Escape || (editing)

16. A Little Trouble

Reconstructed.

Samantha Victoria Johnson

I woke up to the pungent smell of hospital disinfectant invading my nose. The bleach in the air was overwhelming. Light shone in my eyes, blinding and bright, making me want to scrunch them up tightly if it wasn't going to cause me much pain. My throat was drier than the Kalahari Desert. Some piece of technology was beeping, it sounded like something I would hear before my brain exploded into bits; it was disturbing. I could smell the plastic from the tubes that were in my nose. My body was buzzing with numbness which itself is a hard feeling to describe; I couldn't move anything without feeling it being constricted and immensely strained. Was I dead?

I breathed out and opened my eyes.

I wasn't dead. Dangit! Not again.

That was odd to say, or think for that matter.

I was alive, lying in a hospital. The walls were a sickly stale blue. The room I occupied had to beds; one I was on and one empty in the corner with only a thin white curtain that separated us. On my right, I had a small night stand which had a round lamp on it. Two metal chairs were stationed on the other side-as if someone was going to visit.

What had happened? The last thing I recalled was David Richford's face, grinning, showing off his pearly whites. I was in a hospital. Did I cut myself again? No, that couldn't be. Back in the house, no one could have brought me here, they would have let me die and then dump my body somewhere. What day was it, Monday, Tuesday... or was it Friday?

I couldn't remember anything.

I wiggled my fingers. Okay, so I was definitely alive. Just that tiny movement made weird, jerk-like tingles run up arm.

And there was something else on my mouth, something plastic. It wasn't painful at all, just... uncomfortable because my body wanted to breathe on its own but it wasn't letting it do that. It wasn't matching to the rhythm of my lungs. A ventilator, I suppose what it was.

Other than a random monitor beeping, there was no other sound in the room. I could hear myself breath roughly as if I had run a marathon. Had I? That would explain my sore body. I blinked, making sense of my obscure surrounding and my throbbing head. Was I hit in the head?

I had all these questions like people shouting in my head and it was tiring. There were white bandages wrapped around my head, where mostly the pain came from. With all the strength in me, I lifted my right hand up to get a look at it. A needle was attached to the back of my hand which was connected to a drip with some red fluid in it. My wrist was bandaged and there are dark purple bruised decorated all over my arm.

I must have used a razor on me, but then where did the bruises come from?

The only thing I decided to concentrate on was getting out of there. It was getting dark outside. Aunt Caroline must be waiting for me, I thought, with a bat or an empty glass bottle in hand, cigarette in the corner of her lips. And Brian, he would be too. Today was my duty for chores... maybe?

With my other hand, painstakingly slow, I reached over and pulled the medical tape off the needle and devoid of making any noises, I pulled the needle out of my hand. Crimson blood seeped out and my head happened to feel light once more. Next, I removed the oxygen mask and these small square things off my chest and pushed myself up in bed.

On one of the chairs lay my bag pack and shoes. My clothes were nowhere to be seen.

I threw the white sheet on top of me and dragged one foot to the corner of the white hospital bed and then I did the same to the other. They were both bare below the knee and were glazed in ointment on the bruises, stitches and bandages. My knees were scraped too. As my feet touched the cold, marble floor, I shivered. My muscles tensed under the pressure and it took everything in me not to scream out in pain and I stood up. I couldn't even stand up properly without using the nightstand and the side of the bed.