The Haven Hotel

Fortissa

My eyes flutter open and air surges into my chest. The ceiling is white with splotches of brown and yellow where leakages have been poorly patched up. I know from prior experience that the bed has a paper thin mattress, but I can't feel it, nor can I feel the stiff and rough blanket that's covering my front. 

If feels like I'm floating, and for a second I think I am, that I haven't woken up yet, then I hear someone talking. I recognize the voice, but through the clouds in my mind I can't put the words to a name. My heavy eye lids close on their own and my breathing gets shallower until I start whistling through my nose. I've been told that I snore, but I'd never heard myself doing it until now.

"Have they found out who it was?" The voice asks. 

"No." Another voice replies, this one I don't recognize. "The records have been cleared. Mum's the word with those people."

"You think they know?"

"I know they know." A third voice says. "You can't pull a stunt like that without everyone in the base at least seeing some signs. It's just that no one wants to be a snitch."

"Snitches get stitches." The voice I know snickers, but the others keep quiet.

"Omar." I finally remember whose voice I'm listening to, and when I do I say his name out loud. There's a second of silence and then the sound of three people rushing towards me. Instinctively I try to get to my feet, or at least tense up, before they get to me, but I'm held immobile by the same numbness that gives me that floating feeling. 

"Good morning." Omar says. I open my eyes again and look up at his heavy grey beard, caterpillar eyebrows, and dark brown eyes. That's a face I've known for years; it's a wonder that I couldn't recognize his voice. 

"You need to shave." I say what I've been saying since the days when that chest length beard was only stubble. 

"Maybe I will." He gives me the same packaged response to the same packaged jest. 

"How do you feel?" The second voice, whose face I know I don't recognize, asks me. She bears a vague resemblance to a woman who used to play the mother in every other African American movie. I smile at her, or at least my lips are curling some way, I'm not sure if the muscles in my cheeks are capable of forming a real smile right now.

"Not sure." I say, which is true; I have no idea how I really feel, nor do I know for certain where I am. "How long have I been asleep?"

"Six days."

I laugh at the answer. For a moment I think of just going back to sleep and making it an even week, then I think of why I would need to be asleep for six days in the first place. "How do I look?"

"Honestly?" Omar asks. I chuckle and turn my gaze towards the motherly woman, who I'm assuming is a doctor or a nurse. 

"I mean, if you feel the need to lie, then..." I laugh, then my smile fades as everything that's happened to me goes through my mind. "But seriously, how am I?"

"You had third degree burns and several broken ribs," the doctor says, "and your arm was infected. Whoever cleaned it and stitched it didn't do it properly."

"It was infected?"

"We had to amputate." She says it with no hesitation. I respect her for it; it's like having a bandage ripped off in half a second as opposed to it being peeled off piece by piece, but I can't help but hate the messenger for the message she's given me. Her blank face begins to annoy me, so I stop looking at it. I turn to the fourth person in the room, the one who hasn't spoken so far. 

"Who's he?" I've seen him before; he's the scar faced man who met me out in the city. "And why is he here?" The questions come off as more abrasive than I intended, mainly because I'm still reeling from the knowledge that my arm has been amputated, but also because I don't expect any visitors, especially ones I don't know.