What I Expect

Nightmares and Symbiosis

I arrive at the hospital where Joey is standing in the little grass area beside the entrance. He sees me and snuffs his cigarette out with his heel, scraping it off the asphalt in an explosion of loose tobacco strings. "What's happening?!" I pant, breathless. I look around frantically, as if expecting to see Mai standing with him, all healed up. "Where's Mai? What's going on?"

Joey wipes his nose, blinking his red eyes a few times, staring past me like he's in a trance. Old tears stick to his cheeks, making them shine under the overhead lights. It's getting dark, the luminescent hospital lights buzzing around us. "Fuck, Marik. She got into a crash down at the track," Valon's track, where Mai is learning to ride motorcycles. She's been advancing so well, even readying to take her final driving test. But this... "Tryna get some extra practice in to impress dat asshole. Thing is, they think it was on purpose Marik!" 

"Wh-What?" I cant process this, it seems so unreal. Like a dream. My nightmares are always real, so this must be a dream where everything turns out okay and that means it isn't actually happening. This cant actually be happening. "Why would she do that?!" 

"I don't fucking know Marik!" he kicks up some grass with his heel, getting mud splatters all up the sides of his high-tops. They're dirty already. "They won' let me in and I gots no idea what her condition is! They're bein' pricks on purpose,"

"I'm sure they aren't-" I begin, cut off by Joey slamming his fist into the pillar by the door with a sickening crunch. No blood falls from his hand, but when he pulls it back his knuckles are red and one seems askew, pushed back into a crushed tendon.

A mild-mannered nurse appears by the door and looks between us. "Um, Joey Wheeler?"

"Yeah,"

"Um, Mai is awake and she's asking for you. Please, come," I remain outside, kicking up grass either side of the walkway. I could go in and sit down, but he cold breeze feels more natural when my mental state is so worried. A relaxing atmosphere would just be disconcerting, and I alternates between my tiptoes and heels, swinging my body just to expel some energy. My throat is parched, I need a drink.

"You look frozen," I look up and Akefia is wandering over. He stands, maybe about 10 feet away. He smirks slightly as I rub my arms and from his arm drapes my coat, which he holds out. "You forgot this, idiot,"

"Thanks," I put it on, tugging the collar up around my ears. The freezing wind bites my skin and the light above me flickers, I'm once again beckoned by temptation into the warm hospital. From the vending machine I buy myself a coffee and sit in the hard plastic waiting room seats, Akefia sitting beside me. He slips his hand into mine, our fingers interlocking as I sip on the warm coffee. It's just the right temperature. We sit in silence for a long time.

A blue light flashes before anything else, one in the tiny little corner of the room. As I turn to look, a blaring alarm rings in my arms and I jump from my seat in panic, spilling scalding coffee over myself. Nurses wheel out a long stretcher from which blood dribbles over the side, pouring down in sheets and pooling into a thick river on the floor. I look around, but Akefia is gone and when I stare back at the stretcher so are the nurses. The hospital lights dim to an odd darkness, as if time has revered back to dusk, but dusk is indoors. The only person in the room lies on the stretcher. Mai, her hair blonde and matted over her shoulder, clumps of blood stuck in patches around her head. Eyes wide open and hollowed out from pale skin, empty sockets staring straight into my soul like a mummified body thousands of years old. Her skin begins to crack and crumble before me as I frantically gather up the pieces of my friend, crying uncontrollably into my hands. I cannot explain the raw dread I feel.