I threw my head back and laughed.
The adrenaline screamed through my veins as trees and people whizzed by, a blur. I was a blink-and-you'll-miss-it moment, faster than the speed of sound and catching up with the rays of the setting sun that casted long shadows ahead of me. I chased them, an animal, free and filled with a rushing ecstasy that filled my lungs with a shout I couldn't contain.
Smiling insanely, my hands gripped the handlebars, my knuckles white and trembling. I felt as though if I let go, I would be whirled away by the rushing wind and become just another ordinary brown leaf whisked away on the whispering breeze.
I refused to be just another leaf.
A growl escaped my lips.
Pushing myself, my legs pumped harder and harder, my blood being replaced with pure racing adrenaline. Everything around me was made up of smudges of paint smeared on a page. My eyes locked onto the path ahead in concentration, focusing on the way it rushed beneath the wheels of the bike. The pedals of the bike wound faster and faster, almost too fast for me to keep up. Life was a speeding blur of colour, sound, a sensory overload that pummelled into me like a truck.
And then...
slowly...
I began to fall apart.
I gasped as oxygen was snatched from my lips. Each once-carefree breath was becoming a burden, the precious air that I exhaled becoming harder to replace. I gaped like a fish; a hand wrapped around my lungs, crushing them, slowly squeezing every last molecule of oxygen from within me.
The adrenaline rush was over; my energy was slipping away as easily as sand between my desperate, clutching fingers. My body turned to liquid, useless, weak. A tidal wave of exhaustion sucking me under, I stopped trying to fight and let the wheels of the bike simply turn, taking me wherever they wanted to go.
I was whisked along, suddenly helpless. Just another leaf on the wind.
The hand around my lungs squeezed tighter. Blackness invaded from the edge of my vision.
Panicking, my eyes went wide, I gasped hopelessly –
scrabbled at my throat –
and woke up, noiselessly gasping for air in a hospital bed.
A familiar voice soothed, "It's alright, Sammie," as an oxygen mask was thrust at my face. I took in long deep breaths, multiple voices talking to me as the blackness retreated.
The first thing I saw was my mum.
I studied the lines of stress punctuating her face, the smile lines too.
Not that she has any reason to smile anymore, since I became ill. Since life stopped being good.
Never again would I feel the wind in my hair, the rush of adrenaline from riding a bike. I would never get the chance to prove myself, or show that I was more than just a dead leaf.
But I was a leaf, and there was nothing I could do about it.
