A Rush of Summer

Beat One

 My family is highly religious. It's the way I’ve always been raised, how I’ve grown up, how I’ve been taught to believe. My mother had this reoccurring feeling, a message from God she would say, that told her if she didn’t put her faith in something greater than herself, she had nothing to live for.

In some freakish blood connection type way, I had that feeling too. I spent my toddler days on the Church playground, and elementary school days roaming around Vacation Bible School. When I peaked in middle school, I ventured into an amazing youth group, and spent two consecutive summers in Guatemala building schools for the local children. It was definitely safe to say that my life revolved around the Lord, and spreading his word with the people here on Earth.

 Never, not once did my faith waver over the years. Lectures were given in the Milton High School auditorium each month on popular topics for teens; things like alcohol abuse, drug overdosing, and what to do in cases of peer pressure. I was proud in the fact that I never gave into any temptations. When others questioned, mocked, and judged my Christianity, I stayed strong; and eventually I was respected for it, which doesn’t happen often with today’s generation. My positivity was distributed through my passion, determination, and love for softball; my outlet for all frustration besides prayer.

 Our Church’s Youth Pastor, Henry, said that he was extremely impressed with my dedication, as he knows that some teenagers can’t always undergo extensive amounts of ridicule these days. He said that God is working through me to spread not only his word, but his love, and one day I would be rewarded for all of the great things I am a part of now.

 So as I listened to all of my peers and role models boast about my maturity, and sense of faith, I wondered why a God, my God would send me into a down spiral.

    As I slipped, tumbled, crashed on that softball field God watched me struggle. And as I made my way to M.C. Hospital in a bright red ambulance, an oxygen mask plastered on my face, my mother riding in the front seat, and my best friend holding tightly to my hand, I had a feeling similar to my mom’s. I knew that if I closed my eyes even for the tiniest, of a second, they wouldn’t open again

                When we reached the Emergency Room the paramedics wheeled me through large double doors where Mallory was ripped from grasp, and my mother was lost in a crowd of awaiting family members of other patients residing in nearby rooms. I was pushed to a spacious room with bright lights, blindingly white walls, and so many doctors I couldn’t begin to count them. Their scrubs, sea foam green, blended in with the next set, and soon it made me dizzy to look at them. Shallow breaths turned into small pockets of air that would’ve gone unnoticed to me if I had not been contracting them myself; and as an aging man, scrub cap the color of royal red atop his head leaned over me, he placed a mask over my face that released drowsy fumes into my body.

                The last words I heard echoed in the recesses of my mind until I could no longer find them. “Push one of epi, charge to two hundred.”

    When I finally awoke, the shock that I did wake, I was lying in a hospital bed. A cannula was present, sitting in the small indentions of my nostrils, and the light breeze that extended from it made me feel good. Other than that, my entire body ached, and it felt like there was a seventy ton weight on my chest.

  My mom was asleep in the bedside chair. Her arm is supporting her head, and the beige blanket covering her body is so plain that it makes her look twice the age she is. Tightness in my chest arises and a scratchy feeling makes its way to my throat. I cough, or more like wheeze and it wakes her up.

                   “Summer! Oh honey, I’m so glad you’re okay,” she’s says desperately, lovingly, and worst of all, worryingly. All of those emotions wrapped up into one small greeting are enough to cause alarm.