Koda's Thoughts
I woke up in a hospital bed.
"Hey, she's up."
I blinked my eyes open to see both Brad and Alexi now getting up from the little couch in the room. "How you doing sugar?" Alexi asked as he gently squeezed my thigh under the blanket.
I was feeling pain everywhere, but worst of all was on my face. It wasn't a dull, thudding pain; it was a stinging, sizzling pain like I was covered in hundreds of cuts. When I looked at my arms, there were bandages wrapped over both my biceps and up on my shoulders. If I concentrated on those parts of my body, I could feel the cuts all straight-lined and present in my skin.
"What did you tell the doctors?" I asked. I was suddenly too embarrassed to face either of them as my memory of the night before flashed into my brain.
Brad sighed. "We said it was a bar fight, though that was a little hard to keep up. However, Alexi told them that they didn't beat you, just cut you and tried to rip your stitches out as a hate crime."
I remembered the REAL situation with striking clarity. Me, screaming at myself in the bathroom mirror, my arms bloody and covered in cuts.
I looked at my hand on the hospital bed and found it wrapped up with a few small dark red spots.
"I'm really sorry about the mirror."
In my l act of self-destruction, I punched the mirror and then began to rip the stitches out of my face. There was so much blood and so much glass...
"We were just gonna replace it sooner or later. Alexi didn't like the corners of it so we were gonna get a new one anyway."
I sighed. The nurse came in.
"Alright Ms. Richardson,"
I eyeballed Brad who gave me a secret smile. He put his last name as mine.
"You will be okay to go later on this evening. Your vitals are looking good and you're healing pretty okay." she flipped through work on her clipboard. "We'll just dress your wounds one more time with fresh bandages before you leave and you'll be good to go."
The woman gave me a gentle smile, then turned to look at an officer who came in the room. It was none other than Brad's younger brother Alias. They were the spitting images of each other-except Alias looked like a very intelligent twenty-something-year-old.
"Hi Ms. Richardson." he kindly shook my unwrapped hand and followed the nurse while she walked out of the room momentarily with his eyes to make sure she couldn't hear him. "Welcome to the family."
I grinned, but it hurt my face. He was just an easy-going jokester like his brother.
"We don't need to file a report or press charges." Brad said. "As you know the situation and our made-up story."
Alias nodded. "I see." his bright blue eyes made contact with mine. "I just hope you get better and you heal from these emotional scars because the ones on your body mean NOTHING compared to what you feel on the inside. You're a good person, Brad has told me, and I just know this is hard for you."
I nodded.
"I just hope you'll be happy again because I think you deserve it. And STOP hurting yourself! It's wrong! There are better ways of coping with situations.".
"Yeah. A friend of mine once told me that."
Alias smiled and then answered to a 10-4 on his radio. "Okay, I'll see you guys later. Bye Brad, Alexi."
"Bye." we all waved him off.
It was just the three of us until the nurse returned with a tray full of lunch.
"According to your brother over here, you've lost fifteen pounds in seven days. That's not healthy Ms. Richardson."
I shook my head at the Paul Walker imitation.
"I know it's not. I was just trying too many fasts and cleanses at the same time just out of curiosity." I told her.
She brought me a cup of ice water then signed some things in her chart. "Well, be careful with those cleanses. They can do more harm than good."
I nodded and then she smiled and left. Not soon after her did the couple leave to grab their own lunch and maybe a few Z's before coming back this evening to pick me up. I told them that was fine, to take their time.
My pain killers and muscle relaxers were working their way around my body after lunch until I was SO drowsy that I crashed. I had passed out with blood-depletion in my body after I had my breakdown, and came to a few scenarios during the night while we were here. One time in the dead if night, I thought I saw Zach's body curled up next to me, holding my free-hand and snuggling close in the hospital bed. Hanging onto that thought again, I clutched the bundled up covers to my left side and imagined he was here with me and that there was nothing wrong. That I was okay.
That we were back together.
But that's all that will ever be again.
An image.
But not a
reality.
