Atlanta
The white walls of the hospital swallow me, crashing down around me in pale waves.
Somewhere, something beeps. Tired, I lean my head against the raging whiteness, battling for attention with the hard blue of the hospital floor.
Lorraine beside me sighs, taking a sip from her plastic cup, frowning at the watery excuse for coffee slushing inside.
After everything cleared up, Donna warded off the guards pestering us with probbing questions and herded us to sleep in the hut.
We weren't tired. Three pairs of eyes had stared at the ceiling. Three minds wide awake and alive with questions.
I regreted the sleepless night the instant that Donna, bleak eyed and weary, came to haul us out of bed for breakfast.
That dude from the ice cream adventure turned out to be Donna's brother and a mean cook but we were too tired to sit up properly, let alone eat. The second our feet hit the grass outside the hut, we were swarmed by curious campers which Donna silenced with one flick of her wrist and sent off to collect firewood or something.
The ride to the hospital was bumpy in Donna's jeep, and there were one or two journalists when we got there, eager to jump in with the same questions that our campmates had hurled at us.
"Vultures," Donna had muttered and with firm determination ushered us up the steps of the hospital, the closing doors shutting out the chaos of the outside world behind us.
"I kinda feel responsible," Lorraine suddenly says beside me and the bleached coldness of the walls retreats as I snap my eyes onto her face.
"It wasn't your fault," I tell her "there was nothing you could have done to prevent this,"
Lorraine sighs down at her cup of murk as a nurse dressed in scrubs marches past. We fall silent for a moment, but before it gets awkward Lorraine jumps in with
"Yeah, but if maybe we hadn't all been arguing these past few days and there hadn't been so much tension..."
"It wasn't your fault Lorraine, I mean if it was the tension that got to him, it was mine,"
I see her wince at my words, and Brandons face is spat out by my memory, followed with gut wrenching guilt. The whole messed up situation can't be ignored or pushed aside anymore, not that now Lorraine and I are making pained conversation.
The apology is salt on my lips.
"I'm sorry you know. About Brandon. And I get that this doesn't make it better or excuse what I did, but for what it's worth, I am. It was stupid of me and I did it for validation-"
"Validation?" Lorraine raises an eye brow at me.
But I can't explain it to her. I can't tell her about Jordan or what he did. I just can't. It's too personal and too fresh to share. So instead, I shrug and offer her a lame
"I have some issues that I need to work on,"
"Who doesn't,"
And what with the look on her face I can tell that in some twisted way, Lorraine understands. Maybe I'm not forgiven, but she understands.
So maybe, I have figured out how to unscrew Lorraine afterall.
YOU ARE READING
Turmoil
Teen Fiction""And you see, maybe people, maybe we're like those cars. We meet others, we crash, some crashes more powerful than others, we change. Impact. It means the death of something, doesn't it?" Tim : (adjective), a writer who's feelings are pressed into...
