She Was The 0.007%

Days until surgery: 13

Thank you for choosing to read She Was The 0.007%! This is my very first piece I've written, so it will not be my absolute best work. Considering this was a piece I had written for NaNoWriMo, it's a little over 20,000 words, which is fairly short. I will upload a chapter every Wednesday.

I appreciate any and all comments and feedback.
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    I laid there in my bed staring up at my ceiling that was lit only by the red glow of the lava lamp next to the bed. The only company I had at the moment were my thoughts, but not all of them were good. Up until now, I had made occasional jokes about the surgery and the minor risk of fatality that came along with it, but the mere thought of what the operation requires and the thought of losing Audrey continued to haunt my mind. And it just kept getting harder to truly hide my concern for my best friend. I couldn't possibly imagine having to go under the knife for such a serious condition. Laying on an operating table for three hours while doctors cautiously took apart my spine and fused it with several screws and rods. Yet, Audrey didn't appear to be too terribly bothered by the idea of it. Probably because the possibility of her scoliosis getting to that point had always been a topic of conversation whenever she went to a new doctor.

    Why hadn't the brace worked? Audrey diligently wore it everyday for a year, as required by the doctor she had been seeing at the time. And now the surgery is less than two weeks away and it will only continue to rear its ugly head as the days march on. She would be restricted to resting at home for six weeks, and the first week would be spent in the hospital, dazed and loopy from morphine. I planned to visit as often as I could and get her roses, her favorite flower, and possibly make her a blanket so that the hospital she would forced to stay in would feel less like being trapped within its cold walls and a little bit more filled with love. But I was still constantly filled with fear of all of the things that could go wrong during her time under the knife. Even though there's a small chance that something could go wrong, what if something does? What would I do without the constant company of my best friend?

    I could feel the wet, salty tears slowly begin to fall down the side of my face as my thoughts became darker and darker, focusing more on the loss of Audrey and less on the fact that after the surgery, she would no longer have to worry about her scoliosis threatening her health. My vision was blurred to the point that the ceiling was no longer visible. Sobs racked through my body as I sat up in my bed and attempted to wipe away my tears with the sleeve of my sweatshirt. Turning to the nightstand, I grabbed my phone and checked the time. Only ten after midnight. My concern always grew in the later hours of the night.

    I made the decision to text Audrey, voicing my thoughts of the surgery. You now I love you, right? I sat eagerly, awaiting a reply as the dots popped up on the screen, alerting me that she was typing her response.

    Of course I do! Why the sudden concern? She asked.

     I've been thinking a lot about the surgery coming up, and I couldn't help but think, what if something goes wrong during the operation? My phone began to vibrate in my hand as the screen told me that Audrey was attempting to FaceTime me. I tapped the green answer button. Her face showed up on the screen, revealing to me that she had yet to go to bed, her room still illuminated by the soft glow of the lamp on the other side of her bedroom. After thinking so much about Audrey and the dwindling amount of time left until she would leave me for six weeks, it was a relief to see her freckled face and soft golden ringlets of hair that created a halo around her face.

    "Awww, honey, don't cry. It's going to be okay." She said sweetly. Sometimes I hated when she talked to me like that, it made me feel as if she were my mother. But in this case, I didn't want to hear anyone else's voice. "The surgery isn't that big of a deal."