. I'm a bit nervous. I feel like I'm sending a my child off to his/her first day of school..This could be a prologue. I dont think it'll make much sense.. yet.
“… This is the scent of dead skin on a linoleum floor…”
Next to her, John tapped his foot. Tap tap tap.
She squeezed her eyes closed again. Her elbows forced pressure onto her upper legs as she rested her head in her hands. It was a good feeling, it distracted her.
Tap tap tap.
She wanted him to leave. He wasn't there for the same reason she was. He had a lot of nerve showing up here. He didn’t understand the capacity of what had happened, how different the situation was.
Tap tap tap.
Releasing the stagnant air that had been residing in her lungs for the past minute, she sat up in the rigid plastic chair. Her eyes adjusted to the bright light. They begged for the darkness her hands had provided before.
It had been fifteen hours ago that they were found, fifteen hours since she had seen her best friend. They hadn’t said anything to her, the people who were supposed to be helping. Saying something wasn’t allowed until the victims parents had been notified of anything. Fiona’s parents were with the doctors now, so it was only a matter of time..
The silver dress Tia had been wearing still hung off her shoulders and didn’t do much for warmth. People had come, Tia’s mom came every two hours, but didn’t bring anything warm. It was an attempt to get her home. Tia refused to go home.
Tia turned her head to glare at the irritation. Sensing the death stare, John swung his head around and looked at her, concerned.
Tia realized that he was wearing a different set of clothes and that his hair was washed. It radiated cleanliness.
He had left.
"Why are you here?" she demanded.
"Same reason you are" he replied.
She could feel the anxiety creeping back at her, testing her patience. She pushed it away with the anger she had built up to keep guard. She wanted to sob. She daren't. It was neither the place nor the time.
"What do you take me for? I don’t know where you get off. How dare you even come here? If you have any sense of sympathy you’ll leave... now"
His expression was vacant, eyes wide. Only God could tell what was going on behind them.
There was silence until he spoke again.
"It took me a lot of courage to come here, and I didn’t come here for you to blow it up in my face. I didn’t come here for you, at all."
"And that suppose to justify everything? I can’t believe...” she was cut off mid sentence by a wail.
Tia snapped her head around to the pale white, swing doors. How she had longed to be behind them earlier, to ask questions that the under-paid, over-worked nurse at the reception office couldn’t answer. To maybe see Fiona, and make sure she was ok.
Now, they were a symbol of oppression for Tia knew the person that had cried out earlier, all too well. She knew what that cry meant and why it had yet to subside.
The doors were pushed open and Fiona’s father was holding up Fiona’s collapsing mother.
"No...Not my baby... no... Please God no...” She sobbed. Uncle Phillip carried her over to a waiting room chair, sat himself down in it, and cradled her like a child in his enormous arms. He stroked her hair above her tightly shut, wet eyes and finally allowed himself to let the realization grip him and squeeze him enough to bring him to tears.
Fiona was dead.
Tia watched. She felt her heart tear in half. Half of it rooted itself deeper into her, while the other refused to stay, as much as the bound half begged it to. The pain in her chest forced her lungs into a ball and she found she could no longer breathe. Her conscious was impossible to recognize as her own. Her thoughts swarmed around her head with no point, no reason.
She gasped for air, and it filled her up. She hoped the new oxygen would bring her oblivion. She yearned for he senses and her mind to be erased, to be nothing but a body with no connections to this life. Her life was over, she didn’t need one anymore. Her reason for it was dead.
“Tia?” she barely heard Jon say. She used her arms to push herself up and out of the chair.
His voice sent her off and she started to run for the emergency rooms doors. She didn’t stop or slow down as they came close. She slammed into them as hard as possible, needing the pain. Her head throbbed and her bare feet were sticky on the linoleum.
On the other side, she was met by a bright white room, laden with crying children and beds privatized buy pale green curtains. She stopped and investigated. She couldn’t see Fiona anywhere. She ran past bed after bed and searched the faces of each patient. Some irritated, others full of anguish. She didn’t have time to notice anything else about them.
“Fiona?” She asked absent mindedly, hoping that somehow it would will her alive, “Where are you?”
“Excuse me, Miss?” a nurse said as she walked past, “you’re not allowed to be here.” The nurse started to follow her, trying to keep up with her, but failing. “MISS!” She shouted as Tia continued to walk briskly down the hallway. “YOU CANT BE IN HERE!” the nurse shouted again, on Tia’s heels.Tia snapped, turned around and grabbed her by the shoulders, shaking her violently, becoming irritated. “Where is she?!” she shouted, her voice breaking. She just wanted to know where her friend was. Why wasn’t anyone helping her?
The uniformed lady looked startled, eyes wide. Tia disregarded her by dropping her hands, turning around and continuing to look. The nurse was wasting her time. A few people were walking quickly behind her now and she quickened her step.
“Young lady!” she heard a male voice shout.
She lifted her hand to her head and turned around a corner, which led to a darker, more private area. She pulled each curtain she walked past away to reveal severely damaged people. They were all unconscious and doctors worked around them. They shouted at her as she stormed through. Each patient was attached to machines which beeped them alive. The group of people behind her, in white coats, started to run, so did she.
She ran through a solid silver door, and stopped in her tracks on the other side. She was in the mortuary. The room was cold and rigid. Tia instantly became numb. It wasn’t because of the cold or because she had used her head to bang open the heavy door, it was because she had found Fiona.
She lay on a steel bed, as if she was food, being served on a platter. Her body was covered by a white sheet up until her neck. Blond, dirtied hair flowed off the table and hung off the edge, being illuminated by a light coming from behind her. Fiona’s eyes were closed and the gashes on her face were purple. The look she wore wasn’t peaceful or content, the way dead people were thought to look. Her lips were apart, turned down at the corners, which made her look pained.
Everything around her went dark, except for Fiona. It was like a light had been focused on her and the rest of the bodies around her didn’t exist.
Tia’s insides cracked. Her heart shattered in that moment and all she felt was resentment.
“NO! Fiona, no!” she shouted, angrily, almost growling.
Tia’s legs started closing the distance between her and Fiona. Her hands wanted to shake her awake. She couldn’t be dead. She just couldn’t.
She was stopped, pulled back and Tia found that there was a set of arms around her waist, restricting her. She fought against them, kicking, crying, screaming, although she couldn’t hear any of it.
“You promised me, Fi! You promised me you’d stay!” The doctor pulled her further away, pulled her from all that tied her.
“Fiona, please! I know you can hear me! You promised me! These people can help you!” Fiona’s face remained still, her crushed body motionless. Tia watched, hoping for any flicker of emotion. Any flicker of life. But there was none.
“Please …’’ her voice trailed off as she dropped her head, tears falling to the plastic floor, the doctor carrying her shaking body in his arms.
She had seen it. The image that would be burned into her mind for the rest of her pointless life, hauntingly confirmed it. An inner battle raged inside of her. She scrambled for her senses while her sobs had sent her into convulsions in the arms of the doctor who had held her back earlier. He sat on the floor, leaning against the wall while she clung onto him, scratching the skin under his cotton scrubs. Nurses and other doctors stood around them in a semi circle, saying nothing.
She had promised.
