Coping With Clarity

Chapter One

Selena had never wanted or imagined, that hospital walls would ever register as familiar or at all welcoming.

But then again there was bound to be a downside to having a mother is the chief Doctor in a critical ward, such as the Stroke Unit.

Selena sat with a pencil poking out of her mouth, lazily looking over her ‘english essay’, wondering whether the story of the past few months of her life would get her a good grade, and whether or not it would be too much of an effort to write it. She is shuffled against the wall and her view from the workstation desk allows her to see her mother briskly making the rounds in the Dallas University Hospital. Stroke Unit.

Honestly and obviously it wasn’t the most mentally beneficial place to attempt to work. Selena’s eyes have already scanned the numerous beds and patients with horrified and pitiful glances many times before. She sometimes lets herself wonder; Was he a lawyer? Was she married? What about her kids? A flash second.

Selena tastes the wood of her pencil on her tongue before her brain can tell her she’s biting into it nervously. Her essay is dwarfed as she knows that its nothing to bother about, compared to to the trauma the residents of this ward would have to face or wouldn’t be able to overcome.

Sighing Selena places the pencil on the annoyingly blank page of her notepad. Doodles are the only thing that align her margin, where Selena has declared ‘SG4NJ’ and that ‘TSwift is made of win’. But its also home to neater jottings from her mom like; ‘Ward 23 - open - go to the family room!’.

The scribble almost brings a smile to her face. She knows that her mom dislikes their routine as much as she does. Too many late nights, waking up in sterile hospital waiting rooms and cycling straight after school. Their house is not a home, just a half-way point in their lives, reserved for rare saturdays or for when Selena wants her friends to intrude upon her company in an unsupervised atmosphere. She didn’t like being alone in the big emptiness, boxes still lined the hallway from the move two months ago. So she came to the ward, which was far from lonely. Rides on her bike and takes the twenty minute route to the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, or the hospital as Selena renamed it, to stay until her mom got off shift. If she did.

Selena knew, remembering the countless discussions she’d had with her mom, the move from L.A. would change their lives, maybe not always for the conscious good either. It made them busier. Made them seek new friends, as well as clutching to old ones. New school. New job. New love. New, everything. The nostalgia almost makes her take out her iPhone to text one of her new friends, until a strict looking intern snaps a clipboard on the top of the workstation; eying her blank paper distastefully. Selena restrains the childish urge to stick her tongue out at him by focusing on the elderly woman in the bed directly behind him. Selena had been there when she had been wheeled up from ICU. She’d seen a lot. Speechless and without coordination. Helpless. Reduced to a default setting. Stroke.

The paper in front of her is whiter than the walls and any words that could form on the page would be too deep and depressing for a pointless essay. The notepad closes with a thump, and her mom towers over the desk, sympathetic to her actions.

“Hey mom.” she sighs, seeking a reassuring glance at her. Mandy Gomez. Well, Doctor Gomez to everyone in the hospital. Just mom to Selena.

“Honey.” She says in that tone that is both stressed but concerned. Whiteboard markers screech like background music as more names are written up. Each stroke. New patients. New victims. Selena suddenly can’t swallow at the possibility of new arrivals.

“Its going to get a bit hectic in a few minutes. Would it be alright for you to set up camp in the Family Room?” Mandy is checking her watch and hoping her daughter will agree because there are somethings a sixteen-year-old-girl shouldn’t have to see, more than once.