears I’d been holding in. With the T.V on, I watched as a nurse came in to take my parents into the hallway.

Jamie stayed in the room, but he got up this time and paced the room, leaving his sketch book in the chair he’d been sitting in.  He looked down over my body for a moment, he stood still, but then he continued to pace the quiet hospital room.

“My leg fell asleep,” he told my unconscious body, as he started to cry again.  

“They’re talking about donating your organs to people who need them, I wanted to tell them not to do it, but it’s your parent’s choice, and I can’t…” He paused before saying my name “Zaida, I just need you to wake up,” He sat on the bed next to me. Holding my hand, I realized at that moment how horrible I looked, with my head taped up, and all the tubes and wires connected to my body. There was multiple scars on my face, my lips were chapped, and cracked, and I looked like a hot mess. Suddenly I felt nauseous, so I dragged the blankets with me to the outside world,  as the sun was fading into the distance. I let it all out.

The tears, and the vomit, I screamed, I cried, and my body shook with chills. I wrapped myself in my blanket, and stood. Too fast, my body told me, and I sat back down on the ground. I didn’t know what else to do with myself as I sobbed and blew my nose into the blanket. It was as if everything had just hit me at once.

The couch seemed like a bed of feathers, in comparison to the hard ground I had sat on outside.  When I finally made it back to the couch, with careful steps, the T.V was still on, and Jamie was curled up next to me in the bed.  With his hair bushed over his eyes, and still he still held my hand. I reached for the remote, feeling nauseous again. 

“I love you,” he whispered on the screen.

“I LOVE YOU TOO,“ I screamed back, “I love you and Elliot, and  mom and dad, and I’m trying,” I said and lowered my voice as I said the last part.

It’s funny how you never said all the I love you’s  when someone was alive, when they were there in front of you. It was funny how I never said them when I had the chance, and now as I sat there and screamed  at the T.V  no one could even hear it.  It seemed like something trivial, when I was actually there, like something I would always have time to say. Something I would be able to say, on that day when the moment felt right.

 How I never thought of living my life without Elliot. He had been my best friend through everything that I’d gone through, and he was always there, and maybe, my life was not worth living without him there. After all I had been the cause of his death. I had driven his most prized possession, into a wreck, and I was the one who was still going to live.

It was funny that no matter how much I screamed or cried or kicked, or made myself look like a fool, they I couldn’t take my own life instead of his. I looked like a mess, and I didn’t even care,I was curled into a ball in the thick blanket.

The bathroom seemed so far away, it seemed like a long walk, when in reality it was only thirteen or fourteen steps, but I dragged my feet like a zombie, and the end of the blanket behind me like a long dress, I made it into the room.

Dizzy as ever I sat on the ground, sobbing. Was there something wrong with me?  Everything hurt, my face burned, and my shoulder itched. My hair was a mess on top of my head and strings of blonde were hanging down in my face.  My eyes were red with tears, and I sat on the ground, in front of a full length mirror, and for a moment I didn’t make a sound, even my breaths were silent. For a second, I forgot about everything, and I don’t move.