Opposites Attract?

eight

  CONNOR ARRIVED at the local hospital, the same hospital I was admitted into, at a breakneck speed. If I was not rushing to meet my brother, I would be screaming my head off at the speed he was driving his bike. Thankfully, the roads were clear and we didn't get into an accident. Shock numbed my body and my senses, which explained why I couldn't feel any fear nor adrenaline in my body as the houses and trees all became a blur as we sped past.

Once he stopped the bike, my arms unwrapped themselves from his waist and my fingers shakily removed the helmet from my head. I hadn't even bothered to change out of my home clothes. Without evening acknowledging Connor, I sped past him and ran towards the reception.

"Where's the waiting room?" I demanded to the nurse who was sipping coffee and signing papers.

She looked at me with surprise. "To the left down the hallway. Are you family?"

I didn't even reply to her question as I ran towards my left and down the hallway to a large waiting room. A handful of people sat in the waiting room, scattered amongst the abundance of chairs. I recognised Leo from detention, pacing about the white tiled floors with his hands running through his hair. Connor grabbed my arm from behind.

"Don't ever run off." He said protectively. I shook my arm away from him.

"This is a hospital." I stated, showing him the surroundings.

"Look, I know this town better than you. Bluewood is infamous for its notorious gang members and druggies. The hospital is the easiest way that grab teenagers like you and make you a drug mule." He said in a low tone. "So always stay by my side here in the hospital, okay?" he softened his voice at the end of his sentence.

I nodded, a lump in my throat. We made our way to Leo who look even more nervous than he did when I saw him just now. "What happened?" I asked Leo. His lower lip shook and his eyes looked glossy. The next thing I knew, he dropped to his knees and began crying.

"Jasmine Darling, please, oh God, please..." he wept, clinging onto my legs. I bent down and slowly removed his hands from my legs. Instead he grabbed me and started sobbing into my shoulder. "Peter... car accident... I don't know... I found him..." he said in between sobs as he gasped for air.

In my mind, I was mentally piecing his incoherant sentence together. Peter got into a road accident. "Calm down Leo, shhh... Just tell me slowly what happened." I said rubbing his back to calm him down.

We sat on the floor, Connor next to me and Leo on the opposite. People around us threw odd stares but we ignored it. "I wasn't at the accident." He began, his voice still trembling. "I was biking back home, from the gym and in the middle of the road, I saw a group of people gathered around something. I stopped my bike and went to see what they were looking at."

"Pushing past the people, I saw your brother Jasmine, lying on the road and nobody even calling the ambulance. The driver must've drove off because there was no car to be found." He told us. He rubbed his left eye. "So, I took matters in my own hand and propped him onto my bike as drove to the hospital immediately. The doctors took him in and that was the last I've heard."

My body was numb as I listened to Leo. The only sound in the waiting room was my tears and grasps of air as I kneeled on the floor and waited. The wait was agonizing, the clock against the wall ticking away obnoxiously as if counting down the last seconds of my brother's life. Eventually, a nurse scampered in, holding a small clipboard in her hand.

"Leo Forrest?" the nurse chirped. Leo stood up, helping me up from the floor on the way. "Are you family?"

Leo shook his head. "But she is." He pushed me forward to the nurse. Following the nurse tentatively past the surgery rooms and into the elevator, my heart was pounding against my chest. Every beat grew stronger as the seconds ticked by, anxious to know the condition of Peter. The elevator smelt of disinfectant masking over the smell of blood. Finally, we stopped and walked out of the elevator.