Paul & Gertrude

Chapter 2

Life is strange. I mean, if you're about to die, if you're hooked up to all these life support machines and the doctors are crowding around your bed, waiting for the heart monitor's line to go flat and the piercing beeping sound fills their ears but.... It doesn't. And then they all cheer when your eyelids flutter open, call it a miracle.

What if it's a curse? What if you want to die? I lost everything. I didn't want to have to live with the knowledge that I don't have a life anymore. Even though I'm alive, I'm dead. And it would be so much easier to cope if I was actually dead. But I'm living, I'm here, and every single breath in feels like it's filling my lungs with an inescapable fire, while every breath out carries my memory away from me.

When I opened my eyes to the harsh light of the trauma bay, the cheer made me want to curl up and scream. As fuzzy and hazy as I was for whatever drugs they put me on, I knew exactly what had happened. A face loomed in front of me. "Gertrude. Gertrude, can you hear me?"

"Uh huh." My neck was in a brace, so I couldn't nod. I closed my eyes, fighting the urge to cry.

Death is an unavoidable truth, yet we still fear it. It comes to everyone, it's natural. But after all I am just human: I would like to hear beautiful enchanting lies than fearful truths that keep me traumatic in this very way. I am sure that my parents are dead: both my mother and father. But I can't seem to get around the fact that they might now are a mass of lifeless skin and flesh.

I slide my eyes around the room. The only other person in the room is a nurse bustling around with the IV pole. I make my mouth move, croaking out:

"Are my parents dead?"

She mumbles something about them being in a better place and awkwardly shuffles away.

I lie on the bed, in a daze. How is this possible?

When you're frozen in time, every movement feels like you're dragging your limbs through cement, and every breath is a painful reminder that you're here and they're not. Your eyes burn every time you open them, and tears are always there, always and forever.

Miraculously, I've come out of the crash unscathed due to the back seat providing a decent amount of protection.

I wanted to die. I wanted that so bad. But it wasn't coming.

The overwhelming urge for sleep made me pass out on the hospital bed.