Survivor

Chapter Two: After

            Sitting in the white washed hospital room, I feel alone and trapped. It's been three weeks since the accident, and I was in a coma for a good amount of it. Most of my family is here, and I feel more and more claustrophobic as another family member enters the room. I don't want to be here, and don't want to be in this bed either. I want to be home, and hanging out with my friends, or, what's left of them anyways. I got the worst of it, but Aiden has a big scar across his lower abdomen, and Lila's face is alright, but her scalp is still healing, at least that's what I've been told. I pretend that I am sleeping, because if I'm awake I have to take medications and I hate it. I hate feeling like I need to take them, because I don't want them.

            A nurse in pink and purple scrubs walks in, and she nears the bed. I hunker down in my covers and actually try to fall asleep now, because I know what this means--what time it is. "Clare?" Nicole asks, "Clare, wake up Hun. You have to take these." She holds out three cups of different medications and I shiver. "Clare, I know you are awake!" She laughs, but I think it is far from funny. Those pills make me sleepy, and fall away from the world, and I have let them, for three weeks, take care of me. I think I'm fine now, so I want to make my own decisions.

            "No, go away, I'm not taking them," I say defiantly. I shift in my bed, and roll to face the opposite direction. I grimace, and feel my legs throbbing. My stomach hurts and my hips are still sore. My leg that's in a cast is stiff, and it's hard to turn over, so it's a slow process but I manage.

           "No, you are prescribed these. You know the drill." She tucks my hair behind my ears and rubs my back, "Okay, I'll make a deal with you. Just take the pain meds, please, for your own well being, and I'll ask the Doc if you can stop taking them from now on."

            Her deal strikes me with interest and I roll over slowly, and cross my eyes at her. "I think, you are going off your head." I say, "Since when do nurses make deals with their patients?" I ask suspicious of this.

            "Since now. But I will take back my offer if you do not accept, this is one time." She smirks at me as much as a forty year old, woman can anyways. "Come on, Clare. Please, we can still put it in your IV, we are just giving you the choice, you know this," she pleads.

            I am about to say no, when I cry out in pain from my right side, near my hip. "Augh!" I yell, nearly yanking my IV out of my arm.. Everyone looks over to my bed with worried glances and stares. "Ow!" I yell continuously. This pain is like my insides are exploding and I start to cry it hurts so much. I curl up into a fetal position and I wish I was dead, I have never felt pain like this.

            "Please, everyone, clear the room! Single file, please hurry!" Nicole half yells in a strict voice. Everyone, including my mom hesitates. I look around, and then the lights are too bright and I close my eyes shut. There is muffled shuffling and then silence, 'til I can only hear my own whimpering. A door bangs open, and I hear wheels squeaking on the linoleum or marble flooring.

            "Nicole?" I shout in pain, "Can I take those pills now?" I ask, hoping I can.

            My hopes are crushed as soon as Nicole starts talking, "No, we need to get you a MRI, or an X-ray to see if you broke anything, or have internal bleeding. You seemed fine, but maybe something ruptured." I close my eyes again and wished I was home, again. All this talk scares me, I hate hospitals anyway, this only makes me hate them more. I am lifted onto a gurney and clamp my mouth shut from screaming. "Sorry," Nicole says, then starts giving orders, "Michael, strap her legs and Cheyenne, get her arms. She can't move around too much for that MRI, she could damage something else." She says it like I already did.