Breaking Hope (Finding Sky edit)

Chapter 31

One of the issues in life I have never really understood was why they put alarms on hospital machinery. Like, granted, it is to alert doctors to any sudden decrease, but why do they do it in intensive care units, or high dependency units? They are monitoring us from several different bays and they have machines on the desk that bleep along with the army of machines by my head so why do my machines bleep? I know I'm alive; I'm able to have this moral debate with myself. I don't need to listen to a constant beep every five seconds to let me know that my heart rate has accelerated slightly with consciousness. I am completely aware of this fact. But it wasn't just the heart rate monitor that made a constant noise. I could only assume I was wearing an oxygen mask as well, and I could hear the noise the ball made every time there was a dead space in my breathing pattern because it would just donk in the mask. Donk! See. I just held my breath and it made the same donking noise. Also, is anyone else aware of the noise flowers make? I wasn't aware until just now, so don't be too concerned if you wasn't. Like, they make some weird noises whenever gravity started playing with them and pulling leaves and petals starting to crumple. Whilst we're discussing the annoying noises that you hear within hospitals let's discuss the noises that the people in the hospitals make. Not the ones those are ill – no. The people around them. For example, I knew my parents were beside my bed because I could hear clearly the sound of Maria breathing heavily, her breath getting caught in the back of her throat. I could also hear the noise of her tapping her foot on the linoleum floor of the hospital room, impatiently waiting for me to get up.

Well, sorry I'm such an inconvenience, Maria. I thought.

I could also hear Mark walking up and down on the other side of my bed, the sound of important shoes echoing in the room. But as I thought that he stopped, and started taping on the metal rails beside my bed which was even more annoying because you can hear it echo though the metal tubes. From where I lie, I could also hear laughter from the hotel room next to me. Whoever was in there sounded cheerful, whilst I had to deal with my parents burdening me. Two ways it could go when I reveal that I am awake; the pamper me and make a massive fuss or have such a massive go at me and tell me that the Williams had got me into this mess and we were relocating to South Africa. Which one was more likely? It was hard to tell at this precise moment in time.

I started to flicker my eyes open, and saw that on one side of the bed Maria was tapping her feet doing a Sudoku book impatiently waiting for me to wake up, whilst Mark was looking out the window above my head across whatever view he had from up there. It took Mark like thirty seconds to even look down and register I was awake.

'Hope! Are you okay, Hope? Do you need a drink, anything?' Mark said, sitting down on the chair behind me grabbing my hand before painfully jolting my hand. I flinched slightly. 'Oh my God I am so sorry; I keep forgetting that your arm is...' He said, and looked down at my arm. Slowly, I lifted my heavy arm in front of me to see the cast they had placed on it.

'What happened?' I whispered my throat sore and dry. Maria stood up, pouring some iced water into a plastic cup with a straw in it, and held it out with shaking hands so I could take a sip.

'Er, you injured your arm. Apparently something exploded in the warehouse and some debris hit your arm, and it bruised the bone badly. You just needed surgery to pull out the pieces of material that lodged itself, then they casted it up. It's going to be at least six weeks in that cast. We decided light blue colour for you. It's only going to be on for a day or two' Maria explained a bit awkwardly, as if she didn't know me at all anymore. She hasn't been this awkward around me since the day of my adoption. 'You also hit your head, badly. It just needed a clean and sowing up but you have slight concussion. How are you feeling?' Maria asked as if some sort of an afterthought. How are you feeling after I gave you a list of all the things wrong with you. But, I didn't feel too bad. I felt more relieved and there was a massive weight off my chest.