Noel has spent his life floating in the background. In foster care, he was the glue that held his little family together and in the operating room, he makes sure he's supporting the doctors. After years of feeling useless, he begins to believe that...
Darkness was all that I was aware of in my current state, it was heavy and consuming leaving me just with my thoughts. No sounds were audible, and there wasn't a smell present for my brain to recognize. This state had to be death, nothing but the feeling of emptiness, a void, which was what I had been expecting it to be. I had never been one for religion, and it's more than often hypocritical interpretations.
Growing up as a ward of the state could suck the faith from you. It was hard feeling unwanted everywhere you go for your entire childhood. Even those who seemed to want you had anterior motives for housing you. It led me to ask many times, what kind and benevolent god would put a child through that? I wondered if my funeral was happening or if days or years had passed since my death had occurred. I hoped my siblings had cremated me instead of placing me in the ground and morbidly coming to see my final resting place. While I contemplated the movement of time in the dark nothingness, I was struck with an unanticipated sensation of what I only could only describe as electricity coursing through the entirety of my body. Out of nowhere a flurry of smells hit my nose. I felt things like pressure, pain, and numbness all at the same time. The most noticeable of the sensations was the feeling of water hitting my face in a staggered pattern.
"Come on Noel please wake up it has been two weeks," I heard the familiar soft and fragile voice that belonged to my sister that was bogged down with emotions.
"Err," I tried to speak out and quickly realized I had a tube in my throat. The pain was unbearable to the point that my eyes burst open, and I immediately saw that face of my sister with red puffy eyes and her hair in a messy unkempt manner, which wasn't the standard style that she presented herself in, she usually had a poise to her. She still looked pretty, but something was definitely off from what I could tell by just looking at her.
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"Oh Noel," she said in a tone that was louder than I've ever heard her use before, not that anyone had ever considered her to be soft spoken.
"I paid your rent, and threw away all of your expired food," she began telling me a ton of irrelevant things. It only slightly distracted me from the doctor's/colleagues coming in and out of my room until Chief Anderson an elderly Caucasian man with silver-gray hair and a broad smile came and took the tube out of my throat which made Chloe cringe.
"Well hello hero," he said in his consistently jolly voice before handing me a cup of water that I reached for doing my best to maneuver the wires and tubes stuck to me in a way that kept them from being pulled up or out of me. Once I had a firm hold on the cup, I brought it to my lips and let the fresh liquid pour down my sore throat moistening my dry mouth.
"The girl, Tiara," I struggled to get out my question. I hoped she had made it to her mother.
"Oh she's fine, she was discharged a week and a half ago," Dr. Anderson answered
"How," I asked hoping they would get what I was saying without me completing my sentence.
"Noel a few firemen were able to get to you through the building, we were scared you inhaled too much smoke and suffocated. Luckily Dr.Houdeck was able to find a weak pulse and went above and beyond in saving your life. You've been in a coma for about two weeks now. I'm so proud of you and your selfless actions. You saved a little girls life I wish I had the kind of bravery that you showed," He said in a genuine tone.
