Becoming Jane Doe

Chapter 6

"Definitely yellow" I replied to Sharon, she was the women I shared my hospital room with. She had asked me what my favourite colour was.

"Yellow?" she said back to me.

I guess she couldn't hear well and as just checking that she heard correctly. It felt nice that she wanted to make sure she heard me right and not that she would agree to anything I said. She actually seemed like she cared about talking to me. Even though this wasn't much of a conversation I felt warm inside since she was the only person who I talked "socially" to since I had got here.

"Yes, yellow is my favourite colour." I reiterated

"Why is that?" She responded questioning my

reason for picking that colour from all the others.

"Well..." I pondered why yellow was my favourite colour. I had never really thought about it. Yellow just seemed to speak to me. The colour leapt away from the outside world and soaked into my skin causing me to feel calm. Like as it swirled around inside me it's presence gave me reassurance that I should go on. "Well..." I started. "Yellow is bright and vibrant. It reminds me of sunflowers which I love. Sunflowers intern make me think of Van Gogh, Vincent Van Gogh. I guess it was because he painted sunflowers and many of his paintings contain bold colours like yellow. He is my favourite artist. Yellow is, as cliché as it may seem, is a happy colour to me. It makes me think of little drawings of smiley faces and flowers making it through a cold winter only to bloom and be exceptionally beautiful." I

stopped myself before I rambled any further. "I guess that's why I love yellow." I spoke once more.

I looked around the bland room we shared. The grey walls dampened any excitement or energy I had and turned it into boredom.

I don't remember how our conversation ended, or when it did because after awhile of her talking and me replying she had fallen asleep. Sharon has Alzheimer's. I learned that early on in our conversation. By tomorrow she probably wouldn't remember the conversation we had just had. Thinking about her made me sad.

I guess I fell asleep again because when I woke up the old women I shared the room with was gone. I sat up in my bed. I pulled the sheets off my legs. My feet had fuzzy grey socks covering them. I wish I could stand

up and dance around, or leave this room. At the least just being able to wiggle my toes would bring the biggest smile to my face. I would rather be in jail this moment for nearly killing that old man than sitting on a hospital bed, not knowing who I was in the lightest and needed a nurse to help me use the bathroom. Maybe that wasn't true. At least I was free to do what I wanted, even if It was just sitting in a empty hospital room eating repulsive food. I sat blankly staring at the grey wall on the other side of the room.

Maybe I could walk. Maybe the doctors got it wrong. It wasn't a physical disability; it was instead a mental block. My brain wasn't allowing me to walk. It was my own damn fault I was in this mess and I needed to get myself out of it sooner rather than later. If I put all

my strength and energy into this I could stand up and

walk right out of this shitty grey hospital. In theory this seemed like a great idea, now I just had to make it work in the real world.

I used my core muscles to lift my legs off the side of the hospital bed. The lifeless limbs hung there. My feet were about three inches off the ground. I could do this; I just had to be determined enough. I slide my butt until my feet touched the floor. I started to stand up using my arms to support me. My feet were numb and I couldn't feel the floor beneath me but I wanted to walk so I ignored that. I turned towards the door and decided I was going to walk out of here and prove to all the doctors and nurses in this building that I could actually walk. I stepped forward and for a second I believed I was getting out of here.

That belief soon ended. I felt as if I was falling in

slow motion but I happened so suddenly I couldn't have been falling in slow motion. My neck started pounding and the back of my head was throbbing intensely. I reached by hand to the back of my skull and felt something warm. I brought my hand in front of my eyes so I could see what it was. Through blurry vision I saw that my hand was covered in red blood; my blood. I felt dizzy. I laid on the ice cold floor with my hair soaking up my own warm, thick blood. Tears involuntarily trickled down my warm cheeks.

"Fuck!" I screamed through the blur of blood and tears. "Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck," I groaned and smacked my hands onto the floor; the blood from my left hand was so excessive that it made a splashing noise.

A figure showed up in the doorway; a doctor I

decided. My eyes were blurred and I desperately wanted to sink into a deep sleep that I'd never awake from. I started to shut my eyes.

"No," the doctors' warm hands opened my eyes, "you have to stay awake, you have a concussion."

"Just let me die, it's better that way," I slurred, in a half-awake mumble. "Don't worry, I won't tell anyone you let me die," I tried to wink but it came out as more of a twitch.

He carefully lifted my body up. His arms were warm and strong. My bloody head hung down towards the floor. My eyes could see the room in a blur. I saw red; lots of red. It covered the floor. How had I bled that much? Using his hand he propped my head up so my neck wouldn't be bent. His hands were warm. Maybe I'd

bleed out completely and I was just a husk of a human. Falling and hitting my head on the floor wouldn't be the best way to die but dying would be great all together. I couldn't hold my eyes open anymore. They shut.

"Keep your eyes open, do you hear me?"

I was now laying on a table I think, on my side I guess so they could stitch up my gnash. My mind was fuzzy and I couldn't focus. His hands were holding my eyes open , the cold air was making them dry. I couldn't see anything but I could feel the clumps of blood sitting on my eyelashes.

"Hey! Listen to me," the voice ordered.

My eyelids were again peeled open when I didn't respond.

"You gotta stay awake. Come on, just a bit

longer," he spoke in a comforting tone.

Why did people feel the need to save me? Why couldn't I just be allowed to die? It is my life. I heard hushed voices mixed with a lot of rushed movements.

"She's losing so much blood," a female voice stated.

"Hand me the needle," a male voice spoke. It was different from the one before.

That voice seemed to have stopped insisting on me staying awake. Maybe he left. However I still felt his warm hands. They were touching my fingers and tracing nervous circles on the palm of my hand. I felt the sting of a needle poke through the skin on the back of my head. Though it should have hurt it just took my mind off the throbbing sensation that came from behind

my eyes. Then I felt the piercing stop and the pressure of bandages that were wrapped around my head. The man who found me and carried my bloody body here was still hold my hand, his hand was sweaty; it was shaking. A damp cloth was cleaning my face of the blood, some of it at least. The nurses always cleaned most of the blood off afterwards because they didn't like to see the faces of patients who had to wake up covered in their own blood. I'm not sure where I heard that. Maybe a nurse said it in the passing conversations that I liked to listen in on. Maybe I made it up. You never know with me. I liked making things up about people I didn't know it made things more interesting.

I don't know when the man stopped holding my hand or tracing circles on my palm but he no longer was doing it. I also don't know at what time the doctors finally let me sleep but it was late and I crashed nearly instantaneously.