Spoiler
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Please like/comment!Samantha. My name is Samantha. My name is Samantha Kendall. My name is Samantha Jane Kendall.
For a reason that I could not manage to grasp, I found these words immensely important. When my eyes were still closed, they began repeating over and over in my head like a broken record.
I was lying in an uncomfortable bed. Somehow this didn’t bother me. What did bother me was the strange feeling of off-ness that I couldn’t quite place. Something in my mind wasn’t settling the way it was supposed to. I felt as though I was in a fog; perhaps the dream I was just having needed to clear itself out of my head before I could think properly.
Where are Mom and Dad?
I eased my eyes open, despite the glaring lights in the ceiling above me. The absolute, sheer whiteness threatened to eat away at me. I would have shielded my face with my hand if I had felt compelled to lift it into the air, but my brain wouldn’t tell my hand to go up. Something told me that I should lie still, relax. Everything was fine. They’re just lights.
I tried to recall the dream I was just experiencing moments before. Already it was getting fuzzier by the second—all I could remember was a screeching sound and a loud bang. Or maybe not. Maybe I just heard a sound in my sleep and thought it was happening in my dream. Those stupid lights were burning away my eye sockets. I closed my lids and retreated back to the comforting sanctuary of darkness.
Out of the blue, I remembered a time when I was twelve years old and slept through a cop chasing a speeding car right outside our house. In my mind, a policeman was pursuing the vehicle my parents and I were in down a long stretch of highway. I was petrified in the back seat. Dad was driving. At one point Mom looked back at me and smiled an eerie, unnatural smile that made me shudder, even after I had woken. Her eyes had been bright, mischievous.
Where are Mom and Dad?
This time, I was able to clear my thoughts enough to put this into consideration. I was mildly concerned now, although at the age of eighteen I had been granted enough freedom that I knew most likely they were nowhere to be found. Why would they be? I obviously wasn’t at home.
With that, another thought came to mind.
Do I know where I am?
I found that I could not answer this question immediately. The air about the place seemed familiar, but I couldn’t put a name to any of it. As I had discovered earlier, the bed was different, but not completely strange to me, as if I had maybe spent time in it before.
I do not know where I am.
With this realization, I was suddenly too exhausted to think. The logic side of me told me panic, but the other half, which told me sleep, sounded so very convincing...
I could no longer keep my eyes open. The logic side of me would have to go on being ignored for now.
* * *
A soft pattering from a distant window told me that it was raining. When I opened my eyes, the harsh light was gone. It was very early morning—the faintest of light from the horizon hinted to the coming dawn. The room was dim and very slightly greenish from the thunderclouds outside. A peal echoed outside. It reminded me of the dream that I had.
Free from the evil white light that had hindered me before, I looked around. The walls were white, the tiled floor was white, the ceiling was white, and the bed I was laying in was white. I was beginning to despise the color white.
A few machines whirred and beeped next to me. A small television was hanging on the wall in front of me. I concentrated, trying to make sense of it.
I am in a hospital bed.
I knew that this fact should have seriously alarmed me, but for some reason I couldn’t force myself to worry. All I could muster were minimal emotions that refused to escalate to more than a faint uneasiness. Due to my lack of another option, the logic side of my mind resurfaced.
If I am in a hospital, something bad must have happened to me.
I looked down at myself for the first time, at which point I noticed one leg in a cast and a bandaged wrist. A dull ache coming from the back of my neck that I had ignored up until now momentarily dominated my attention. Smaller, exposed cuts on my arms and other leg were already mostly healed. A few pink, shiny scars that I had not had before now were on my hands and fingers.
I’ve been here for a while.
I could now pinpoint the feeling of wrong hovering at the back of my mind. There was a huge, gaping hole where some huge, painful event should have been. The most recent memory I had was the day before the beginning of spring break, when my parents, my older sister and I were packing to leave for our trip to visit family two states away. Emily, who was twenty, kept complaining that she was too old for these trips, and Dad told her that she needed to be respectful and to remember that after all, family was family. Emily was not appreciative of Dad’s advice.
Later, we were all packed, we loaded our things into the car, and then—
And then what?
The simple act of trying to conjure a memory made me feel drowsy and unable to think.
I stared out the window at the dissipating clouds, wondering what I was supposed to be thinking about. Behind the receding storm, the pink sky brightened and became more noticeable by the minute. I knew that in less than an hour, the sun would show itself in a blinding display.
I did not want to think about blinding light. It made me think of sudden flashes, lightning but not lightning, that made me think scared. I wanted to think about the safety of darkness. I drifted back into my endlessly black refuge, wondering if I would ever be able to face the light of day again.
* * *
My parents were not very strict, but Emily seemed to think so. She was much more headstrong than I, and had a tendency to get in much more trouble. When she was sixteen, and I fourteen, she got into a huge fight with Mom, and Dad yelled at both of them. I was standing in the next room, trying without success not to eavesdrop. Mom went into her and Dad’s room and Emily left the house. When she hadn’t come back later that evening, my parents were hysterical.
She showed back up around midnight. Turns out she had climbed to the very top of the massive tree in our backyard and stayed there, just crying and staring at the cloudless sky.
I hadn’t thought much about any of them until now. I wondered where they were, if they weren’t here with me. It was just past dawn, and the lights were back on now, but I was doing better. I tried not to think of that lightning-that-wasn’t-lightning and focus on the present.
A nurse walked in just then, carrying a clipboard. I tried to speak but no sound came out. She only noticed me when she looked into my eyes and found them very open. I could tell when she saw it from the sudden arching of her carefully-plucked eyebrows. She promptly turned and left the room.
Where is everyone? was the question I was going to ask, but I would have to wait even longer for my answer.
I waited an unbearable amount of time. I decided that forcing someone to be alone with their thoughts for that long shouldn’t be allowed. Soon after, I realized that it was totally worth it when Emily walked into the room.
Just looking at her face brought back something that I didn’t know I had lost.
“I am not going!” Emily yells as she slams the car door shut. I am on the inside, trapped in the back seat, but I can still hear the raised voices on the other side of the glass. Mom is pointing her finger at Emily, and Emily glares right back with a look that could set things on fire. I am caught in the middle. What seems like an eternity later, Emily shoves herself into the back seat with me and Mom in the driver’s seat next to Dad.
“Hey, Sam,” Her voice was so soft I could barely recognize it. She looked so much older than she did in my recovered memory, as if stress has aged her. She sat at the end of my bed and smiled at me with the kind of smile people give when they are sad but feign optimism for someone else’s sake.
“How—” I began, but Emily interrupted me.
“I know what you’re going to ask. It’s been twelve days since the accident.” The way she delivered the information sounded like it had been rehearsed.
“Twelve days.” I thought for a moment.
Accident?
I sat for a moment and took a breath. “What happened, Emily?”
Her eyes went wide, and she rubbed a hand across her face. “Okay. I hoped I wouldn’t have to explain it, but I guess I don’t have a choice.” She looked out the window. “Do you remember how Mom and I got into a huge fight right before we left for our family reunion?” I nodded. “Well, Mom was really upset while we were driving there. And since we were driving through the night, Mom wasn’t paying enough attention and—”
A flash, lightning-but-not-lightning
“—we swerved into the other lane, and a semi was right there and—”
Screeching
“Mom tried to stop but—”
A bang
Emily crying from the backseat. I had hit my head on the side of the door and I am bleeding. A suitcase had flown from the seat in between us and hit my leg. Emily has a few minor cuts but was otherwise unhurt.
“Sam, are you all right?” Emily looked at me. I could feel the tears before I knew I was crying.
My eyes don’t want to stay open. I hurt so much.
“Sam? Are you remembering, Sam?”
I look to the front of the vehicle. The window is smashed. The hood and the roof are caved in. Mom is bleeding out of her ears and Dad’s arm is twisted in a funny angle. They are both lying very still.
“Sam, it’s all right.” She grasped my hand too tightly, but I didn’t really care. She was crying too. “It’s just us now, okay? But we’re a family. Do you hear me, Sam? You’re my family now.”
I heard what she said, but I wasn’t really listening. All I could think was that those stupid lights were making her and my tear-stained faces all shiny. I wanted it to be dark. You can’t see tears in the dark.
