The Comeback

Chapter 7 - Ungrateful

Chapter 7 - Ungrateful

I blink and everything comes back to focus, but it doesn’t make any sense. I blink faster but the picture is the same, the doctors and nurses are still all over a body, screaming and rushing… working on that body maybe? I feel dragged to it, but at the same time I feel like I should go, like I don’t belong here anymore…

However, I get closer and I freeze because the body on the table is me. I’ve seen my face for years, I can recognise myself. That’s my face… pretty messed up, but my face nonetheless.

I can’t breathe, I can’t move, I can only see myself with all those tubes and the doctors, with everything they can, even a defibrillator trying to… to… make me come back?

What’s happening? Why am I seeing this?

“Again!” One doctor shouts frantically, rubbing both plaques of the defibrillator together to then press them against my bare chest. My body jerks but I don’t feel anything. “Again!” He shouts one more time, more urgently this time, repeating the procedure. But once again, I feel nothing.

That’s my body, but I’m standing here. How is this even possible? Why am I not inside my body?

I start to freak out, getting really scared. Why isn’t it working what the doctors are doing? What’s happening? And that machine has to stop screaming with a constant tone…

Wait a second…

The machine shows a green line, no explosions, no movement. A constant beep without change… a sound that indicates there’s no life. And that machine is connected to my body.

I’m dead. Holy shit, I’m dead!

No, I can’t be dead. I’m too young. What’s going on? Please, somebody help me!

“Do something!” I shout but no one hears me and I feel like a force is pulling me away, but I can’t go. I don’t want to go!

I feel someone else in the room, someone besides the doctors and when I raise my gaze I find a guy, probably my age, light brown hair and green eyes, pale like the snow and with a frantic look. He stares right into my eyes after his examine the whole room.

I don’t know what I’m doing, but I cry out, “Help me.”

In one second he rushes forward and takes my wrist. “You’re not dying and I’m not leaving!” He exclaims and pulls me. I don’t know what he does, but he pushes me back into my body and then everything is black.

I jump in my bed, my heart hammering against my chest and my breathing heavy and my eyes wide open. I’m shaking as I fight to collect myself. It was a dream… or a memory. I don’t know. Was that the moment when I was dead? Those three minutes when the doctors almost gave up on me? And who was that guy? Was he an angel sent to help me?

What the fuck am I dreaming of? Seriously, how strong are all these drugs they are giving me?

“Liam?” A sweet voice asks and I turn right to find my mother with worried eyes on me. “Are you okay, baby? You screamed ‘help me,’” she adds and I blink.

“Just… just a bad dream, that’s all, Mum,” I tell her and I smile, trying to put her at ease. I’ve distressed her quite enough already.

Mum is not sleeping on the sofa anymore, she goes back to aunt Mary’s house to get rest now. She is looking better, still really tired, though. She doesn’t want to go back to Wolverhampton until I’m cleared up, which should happen in two days.

She strokes my cheek and smiles at me. “Do you want to talk about it?” She asks me without losing the smile.

“Just a crazy dream, Mum. It makes no sense,” I answer because it’s true. That dream makes no sense. Maybe I did see myself when I died, maybe I didn’t really want to go and that’s why I came back. Maybe my mind made up the rest, like the guy showing up in the room and pulling me back to my body. Maybe my mind just likes to be creative. I mean, I’m already imagining a whole life with Cassidy, a life I never lived and I’ll never have because it’s in the past. I probably made up that guy in the long grey coat with a black scarf who looked just like he had ran through the streets of London.