To My Dearest Roseanne

Chapter 30

Liz Juzynski woke up in her room. It was the middle of the night. Her neighbours were sound asleep in both beds between her. She was still in the same room on the top floor and travelled down the elevator to the physiotherapy ward every day. A faint corridor light luminated the darkness through the open door. Liz tried to swallow, but she couldn't. Her throat was as coarse as sandpaper. She was thirsty.

In silence she got up on the bed, avoiding to wake up her neighbours. Unfortunately, it was difficult because the springs were always unforgivably squeaky in hospital beds. She drank a cup of water, refilled it and drank another one, then refilled it and drank once more.

Before she knew it, she needed to use the bathroom.

Even grunted in the darkness and climbed into her wheelchair. While doing so, the lady who was run over by a harvester turned on her bed and gasped.

"Are you a ghost? Am I dead?!"

"No, it's just me," Liz waved at the neighbour. "Go back to sleep."

The lady closed her eyes and began snoring again.

***

After flushing the toilet, Liz rolled out to the corridor. It was completely empty. In fact, the whole floor seemed abandoned. Still, it was just an illusion because all the patients were sleeping in their rooms. Out of curiosity, Liz didn't return to her room, but she journeyed to the elevator lounge, which was a large rectangular space with a wide window in the middle of the floor, separating the departments of internal medicine and ophthalmology.

Here, the lights were turned off and the air was noticeably cooler, but it wasn't inconvenient for Liz. She stopped the wheelchair by the window and observed the city skyline consumed in clouds of fog. The humming of air conditioning made her feel like on a spaceship that's about to take off.

Still, she knew it was wishful thinking. She wasn't on a spaceship, and she couldn't reach the stars, let alone witness the meteor shower. She wanted to see at least something in the fog, and suddenly a flash of blue light appeared under the window. Liz leaned over, hoping to see better the strange optical phenomenon, but it turned out to be just an ambulance speeding towards the ER.

As she looked at the fog again, her thoughts drifted to Roseanne.

Liz wondered how her daughter was coping on her own. Did she feel tired? Exhausted? Even if she did, she never showed it. Roseanne always slipped into the posture of a brave topper in front of her mom, doing the best she could for her, never complaining, never arguing, always smiling, always supporting. This made Liz feel all the more like a burden.

She knew she had to survive, be strong for her daughter. That's why she refused to break down after the accident, but Liz was aware that it took away so much from her life. She didn't have the strength to be angry, but she felt a deep sense of injustice to God, the universe, fate, or whatever the supreme force is called.

Perhaps there is no supreme force. Perhaps we all are in a bus, but there's nobody behind the wheel? Is our ride just a string of accidental decisions? Liz thought to herself.

Her hands firmly grabbed the resting pads of the wheelchair and she pushed her body up in the air. She desperately wanted to stand up. She wanted to prove to herself that she could do it, to stop this nightmare of dependency once and for all.

But it was a fool's errand. In spite of continuous physiotherapy, her legs were still too weak to support her weight.

"Holy crap, you're gonna fall or something!"

Liz heard a loud cry behind her back, but before she could turn her head, the stranger already helped her descend on the wheelchair. It turned out to be a blonde teenager with blue eyes and an upturned nose.