Deep Asleep

Chapter 5 : Birds

Max was beginning her reeducation for her knee. The nurse placed a machine slowly raising it under her knee to get it used to bend again. It was painful, but she didn't mind, if it could get her rapidly outside, she wouldn't complain. They made an X-ray of her knee, cut a bit her plaster cast on her arm -allowing the girl to move her wrist- gave her her meds, and left the room. She took her laptop and searched for a movie. She found Armageddon and began to watch it, but she didn't plan the bad connection of the hospital. After a few minutes, it stopped working. She loaded it again and again, but she lost her patience and gave up. She was bored, again! But she had another idea. The meds were working, so the pain was low. Why not moving a bit? She couldn't walk, but there was a wheelchair next to her bed, she just needed to get in there. She put off the blanket and grabbed her left leg to move it without moving too much her knee. Once sat on the bed, facing the wheelchair, she softly put her right foot on the cold tiles. She took support only on her right side, not wanting to fuck up her operation; it wasn't the goal. She jumped on one leg to reach the wheelchair and let fall her body in it.

- "Awesome!" she smiled.

It was the most extreme thing that happened to her those last days. She put her hands on the wheels and rolled through the room to join her roommate. She wanted to know more about her, and what was the best way to know about someone than searching her stuff? She was sleeping, she would never know.

- "A leather jacket! I knew you had a rock side," she happily said. "Sex Pistols, Bon Jovi, Linkin Park, that's nice CDs. A big book about birds! You're literally heterogeneous! Damn, maybe I'm smart! I'm sure Billy doesn't know what that means."

Max kept searching the girl's bag. There were some pictures of her with her family. The redhead felt a warm sensation inside her, seeing all these people happy together, Max was sure she had no pictures like that. Her smile slowly faded when she realized that Jane's family would be forever destroyed now. She was sure she wouldn't smile again as on the pictures. She looked at the nightstand and saw a Teddy Bear on it. She took it with a soft smile before placing it in the bed, next to Jane's head.

- "Teddy Bears are the best friends in these kinds of situations. Me, I have my Super-bunny, he protected me when my stepfather was...well, being violent toward Billy, or my mom, or me...He still does...Anyway! I need to stop telling you sad things like that, you will prefer staying in your coma!"

Max took the box of chocolates and put it on her lap.

- "Whoa! You have good tastes in chocolates! If they stay too long there, they won't be good anymore, you don't mind if I eat some of them? No? Thanks, I knew you would understand."

The redhead placed a chocolate in her mouth. She took the big book about birds, opened it, and began to read it out loud. If Jane was liking birds, why not sharing it with her? The pictures were beautiful, Max ever wondered if she wasn't beginning to have a new passion for birds. It must be cool to fly, you could go wherever you wanted, far from problems.

- "What kind of birds would you like to be? I would like to be an eagle. It's so majestic, and they fly alone most of the time, what a dream! Well they don't eat good chocolates like yours, bu-"

Max stopped talking. The two brown eyes looking at her turned her blood to ice. She froze, she wasn't expecting that, she didn't even know if she was conscious, if it was normal, if it was a good thing or a bad thing. It couldn't be a bad thing, but it was creepy as hell! She went back to earth, closed the book to put it back in the bag, and placed the box of chocolates on the nightstand before waving in front of the other girl's eyes.

- "Oh my god! This is crazy! Are you here!? Are you alive!? Can you talk!?"

Jane stopped looking at Max and began to look around with a terrified expression on her face.

- "You're in hospital, it's okay, you're okay," Max quickly told.

Max grabbed Jane's button and called the nurses. A few seconds after, a nurse entered the room and pouted in direction of Max.

- "You have nothing better to do!?"

- "What!?" Max exclaimed.

- "Don't play with her button! People are working!"

- "No! Look! Her eyes are opened!"

The woman frowned before approaching the young girl on the bed. When she met Jane's eyes, she called more people in the room. Rapidly, Max got lost in a storm of medical staff. Her nurse grabbed her wheelchair and got her out of the way.

- "I thought you were supposed to stay in your bed," the nurse said, with a light tone of reproach.

- "Your Wi-Fi sucks! And I managed to wake her up!"

- "She had good constants lately and she was responsive to some stimulations, the doctor was more than optimistic, but he wasn't expecting her to wake up this rapidly."

- "What's going to happen to her now? Are you going to place her in another room?" Max asked while her nurse was helping her to go back in her bed.

- "Nothing is done yet. She will have reeducation, and she will have to learn again to have a normal life."

- "She won't."

- "Why do you say that?"

- "Her parents died in a car crash; she won't have a normal life again."

- "That's why she will see psychiatrists."

Max nodded. She was trying to see what they were all doing with her, but a nurse drew a curtain, stopping the show.

- "You want her to leave the room?" the nurse asked.

- "If I say no, you'll think it's weird?"

- "Not at all."

The nurse smiled to her, checked her wounds, and left the room. Max couldn't see what they were doing, and she couldn't hear what they were saying, it was a big hubbub until they all left the room with Jane. It was so unreal, it was the first time she had seen someone waking up from a coma, she had only seen that in movies! Max was sure she would have nightmares of those two brown eyes.