Sweet Satisfaction (Purple UGC Winner 2014)

Sweet Satisfaction - Six

Six

Slowly, slowly, I lifted my eyelids open. I wanted to shut them again immediately, as the white wall from across me pierced my pupils, but I was intrigued by my surroundings.

I tried to move my legs, but they felt like jelly. Looking down the bed, I noticed I was lying under a white sheet. My eyes scanned around the room; the people awake were mostly reading newspapers, propped up against the metal frame of their beds. I cleared my throat.

“Excuse me, but could I read that newspaper?” I asked the woman next to me. She nodded, turning, and I almost screamed. Her face was horribly disfigured, scarred and bruised. There was only one place I could be in: a hospital. With trembling hands, I took the newspaper, feeling fearful. What had happened to me?

Coventry Evening Telegraph                                                               Wed, 20 January 1915

THE AIR RAID ON THE EAST COAST blared the headline. And then everything came back to me, a punch in my stomach. Nausea grabbed me in a headlock.

All I could see before my eyes were the two lethal Zeppelins gliding through the sky, the blood-curling screams, the ear-shattering BANG, the debris flying through the smoky air, the piano… the piano toppling into me.

My eyes racked through the letters, until I saw a ‘k’. Killed. Everything inside me was screeching with terror. The woman next to me gave me a curious look, as I let out a strangled cry of uttermost relief and sorrow.

…in addition, Percy Goate, who was a victim of the enemy’s bomb dropped at Lynn, and a widow named Mrs Gazely was also killed.

Rose wasn’t mentioned; she was alive. But two people’s lives had been blasted from them; they had died at the hands of the filthy Germans. I handed the article back, and the woman across the bed patted me.

“It’s no wonder they died love. All those terrace houses packed together down Bentinick Street were bound to cause damage. I say, are you alright?”

I had swung my legs over the bed, gasping, retching. They had died in the street I had been in. I hauled myself up and with a yelp, fell down again, bashing my head on the wall.

My ankle was heavily wrapped in bandage. Pain shot through my body, which caused me to moan like I had been stabbed.

“Elsie, oh Elsie, you’re alive!” There was Aunt Rose, hair dishevelled, the buttons on her droopy cardigan through the wrong holes. Every shard of anger I had at her melted away as she scooped me into a hug, clutching me so tightly, protectively, I could barely breathe.

Then everything just got too much, and I started sobbing along with Rose. The guilt I had over Alice (Mrs Gazely’s first name) and Percy’s deaths hammered against the worry that had been pounding around me. Rose was safe.

My eyes blurred, but I could see the hazy outlines of Mary and Emma, a little distance away. My ankle gave another seize of harsh twinging and I fell to the hard wooden floor.

AN: The newspaper article featured is real and I do not own it although I have changed words where the text has been transcribed badly.