Coping With Clarity

Chapter Thirteen

There is a thin line of tubing, coloured deep red; it ran from a full bag of blood hooked on an IV that would painfully remind everyone who walked in the room of what happened.

The IV drops down, like an unused road on a steep landscape, it dips and bends over the plastic barrier of the bed. It gets lost, briefly, in the sheets - before Selena spots it again. Pierced into the thin left wrist of the girl who shocked doctors, residents, and a girl who owned a hello-pony sleeping bag; by severely relapsing into a vicious and bloody seizure. 

Selena focused on the small changes, because she knew the biggest would be her perception. It was a scary anxiety that she’d look into Demi’s eyes and relive everything.

Doctor DeLuise had left an hour ago telling her that Demi had stabilized. His tone was too ominous for Selena’s liking. He’d frowned a little too much at her bloody handprints on the floor and said it was okay if she wanted to go and see Demi now. Now, after the worst had passed. But why not then, when Demi needed someone to anchor her?

The blood on her face may have been washed off but she still felt it. Caribbean blue still looked red but Selena will never be able to associate it with anything like prom again. She can’t even take it off.

Demi is sandwiched between clean sheets that Selena saw being scurried in. Sickness rises in her throat as she replayed the bloodied sheets she saw beneath Demi’s frail legs.

Selena can see her eyes again. Its this that takes her breath away.

She’s never been so happy to see someone’s eyes. Demi blinked a few times. Adjusting.

The blood loss would have no doubt left her physically and mentally exhausted. One of Selena’s excuses not to have visited as soon as DeLuise had allowed her to.

The IV is still 3/4 full. Selena wants to stop thinking about scientific and medical curiosities (what blood type? how long? first bag?) which try and distract her from the shaken girl.

Paleness is a cool and stomach churning feel freezing her cheeks. The trauma she felt must have been nothing to what Demi had to endure. Almost naturally, like the past hour had never occurred, Demi’s anti-seriousness button is pushed.

“Its okay, I ran out of ketchup - the Doc’s say no more party tricks for me for a while. I promise.”

How can she even-? Selena thinks with every thought. How, when she was being refilled with pints of blood? How can she look at Selena like she wasn’t there, like she didn’t watch the light get so close to leaving her eyes?

“Was it too much? I’ll remember next time.” Demi’s voice was still gravelly. Still infected. It was only a cough, Selena remembers. Every word Demi utters pushes her closer to breaking down. She’s looking at Demi; who can’t seem to move much, that tired form, desperately trying to joke her way out of the horror she went through. A horror she may have already experienced.

She wants to say something. But its like she can’t say anything that will matter or make sense; nothing with any meaning.

“Oh God, Sel, your dress-”

Demi’s eyes flare as much as her body allows and Selena’s frustration shoots past her concern. Its just a dress. For a stupid boy. In a stupid school. For a stupid prom.

“I don’t care about the-”

“Can you say something then?” Demi pleads. 

Selena stumbles further in, allured by the voice and sudden tears. She never stopped to think that Demi might need her. She was too wrapped up in needing Demi.