Dipping Into Together

Ch 28

Screaming wakes me up. Someone somewhere in the hospital is screaming bloody murder. I pull the sheets tighter around me, careful not to mess up any of the tubes wires that are stuck all over my body. I close my eyes. Concentrate on nothing. Try to fall asleep.

Sleep doesn’t come.

Sighing, I slowly turn over to one side, in the process, pain shoots up my spine and spreads a sharp ache along my skull. I groan. Malnutrition. Concussion. Broken ribs. Fractured arm. Severe bruising. The list was longer than I liked to admit. But those were only the physical side effects of my stay with Uncle. They suspected trauma, depression, anxiety, shock….that list went on and on as well. They never told me any of this, but the loud and talkative nurses that passed by my door or checked up on my while they thought I was asleep were quite informative.

***

 The nights and days that I spent at the hospital eventually begin running together. I was flocked with visits from doctors and nurses, checking my heart beat and fiddling with the beeping machines that were next to me. One morning, I overheard one of the nurses saying that some reporter had tried to interview me, but the doctor wouldn’t let him. People must have started finding out about what had happened, because after that flowers started arriving with regularity, accompanied with notes that I never touched.

            I didn’t want anyone’s sympathy flowers or words. I wanted my mom, and I wanted Jonah. Everything else was meaningless and not worth thinking about. Having still not seen either of them, each day my sadness grew deeper, my worries grew larger. When I asked the nurses, they just smiled at me and told me that they were both doing just fine, but were not in any condition to come visit me yet, and I was not in any condition to go visit them either, apparently.

            I did, however, find out some details about that night that I hadn’t known. Like the fact that it was my mother who killed Uncle after finding two guns somewhere in the house. She shot him twelve times.

            One day, I had been sitting in my bed, trying my best not to cry, when one of the talkative nurses came in, all smiles. I had taken advantage of her tendency to blurt out things that she wasn’t supposed to and asked her if she knew how long Uncle had kept me.

            Her eyes glanced around the room, like she was nervous. “Sweetie, I don’t think I’m supposed to tell you that.” But the look in her eyes told me that she wanted to.

            “Please,” I begged, knowing that she would give in. “I need to know.”

            “Well,” she glanced back at the door, “they say that he had you for about a month.”

            A month? A month?

            “But,” she said, “I heard that he had your mom for a day longer.”

            “What?”

            “Yeah, but you knew that. I bet you’re just acting like you don’t know so that I’ll feel important.” She laughed

            This angered me. “Did you just make a joke about this?”

            She looked stricken, as if I’d just reached out and slapped her.

            I continued anyway, ignoring her look. “So what did you mean that he had my mom for a day longer?”

            Regaining her composure, she said, her voice leveled, “He kidnapped her before he kidnapped you.”