Flight

Coming Back

My head hurt a lot after that injection. And I was exhausted from thinking and making odd noises from time to time. And I still couldn't open my eyes. Laura was still sitting with me, she had been for like forever,  when suddenly she said "would you like to talk to you Mum now?" Yes! Yes! Yes! I thought, I wanted to hear my Mum's voice again, for her to hold my hand again. "Hi there Benjy." I heard her say, she scraped that same chair that Doctor Cawley had scraped across the floor, but she scraped it more gently. "How are you feelin?" She made me feel safe and happy "now, you've had a nasty accident, and it was just as well that they took you to hospital. Because your lungs were already feeling a little bit poorly." This reminded me of what the flight attendent had- Flight attendant, plane! That's it, it was all coming back to me now. I remembered everything. "Very soon you'll come back to us, and you'll be walking around as normal again!" This made me happy, and stronger. And slowly, very slowly, but very surely. I managed to open one eye, it felt amazing. I saw my Mum, she gasped. "Benjy!" I closed my eye again, it was tiring. My head dropped back onto the pillow but she lifted it again. "Benjy, if you can here me, I want you to listen." I acknowledged, by making a small noise. "Chrissie isn't very well. It looks like she is coming back. But she's going to be in hospital for a little bit longer than you, and we can't necasserily stay with her. We're not leaving now, obviously. But when we do, you'll have to say goodbye for then. And there's something else, Caterina. She wasn't found after the crash landing, nobody knows where she is. And we can't do anything." I yawned, and it felt good. "Is she ok?" I managed to utter slowly and quietly, the nurses urged me not to, but I didn't listen. "We don't know." My Mum responded "most likely not, but you need to rest for now. Don't think about it too much, just know that we are all praying for Christiana and Caterina, you don't need to worry about them." I couldn't think about it right now, what she had said. It didn't process properly in my brain. I didn't realise what she had actually said. My Mum sat there, and held my hand. "Can you hear me Benjy?" I very slowly nodded my head. "Okay," she said. 

Only five hours later and I was lifting my head on my own, and talking, the nurses said I wasn't fit to walk or get up yet. But now I could see Laura and Kathryn. It was still Laura sitting with me, she was almost exactly as I had pictures, she had blonde hair in a ponytail and she was very short. She had minimalist makeup on and big blue eyes. She was very friendly looking. "C-could I get some water?" I asked her, she nodded and got up to walk across the room. Then run the tap into a glass of water. "Thank you." I said and took the water. I drank it up. "So, when you were asleep, could you hear stuff?" I finished the water and put it down "Yep, everything. It was really weird, because I couldn't move or anything." She came and sat down next to me, in the same place as where she was when I was asleep I was assuming. "I'm always curious, it's not often I get to talk to my patients after they've been in comas." I looked at her "I know this sounds a little weird but, what actually happened, where was I injured, how long was I asleep?" She got up and picked up a long document, it was pages and pages of what looked like greek to me. "Everything's in this, your files, your injuries are as follows, you have a large fracture in your elbow, you had a puncture in your lungs and needed a lung transplant shockingly enough. And you had a small break in the arch of your right foot, all your x-rays are in here, have a look." She handed me the booklet, I couldn't believe all these x-rays and everything had happened whilst I was asleep. "A-and what happened to Christiana? What were her injuries, why's it so bad?" Laura sighed, and took the file off of me because I was done with it. "I'm afraid we can't talk about other patient's problems with other patients, but in a little bit I could pop you in a wheelchair and we could visit her, a change of scenery would do you good I think." My face lit up. "Yes! Yes, I'd love to!" She giggled and got up off of her chair and picked up my empty glass. "I'll go and get you a chair then if that's what you would like." I nodded and clutched the covers in one hand, having realised I had a cast on the other arm. Finally, a change in scenery. I could get out of this stuffy little room. Laura reappeared moments later with a big wheelchair. "Okay I'm going to need to to try and lift your body and help me out because I can't lift you alone." I sat up straight, without being propped up and sort of swivelled round so my legs were dangling off the edge of the bed, I had tugged my leg out of the hammock thingy that had kept it elevated, so Laura was quick to lift it again. She prompted me off the the bed and I plopped straight into the chair. This one had special supports for my legs, she lifted one so my foot was up. Then proceeded to wheel me into an elevator just around the corner.

We finally made it after endless white corridoors, I was feeling quite drousy, and kept feeling my head dropping but Kathryn had told me to try and lift my head when I can, because of blood circulation. So I tried to keep it upright. Chrissie's suite was bigger than mine, and it had a window. It was larger because she needed more equipment and window was huge but dimmed with a beige blind. The door also had a window, which I was looking through. Laura knocked on the door and a doctor opened it and started whispering. "Christiana Woodman is not taking visitors right now." He was a very miserable looking man. His hair was turning grey and his face was decreasing into a big lump of wrinkles so fast you could almost see the transformation taking place. In the corner of the room I saw Chrissie's Mum sat on a chair, I think she was crying, but I can't quite remember. I just remember her holding a hankerchief in her hand, she had her arm in a cast and she looked quite worse for wear herself. "Oh please, we brought him all the way upstairs to see her." The doctor didn't look like he was going to give one way or the other. "What room was this boy in?" Laura looked down at my wrist, I had a band on it, it said my room number. "Suite 237." The doctor slowly walked over to a desk in the far left corner of the room and consulted a file, he looked rather senior. "It seems that this young boy shouldn't have been out of bed until next Friday depending on his progress." I looked up at Laura "I was never told this, Doctor Cawley I apologise, I didn't realise." So that was doctor Cawley. Not what I expected, from what I had heard of him, he sounded very nice. "Which doctor is monitoring this boy, and why wasn't he there when you took him for a ride." What? I thought, you were. "You were." I said, the doctor looked shocked and looked at me dsigustedly. Like he didn't like kids or something. Like he had just transferred over from a different ward. "Excuse me?" He said slowly and sinisterly. "It was you, I heard it all. When I was asleep." Doctor Cawley rolled his eyes and sighed. "I understand now that it was my brother, also Doctor Cawley who was monitoring Benjamin." Laura nodded, she had suddenly gone into a different mode, like a frightened schoolgirl been sent to the headmistress. "That is correct it was Doctor Ian Cawley." He sighed again, and looked at me. "Yes. Now take this boy back downstairs immediately, there shall be no visits. Today." Laura seemed almost as disappointed as I was. "What do we do now?" I asked after the door had been closed on us. "Well we don't give up. That's for sure. We find Doctor Cawley, the other one, and get him to frighten his younger brother. I really shouldn't say this but. Samuel Cawley who we just spoke to is very afraid of his older brother and will do anything he tells him to." I laughed as she wheeled me down the hallway.