Tak'n Awey

▽. 25

When I wake, I smell something bitter and it is numbing me with a coat of warmth and delight. I get weak instantly and sleep hits me harder than a car.

It feels good.

This must be medication.

My vision isn't up to par, but it is leisurely retrieving. The moment it returns, I see a woman standing beside me in a cute printed scrub. She's disposing a needle into a red hazardous bucket.

When I get enough strength, I feel a blue wrap across my arm getting tighter by the second until it feels like it's about to explode, but then it releases every two seconds.

Am I getting my vitals checked?

Far away, I see opal colored walls and a whiteboard that says:

Nurse: Helen

Doctor: Dr. Lance Winston

Get Well Soon! ツ

I'm in a hospital???!!!

Immediately, I snatch my attention to the left and see Dewayne on his cell phone, texting and eating a bag of fuschia colored Skittles.

He sees me and walks smiling. He leans onto my bed's rail, "How are you feeling?"

"I'm... I'm really sleepy."

Dewayne snickers so beautifully, "Yeah, the nurse just gave you some morphine and a nausea-controlling medication. All you've been shouting was that you were in some serious ass pain and you're so nauseous that you could throw up everywhere. Those exact words."

My forehead creases. How humiliating.

"How long have I been here? What happened to me?" I utter anxiously.

Dewayne is mindful of my actions and tries calming me down.

"Relax, Mahrie. You've been here all day... or night. I came by the house and saw you lying at the bottom of the stairs. You did something strange to your arm or wrist and you broke your leg. I don't know, I'm not the doctor--just going by what I heard."

I continue to think about what happened yesterday, but nothing comes to mind, "So... what? I fell down the steps?"

Dewayne rubs his head and eats a handful of Skittles, "Well, the living room window was broken into, but no one took anything... The police thought it was a burglary and maybe you scared him away, but the police are fucking clueless of what to assume. They're like, 'well maybe we should talk to Dewayne--maybe he had a little problem going on with her and didn't know what to do'. Trying to blame me and shit."

I could not help but smile at him, even though the situation is not a smiling one. Not at all. I take a look at my leg in the cast and don't feel to shabby about it. A cast during the summer? Gross.

Dewayne grins as well. We both know he wouldn't do such a thing to me, let alone harm me, so we giggled it off as a little friendly inside joke.

"Are my parents here?"

"Yeah," he nods and points at the door, "but the police are out talking to them."

I don't respond, because I can't find a rational enough reason why. All that matters is that they came... I guess.

Dewayne breathes in a heap of air, so much that it looks like he gained twenty pounds, but then he releases the hot air into a sigh. After that, he is back to the skinny old Dewayne.

He's severely frustrated.

"What's wrong?"

Immediately, he grabs a chair and slides it near my bed. I sit up, in a trance of worry. Dewayne puts his head down and rubs it continuously, "I'm just... I'm extremely worried about you. Like... I need to know if that dude did this to you or not."

I contemplate as hard as I can, but again, I can't recollect anything.

"I... can't remember, Dewayne. He wouldn't break into my house and push me down the steps. He just wouldn't do something like that."

"Well, you didn't know he'd kick you out of his house, without you even living there. Plus, he put his hands on you. You didn't think of he'd do any of that, did you?"

"Well, no, but he--"

Dewayne interrupts with an attitude and gazes at me with eyes of protection, "There's no but, Mahrie. He's the ideal suspect right now."

I deny everything he tries throwing at me, "What!? The only reason you want him to be the suspect is because you hate him."

"Yeah, I hate him so much that I have respect for you loving him. I don't want you to be hurt." He rubs his chin hair and licks his lips irksomely, "You wanna know something? The cops asked me could I think of anyone else that you associate with and I covered for you. So that you wouldn't be hurt by them taking away someone you love."

"What does that have to do with him being a suspect?" I reply, resuming to defend Justin.

"Nothing at all. Not a damn thing, because instead of the guy that it could possibly be, those assholes are trying to blame ME for breaking into your house and pushing you down the fucking steps! Damn, Mahrie! ....DON'T YOU KNOW... that... I'd do..."

He cuts himself off while shaking his head, sympathetically. I'm almost in tears, because I've never witnessed Dewayne have so much sympathy and zeal. I desire to know what he was willing to express, it puzzles me and convinces me to feel guilty for taking up for Justin. I just can't chose between them both. "You... you'd do what??"

"What difference would it make if I said it or not. It's not like you'll listen or care."

Before I could think and answer him, a doctor enters the room and interrupts our conversation, beaming with a mood of generosity and bliss.

Dewayne tosses his bag of Skittles into the trashcan and scores. That is one basketball hand. He is extremely distant from that trashcan. After he scores a forty-pointer, he plops into a chair without looking at me once.

Guilt... I feel guilt written all over me in black ink.

"Hi, I'm Dr. Lance Winston. I'm here to confirm that your vitals are great and uhm... that your," he flips through a clipboard and then places his hands into his white coat, "Supply of a few vitamins is low. So you might want to start taking prenatal vitamins ASAP for the baby. Um, and as for your leg and arm, you'll need physical therapy--"

Without much thought, I cut Dr. Winston's sentence right in half, "Wait, wait, wait. What did you just say?"

Dr. Winston's face is baffled, but not as much as mine.

I hope...

I didn't just hear...

What I heard....

Dr. Winston looks around, "With your vitamins?"

"Yeah... I don't think... I don't think I heard you well."

Dewayne stands up and agrees, "Yeah. Me neither."

Dewayne's face is inexplicable to describe.

Dr. Lance Winston repeats himself, but this time, a bit more explanatory, "Well, we perform tests to see if everything is fine, and your vitamin supply is low. Like your iron and--"

I cut him off again. My hands are shaking and sweating.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah. I understand that thoroughly, but why do I need prenatal vitamins?"

He grins, but after he realizes that we are in no smiling mood, it fades as if it was never there. "You don't know that you're pregnant?"

Everything... in my head... goes blank.