Consulting Fangirl

Chapter 14: Mai

A/N Greetings, mty lovely readers. Here is the next chapter, I hope you enjoy. :)

P.S. To the person this is dedicated to, thank you for commenting. Here is me making it up to you. 

Darkness really is a subjective term. To some, the darkness is choking and harsh. It wraps around their hearts like a chain, compressing their souls until they shatter from the mere pressure of it all. To others, darkness is a relief, a quiet place to hide from the prying eyes of existence.

To me, darkness was nothing. It was oblivion. From the second the car knocked me off my feet, I was sucked into a state of nothingness that neither scared nor calmed me. I was simply there. I had no emotion about it. In some ways, it was terrifying. In other ways, it was glorious.

After what would have seemed like millennia but rather felt a second, I felt the darkness lifting off of me. It started with a pain in my skull, startling me from my trance. The sharp pain spread like poison in my veins, crawling under my skin to each muscle, every limb. Soon, my entire body was on fire.

I would have given anything to feel the nothingness once more.

But it seemed that I couldn’t escape the pain, the memories of each bone breaking a thousand times over, the slow but steady beating of my heart, pounding in rhythm with my internal screams.

I knew that I was alive. I was aware of where I was and what had happened. I screamed and cried and pounded on the glass confining me, but I could not move my body. I was trapped inside an echo of a shell, a mere vessel to my broken soul.

I heard John’s voice, a quiet whisper amongst my screams. It calmed me. I listened to his words. They were familiar, but I was in too much pain to remember where I’d heard them.

I called out to him, but he didn’t hear me. It was understandable, but I still felt a stab of betrayal in my heart. Why couldn’t he hear me? If he really loved me he’d stop talking and rescue me from this hell.

Despite how selfish it was, my mind couldn’t stop throwing these doubts at me. Maybe he didn’t really love me. Maybe he enjoyed my pain.

Though I knew that these delusions were foolish, my mind needed more ways to torture me. Naturally, when the pain in my body had grown familiar enough, it used John against me.

Time was infinite these days, never ceasing to pass yet never showing any signs of an end to it. I was trapped inside a perpetual loop of pain, never once halting to give me time to breathe.

When time finally did seem to make a difference in my life, I knew that things were about to change. As more time passed, I began to feel less fire and more air on my skin. I felt that I could move things: just tiny gestures, like a twitch of the finger, but gestures all the same. When John spoke, I could hear and understand what he was saying, occasionally.  

The first time I opened my eyes since the accident, I panicked when John wasn’t the first face I saw. It took me a second to realize that this face wasn’t a stranger, though.

“Mai? Oh God, Mai. You’re all right, thank God. We were so worried about you.” Dan’s voice comforted me in an instant. I felt the initial spike of fear when John wasn’t there diminish, though it was still alive, hiding in the dark corners of my mind, the parts of me that wanted Dan to disappear and John in his place. I hated those thoughts, but they were a part of me and I couldn’t change that.

“It’s okay, I don’t expect you to talk. I know what you went through. I just wanted to be here when you woke up. I know you’d kill me if I wasn’t.”

I wanted to smile at him, to reassure him that he was my best friend, to tell him how much I loved and cared for him. This near death experience helped to open my eyes to how valuable life was.

I think Dan understood everything I wanted to say when he saw the look in my eyes. His face softened. He opened his mouth to say something, but his eyes darted to the door. A smirk stretched across his face and he looked down at me once more.

“Have fun, you two,” he joked playfully.

I was confused until my eyes followed him leaving the room. It was then when I noticed John standing in the doorway, an expression filled with such joy, love and relief I felt as if my heart would burst looking upon it.

He made a low sound in his throat before running to the bed and throwing me in his arms. His embrace was gentle, of course. He understood that I was still healing, but I still felt the affection flowing from his touch.

“Mai,” he breathed, his voice cracking a bit. I could see, as he held me, how hard this must have been for him, how much he blamed himself. His hands we trembling as he dug his fingernails into my back.

“John… I… ” My fist words since the accident were slow and slurred, sending a stab of pain into my head. Tears leaked out of the corners of my eyes. The pain was too much. It hurt so badly, like a knife twisting in my skull.

“Sh, love, don’t talk. Relax.” He shushed, leaning me back to lie down. My brain exploded and I blacked out for a second.

When I came to, a doctor was leaning over me, shining a light into my eyes. It occurred to me that people were talking, but everything sounded distant.

“Mai… woke up…wasn’t I informed? … can’t handle sensory yet… been three weeks already… fear for her stability… history of depression?”

My broken mind managed to piece together what they were talking about. Everything hurt, though. Every thought, every sound, every sight: each stimuli like a dagger in my nerves.

“Yes, she… all through high school and… sill faces today…” John’s voice calmed me. I didn’t know what he was talking about, but his words washed over me like morphine, settling every worry.

Morphine. I could feel the morphine that the doctor clicked on. It entered my veins, honey amongst the acid. I felt the world fading away from pain and harshness and terror to peace. The light seemed warmer. John’s hand on my shoulder felt softer.

I grinned, despite everything, and basked in the ethereal splendor or my drug addled state. I felt light, I felt aerial, I felt free.

It was glorious.