All My Sins

An Emerald

Just a foreword for this chapter, I'm sorry if it falls short of the excitement of the rest of the chapters, I have just had a really hard time with writing it and figured that I might as well publish it now or I'll leave myself stuck here for another two weeks! Just want to say thanks again for the incredible support that I've gotten and how much it means to me! 

Maureen had a very beautiful dream her first night in the hospital. She was sitting in the Lantern Room at the top of a tall lighthouse. A pelican bobbed across the horizon, where the sun was setting below the burbling ocean water. The night sky was nearing behind her, but her eyes were cast to the remaining light. While the sun burned ferociously orange, giving its all before sleeping, it blushed the rest of the sky a bashful pink. A truly beautiful sunset. The water was calming and there she sat in the Lantern room, watching the world settle down.

This sleepy hallucination was short-lived when the oceans murmurs and sea breeze were drowned out by the noise of a rattling cart. She was very confused upon seeing a nurse in purple scrubs walk into the room where she was sleeping. The nurse could see the confusion cross the young girl's face, she spoke up and said "I'm gunna go get the doctah!"

She spoke very loudly and with a Southie accent like that of someone from Boston.

Once she opened her eyes, she felt as though that were the only movement that her body was physically capable of. She couldn't move. Her chest hurt and she could feel an immense pain all around chest and ribs. Looking down she could see that bandages had been wrapped around her forearm.

There was no telling how much time had passed. To her, it seemed as if she had left school and then woken up in that bed. Maureen felt very scared though and she felt as if she could hardly breathe. The air was there in her lungs, but she could not get it out to exhale, nor could she take more in. However, then she felt the pressure of air moving at the back of her throat, it was then that she realized she had a breathing tube over her face.

At last the same nurse with the Southie accent walked back in and following behind her was a doctor in a long white coat. She opened her mouth to speak and inquire about what had happened to her, but she was met with great difficulty in doing so. The doctor was not surprised by this.

"Hello, Maureen. I'm Doctor Blevawick. I oversaw you after your accident earlier yesterday afternoon. Do you remember your accident?"

She shook her head no, her chest causing her a great deal of pain and her eyes beginning to water.

"Well, we assume that your accident occurred due to the ice on the roads. When the EMT's arrived at the scene, your car was flipped over and had appeared to have flipped over the guard rails, and rolled down the hill of the road. Your ribs were broken and those ribs ended up puncturing your right lung. We considered this a pneumothorax. So basically, there is an air sack around your lung. Now, air is leaving your lungs and going to the rest of your body. For the sake of explanation, I'm gonna compare your lungs to a balloon, they need to stay inflated. But now there is a hole in one. So we have put a tube into your lung to fix the hole, but also maintain the inflation and uphold of your lung to prevent it from collapsing. Do you see?"

Maureen nodded her head again and suddenly felt so frail. Even if she felt like she had been able to, she was afraid to move. 

Maureen nodded her head.

Doctor Blevawitz walked around her bed removed her breathing tube, and showed her where the tube ran into her body at the bottom of her ribs. It was a disturbing sight for her to see.