Hundred Words

Eleven

Eleven

I don't want to open my eyes.

Sometimes, I hear people bustling around me, busy like school, but also organized and calm in the same instant. It is familiar, yet unknown, and that is what worries me. I feel rested and alert, but feel empty as if I hadn't eaten in weeks. I feel poked and prodded, purged of most emotions. I want to cry, but the air around me is thick, like I'm trapped in the endless void of space.

And I am scared. I don't remember why I am here, our way happened. Who am I? My name could be Lucy, or Maggie, our anything. I am nameless. But I fear that if I open my eyes, but only will I remember my name, but maybe something bad, something that had carefully placed me in this torturing emptiness.

I feel phantom hands try to wipe my eyes, hug my legs close, give me warmth, but they don't exist. I don't exist. But I must, shouldn't I?

I pretend to stretch, something reminiscent of who I used to be, for the added comfort, and blink.

Just a blink.

One.

Tiny.

Blink.

The world floods back in a tidal wave of light and pain.

No one is rushing anymore, but I assume they will soon. My name is Alex. I'm a girl. A scared girl, shivering and huddled up on a hospital bed, a gray color that looks white due to the light. My eyes hurt, and when I reach up to rub at them my hands are slowed down by an abundance of tubes. I hate needles, and my heart beats frantically before I realize the tubes don't hurt.

My shoulder throbs with invisible energy, with a heartbeat of its own that pulses with anxious notes of white-hot pain. My body tenses.

"Well, thank goodness!" I start at the voice, and soon I am looking up at a woman. Dark skinned, dressed in what I assume to be a nurse uniform, white, or perhaps minty, off-white and resembling light paper. I just stare blankly, not comprehending the situation.

"Oh, you poor thing. I'm your nurse," she smiles at me, and starts fiddling with what I think is my IV. It looks like a dead robot, and it is beyond me how it actually helps people.

"You must be so confused." I think I nod. "You've been asleep for a few days. We were pretty worried, you're family too. But we're gonna fix you up just fine."

I nod again. I try to make words. "How did... I... Get here..?"

She looks up for a second, making her rounds on the room. Thankfully I have a window. "Your friend... Jane, was it? Well, lucky for you she was coming to pay you a visit, and instead, well, saved your life. And I've seen people in that situation that just freak out, but she seemed very calm. No tears, no nonsense. Like me!"

I force a laugh, not to be polite, but to prove to myself that I can. One small victory.

"See, I like you, honey!" I smile, this time for real.

"Is my family here?" I soak up, my voice not sounding right to me.

"Huh!' Is my family here?' Of course they are, honey. I'll be right back. They were practically jumping up at the opportunity to see you yesterday, and that was when you were sleeping."

"Thanks..." I fumble for words, but they fall through my thoughts like sand through my fingers.

She clicks her tongue. "Marcy, nothin' special about it."

"Thanks, Marcy." She's already gone by the time the words left my parched mouth. I bite my lip as I wait, feeling the need to do something."Thanks, Marcy." She's already gone by the time the words left my parched mouth. I bite my lip as I wait, feeling the need to do something. I think of twiddling my thumbs, a common habit, but when I try, my body is sore and seems to tell me to stop. I listen.

I hear footsteps on the floor leading to my bed, and so I look up. It's my mom, her face crinkled in a sad smile, and Eli, looking amazed like I just won a million bucks, and finally, Mia. Her face is watered down with sadness, her nose and eyes red as they are when she is sick. Her cheeks look moist, like she was crying and tried in vain to wipe away the tears. It makes me want to cry, but I try and no tears come, like all the moisture had been sucked out of me.

"Mom." The word is so simple, yet means so much, as it creaks out of my vocal cords.

She just gives me a hug, wiping the single tear that managed to escape my living drought and smoothing my unbrushed hair. "I love you, so, so much, Alex. I was so scared." She doesn't cry, but I know she's upset. Who wouldn't be?

Eli speaks up, his voice not shaking. "I knew she was gonna be okay." He didn't say how he knew, but I inwardly thanked his support. Eli always said what came to mind, so I knew he was telling the truth.

"Come here, you!" I managed to say happily. I still didn't fully understand what was going on, so I tried to take it all in stride. Nothing really hurt as much as I expected it would feel to be in the hospital.

Oh sure, I wake up in the hospital every day, a tiny voice murmured in my head, trying to raise my spirits in a retested form of humor. I still laughed inwardly.

Eli rushed forward, along with Mia, whose cheeks were still slightly rosy from her flood of tears. They enveloped me in a bear hug, the four small arms lifting my spirits into the clouds. "Hello to you guys, too!" My voice was no longer shaky, a broken smile on my mother's face.

"Why don't you two go find dad? He's in the cafeteria, and it's about time you guys ate lunch." My mom suggested, and I had the feeling that she had to talk to me. Mia nodded, and held Eli's hand. He waved before leaving, and a nurse was nice enough to steer them in the right direction.

"Okay." I said. Mom nodded solemnly. " Sweetie, I need to talk. With you.." This time, I nodded. The feeling of plunging anxiety before presenting a project in front of a judging glass lodged itself in the pit of my stomach, a thousand pound weight I now had to carry. And I don't know why. It just, was. Was there. Was with my mother. The realization that I had been shot simmered in my mind for a good few moments, a couple ticks of a distant clock.

"They think you will be here for a week."

"Okay."

"What exactly, happened?" She asked tentatively. I was surprised. My mom is the person I rely on, not the opposite way around.

"Well," I begin. "He was cutting through the yard- the side yard- and I told him to go the block down like we always do, but he... Got me." The words hang in the silence hung by invisible spider webs.

"Thank god it wasn't worse." It looks like another tear is threatening to fall from her eyes, but she smiles instead.

I smile back.

I knew what she means, and the impact of what could have happened blinds me.

I could have-

I was lucky.