Two Hearts No Words

Chapter 3

The next thing I remember was waking up in a hospital bed. I looked around but didn't see anyone there. I was in some weird hospital gown. It smelled like Clorox wipes and other cleaning supplies. What happened? The last thing I remembered was...was...falling over, and then...black. I needed to figure out what was going on.

I sat up from laying down and turned and saw I was in a closed room. I swung my feet over the edge. Then, a girl in blue scrubs rushed in, "No! No no no no. Sit down." She rushed over to me and grabbed my arm and guided me back to lay down. "No, I have to get to my mom. Where is she? What's going on? Am I okay?" I looked at the lady, desperate, I needed my mom. I needed to know what's going on. "Your mom is down in the food area getting lunch. Everything is going to be okay." I slowly calmed down. "Am I okay? What happened?" She didn't speak for a couple of seconds. "We don't know for sure yet." She said slowly. "We ran some tests but need to run some more to figure out what's been going on." I looked at her worried.

My mom walked in then holding a tray with applesauce, mac and cheese, and a chocolate muffin. She saw that I was awake and rushed over to me. She threw herself over my body and wrapped her arms around me. I hugged her back. "Oh, Luke! I'm so glad your awake!" She released her embrace. And sat and the foot of my bed. "Mom, what happened?" I looked up into her eyes. "A lot sweetie, a lot." My mom looked up at the nurse, nodded at her, and the nurse walked out. "I'll tell you what happened."

"I had gotten off from work early that day and was going to take you to get some ice cream or something. I was waiting for you at my work, but...you never came. I got worried and maybe thought you were just eating lunch with friends, so it took you longer. I kept waiting and then decided to start driving to your school.

"I was on the way to your school when I saw a guy from the neighborhood next to your school crouched over something. I thought nothing of it and kept driving to your school. The whole way I was looking for you, hoping you'd be walking to my work, but never saw you. I was beginning to panic. I got to your school and got out and walked around where you usually are, but you were nowhere.

"After going to all the spots, you are usually at, I decided to drive back to my work to see if I had missed you. This time, driving by that spot where the guy had been crouched over something. there were two more people crouched over it. And this time, they were waving me over. I parked by the curb and hopped out. I ran over to them and looked down to find you laying on the ground...passed out."

She looked sadly down at her hands, fidgeting. "after that, we called an ambulance. They came and took you on a stretcher. They told me I could go with you, but I had the car. So, I told them I'd meet them here. I hurried as fast as I could. I got here and they said that they were running tests on you, I had to wait in the lobby. I went and sat down and started sobbing."

I saw a tear slide down her cheek. "Mom, what's going on? The only thing they told me was that they didn't know, and they needed to run more tests. But you know something more than that..." I stared at her, trying to read her emotions. Just how bad was this? "They don't know for sure, but they have a suspicion. I'm not going to tell you, because I don't want to freak you out."

Then she continued with the story, "I sat in the waiting room for around two hours. Finally, the nurse you saw a while ago came and got me and brought me here. You were unconscious. I stayed the night and fell asleep in that chair in the corner. That's pretty much it." She looked at me, waiting for a reaction. I just sat there, dumbstruck. My entire life, I had perfect health. Well, other than that time I got amnesia for a day.

We were at my mom's fundraising even. There were a ton of bounce houses and stuff. I was there with my friend, Sam, we were 12. We saw that they had an inflatable boxing ring. I thought that was cool. We were waiting in line to have our turn, when we started trash talking each other. It got serious. We got to the front and got on these big inflatable boxing gloves. I couldn't just climb up into the ring, my honor was on the line. I remembered that the inflatable was like a trampoline. I had done tons of back flips on a trampoline; I could do one into the rink from the big inflatable wall on the side. I got on the wall and prepared myself. Three, two, ONE! I jumped backwards swinging my arms up. That was the last thing I remembered. I remember opening my eyes and was holding a red ice cream cone to my lip. I didn't remember anything. There was a weird guy standing over me. Where was I? WHO was I? "Hold your ice to your lip." the tall guy said. I looked down to find it wasn't a red snow cone. It was blood.

That night when I went to bed, I still had no clue where or who I was, but when I woke up it all started coming back to me. My name was Luke, I gave myself amnesia because I jumped off a wall doing a back flip, and that tall guy last night, was my dad. That was the last time I was seriously hurt other than being sick and getting colds.

"Luke" I turned and looked at her. "everything will be okay." She gave me a reassuring smile. I didn't know whether to believe her or not.

"Do you want me to go get you some food?" She asked. Now that it was mentioned, and I thought about it, I was starving. "yes!" I said eagerly. She laughed. "What do you want?" I thought for a moment. "What about, some fruits and vegetables, and a muffin?" I asked, looking up at her. "Can do. What kind of muffin do you want?" She started walking towards the door. "double chocolate." She smiled at me and then left the room. I was grateful she was my mom.

While she was gone, I looked for something to do to entertain me. I found a couple magazines, and a word cross game. I picked up the word cross game and started on it. I got four of the answers and my mom walked in with my food. I shoved the crossword puzzle aside and grabbed the tray from her hands.

She brought back the muffin I asked for, some watermelon, raspberries, an apple, cucumber slices, and carrots. It looked amazing! I started shoving it all down. "Slow down!" my mom hasted me. I started to slow down a little bit but was still eating fast. I was so hungry!

I finished eating and about ten minutes after that the doctor came in. He came in while I was working on another crossword puzzle. "Alright, we need to get some more tests taken to figure out what's going on." He said as soon as he sat down in a chair nearby. "um, okay..." I said cautiously. "For the first test, we need to put you to sleep again. You can decide which scent of air you want that will make you fall asleep." he handed me a list of options: root bear, cotton candy, vanilla, mint, and regular. I read through the options a couple of times when I finally decided on cotton candy.

He nodded and then walked out of the room. He brought in a machine looking thing that I eventually figured out blew air. I smelled the air and realized that it smelled like cotton candy. After a couple of minutes lying there smelling cotton candy, I got very tired. Eventually, I fell asleep.

The next thing I remember was waking up back in the hospital bed. It was like nothing had ever happened and I never left. I just now realized I had a headache. My vision was also kind of blurry. I looked over to see my mom sitting in the chair asleep. I was glad, she needed to get some sleep. She had been spending too much of her time worrying about me. I'm sure I was fine.

Just then the doctor walked in, with a clipboard and a ton of papers on it. It startled my mom awake and she looked up. The doctor walked over to my mom and muttered something to her. She gasped and started balling. "What?! What? Mom, what's going on?" The doctor leaned down and whispered something else. My mother nodded up at him.

The doctor walked over to me and sat down on the hospital bed. He looked sorrowfully at the ground and sighed. "So, we got the results from your test back." He paused and looked at me. "And...?" I said nervous for the answer. "Our official diagnosis, is um...brain cancer."