Where Two Collide

Chapter Nine - Alice

Chapter Nine

Alice

A case of bacterial infection coupled with pneumonia, likely caused by the digestion of polluted waters. That's what they said when I woke up.

I never really understood the word disorientation before. Disorientation must be felt to really be understood. Waking up in a place that is not your home, somewhere you don't remember travelling to, is the epitome of disorientation.

The hospital room I was in was pure and untarnished. The walls were white, the curtain along the side of my white bed, was white. Even the white plastic table had a vase of white flowers in them. I was relieved to be told that I was not in fact dead, as I had first suspected, though if I was dead maybe they wouldn't want to shock me by telling me straight away. At least that was the thought process that ran through my mind, as a lady nurse with nice eyes checked my vitals and then passed me a glass of water with a white paper straw.

If I was dead, then maybe she was an angel. I eyed her suspiciously as she told me about the tubes in my arms and instructed me not to mess with them as they were making me better. I nodded, wondering if I would see my life flash before my eyes, or if that was supposed to happen before the actual dying part.

She helped me sit up against my squishy pillows and then left, giving me an extremely precise time as to when she would be back. I nodded again and sat in silence, wondering what I was supposed to do until she came back.

The curtain slid back on its rail with a gentle whoosh, and an ashen-haired boy peered out at me from behind it. I had not in fact been alone. "Hello," he said with a smile. "Are you a twin or a triplet?"

I cocked my head at him, somewhat befuddled by his surprise appearance.

"Or I suppose you could be quadruplet." He scratched his head, leaning back on the legs of his chair. "An octuplet wouldn't be unheard of either."

"Are you an angel?" I asked, hoping he'd clear it up quickly so I could move on with my theory.

He laughed in a way that reached right up to his eyes. "I can't recall ever being called that before."

"So, not an angel." I hesitated, maybe the nurse wasn't lying.

"So, which is it?"

"Twin," I replied and glanced off toward the window, noting that I could only see clear sky from where I sat.

He smiled thoughtfully. "I knew it. Though it'd be cool if you were an octuplet, imagine there being eight of you. When I saw your sister, I just knew it though. Twins!"

My head snapped back toward him. "Cat was here?"

"She was here when you came in, and for a while afterwards." He watched me carefully. "But that was yesterday."

"Yesterday?" More disorientation. It was even weirder to lose time.

He let all the legs of his chair settle on the ground and twisted to face me. "Don't worry, visiting hours are soon, I bet she'll be back. You're probably going to get a lot of visitors actually; you should have seen how panicked people were. There was even a guy yelling down the corridor." He laughed again and I lay my head back, pulling a face.

"That sounds, erm, dramatic." If I was being honest with myself, it was not just dramatic, it was Owen. Once, Owen was kicked off the rugby team for a rather aggressive tackle, which had set the other guy back with a broken wrist. He'd gotten the rest of the team to quit and they'd all hung out on the field during practice playing with a football, which in our school was basically sacrilege. Needless to say, he put the school in a tight spot, and they caved.

"Those were from him." The boy gestured toward the white flowers I'd spotted earlier.

"Huh," I said. "That's nice."

"Everybody loves flowers," he agreed and crossed the room, plucking a stem from the vase and popping it behind his ear. "Don't tell me, I look beautiful right?"

"Sure," I said. Uncertain of how to speak to him. This boy was odd.

He headed toward the only door I could see in the room and paused. He lifted one hand and waved, and then left as quickly as he'd appeared.

I stared after him a moment, before leaning across and drawing back the rest of the curtain just to make sure he was in fact gone. Behind the curtain was another bed, and in the bed, an older lady with greying hair who was fast asleep. He was probably visiting her, I realised, then pulled the curtain closed to give her some privacy.

It was a relief when my sister and parents came by. I finally felt like I could breathe, though the exhaustion my body had been carrying came over me in a rushing wave, and I felt as though I might sink into the springs of my mattress and it would swallow me up. Cat brought me a sandwich box filled with M&M's, having removed every single red one because she knew I wouldn't eat them. She was the only one who really knew what to do to cheer me up.

"The red ones are the best ones," Cat had said, confirming that she'd eaten all the leftover chocolate.

"You know they get the colouring for red M&M's from crushed beetle's, right?" I'd told her.

She'd licked her lips as if savouring the taste. "Mmmmm, adds to the flavour."

Our dad had immediately debunked my reasoning, telling me that he didn't think that was true anymore. I was still unwilling to risk it.

It was just before the end of visiting time when they left. I didn't have my phone so I opened up my M&M's and begun to snack on them, I felt this awful empty feeling in my stomach as though I hadn't eaten for several days and chocolate was just what I needed to quench that thirst. Before I made it through even a quarter of the tub I promptly, vomited them all over my hospital bed.

I stared at my lap in horror, a pool of rainbow seeping through my sheets, and quickly launched myself off the bed pulling the tubes attached to me with me. What was I supposed to do now?

"Alice what are you doing out of bed," the nice-eyed nurse said as she came back into the room, rushing toward me.

"I was sick," I said, wiping my eyes on the sleeve of my hospital gown. "I didn't know what to do."

She started rolling up my sheets, there was a plastic layer underneath that protected the mattress from my puke. "You call me, and you don't get out of bed," she gestured toward a console beside my bed with a button on it. "Press this when you need me, and I mean it, you must stay in bed or you won't get better."

A tear rolled down my cheek as she set me back up in my bed with new clean sheets.

"No more M&M's," she admonished, putting the lid back on my sandwich box and setting it across the room just out of reach. "Anything that goes in your stomach at the moment will just come right back up, so water only, but just small sips."

I lay back against my pillow, defeated. How had I ended up here? What atrocities had I committed in another life to find myself pinned to a hospital bed, and without my phone at that.

"If you're feeling up to it," she began, after she'd finished her checks on me. "There's a large boy out in the waiting room who has been here for a while. We wouldn't let him in before as there were already too many visitors. He can come in for a bit now if you'd like?"

"Owen?" I sat up suddenly, pushing down the panic that's rising in my chest. 

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Hospital stays are terrifying the first time, have you ever had to stay in hospital by yourself? Comment below!