Agnes in JackieLand

Chapter 23

I was swimming in darkness, trying to make my way out. It was thick like tar. Was I floating in tar? I tried so hard to make my way to the surface, but I couldn't move. Fear ate at my insides. Was I drowning? Confusion settled in with the fear. Where am I? The darkness swallowed me.

Conscious again, this time, the darkness is soupy and grey around the edges of the black. I try to open my eyes, my real eyes, not my dream eyes, and I can't. The dream has me trapped, and I want to get out. I can't do anything but float in the soupy blackness. It swallowed me again.

I surface out of the darkness this time, clawing my way free. I blinked, and the light hurt my eyes. I tried to swallow but couldn't. Something was lodged in my throat, and I couldn't swallow around it. Panicking, I tried to lift my hands to get the suffocating thing in my throat, but I was too weak.

In the distance, a voice called out, "She's awake. Get the doctor."

Sluggishly, I turn my head and see a woman dressed in hospital scrubs that have cheerful ducks all over it. She's saying something, but all I can hear is a machine screaming. I try to sit up, but the nurse pushes me back down. I'm confused and don't know what's going on. A syringe is plunged into a tube attached to my hand. Ice coldness runs through my hand and up my arm. My vision starts to blur.

No! I don't want to go back into the darkness, but my grip on the now fades.

Sometime later, I awakened to an extremely sore throat, but I could swallow this time. I opened my eyes slowly, trying to get used to the bright lights. Noises assaulted me: a machine blipping and the shuffle of feet. Moving my head to the source of the shuffle, I saw Graham. He was staring off in the distance. I lifted my hand with much effort to alert him that I was awake.

"She's awake," my father's voice rang out.

Graham's eyes met mine, and their rush of emotion made me smile or try to anyway. My lips were dry, and it hurt when I tried.

"Hey, stranger," he said, slipping his hand into mine and squeezing it.

"Hi," I managed to get out after three tries.

"Don't talk, honey. Your throat is rubbed raw from the tube they had down there," my dad told me.

I rolled my head over to the other side to see my dad. He was in full drag, but somehow, I was okay with it. Usually, I would have been embarrassed, but today, it didn't bother me; I was just happy to see him.

"Hi, baby girl. You gave us quite the scare. I'm glad to see that you're awake. Liam's here too." My brother shuffled into my line of sight. He looked different. Older, if that was possible. "Say hi to your sister," my father urged him.

"We thought you were going to die," he said, not meeting my eyes.

"Liam! Go sit down if you have nothing nice to say," my father scolded him

Graham squeezed my hand again. I had forgotten I was holding it. "Aggie, do you remember what happened?" he asked me when I managed to roll my head back over to his side. My head felt like it was full of cotton.

All I could remember was trying to get out of the darkness. It had sucked at me, wanting me to stay in it, but I had been determined to get out. The darkness had felt wrong as if it was trying to eat me alive. A machine in the room started beeping faster.

Graham's eyes widened in terror. "Aggie, it's okay. Don't try to remember. We are just glad that you're okay and awake."

"I hear our patient is awake," a man's heavily accented voice boomed through the room.