Young Writers Society

Black.

That’s all I could see, feel, understand…

I was desperately confused.

Why can’t I move? Why can’t I feel anything? Hear anything? Taste, smell, see anything!?!

I lay wherever I was for endless hours, until my hearing returned. I could hear sirens near by. Was the hotel on fire? Was someone hurt?

My sense of touch gradually returned, as it became easier to hear. The sirens were louder now, and I could feel the vibrations of a moving car.

Wait a second! Am I in an ambulance?!?

I reached into my fuzzy memories. All I could remember was a set of tiny hands on my shoulder, and feeling my foot get momentarily caught on a stone wall. Then nothing but fuzzy grey then black.

Once again, I tried to move my fingers. Once again, they didn’t move. I felt someone put an oxygen mask over my face. It made breathing easier, much, much easier. I hadn’t noticed before exactly how hard it had been to breath. Maybe because I had been so bewildered by the dark.

Listening harder, I tried to understand the doctors in the ambulance, hoping to learn what had forced me into this conscious-slash-unconscious-state-of-mind. Unfortunately for me, all I could here was a child’s heart-wrenching sobs, and an unfamiliar female voice comfort the child.

Who on earth would cry for little Lace Wilson?

I thought about the question.

Mum, of course. And Helen. And maybe one of the kids at the hotel that I babysat during the summer holidays. No one at school would be sad. I expect that they would all cheer if my death was announced at assembly… SNAP OUT OF IT, Lace! Why do you have to so morbid!

I continued arguing with myself, until the ambulance stopped. Though it wasn’t unusual for me to split up into several Laces (and accidentally argue out loud, which was probably to blame for my eternal social status as official school Loser), but I had never split up into a whole rugby team! The war inside my head went something like this:

Lace One: Am I dead!?! Is this heaven?

Lace Two: Um, Lace One, you’re not dead. Dead people don’t hang out in ambulances, feeling an oxygen mask put over the mouth of their previous body. You are unconscious. Need me to spell that for you?

Lace Three: Ugh, it really doesn’t matter. All I know is that I can’t move, and that mask smells funny.

Lace Four: Ew! Gross!

Luckily, there are only so many members in a rugby team, and my inner selves quickly ran out of steam, leaving me alone with my thoughts. I suddenly wished they were still there, even though they infuriated me. If I truly wasn’t dead, and I couldn’t move or talk or blink, then I was probably in a (gulp) coma.

I searched my now unoccupied head for everything I’d watched on TV about comas. I found a surprising amount of information, probably because every drama on TV involves a coma at one point in time. All the soap operas proved that people in comas could hear what was happening around them. I listened harder. People were rushing around, asking people to move, several complaining that their medical problem was far more important than mine. There were children crying, but the sound was soon drowned out by a buzzing sound. There was a beep, too. The ever-omniscient beep that was always present in hospital dramas. I was in an operating room.

Unfortunately, I had never been in an operating room in my life, and, even worse, had often read stories about people waking up during operations because the anesthetic had expired. And they were the conscious people. Would they give me anesthetics, too? Or would they assume, because of my self-diagnosed coma, I could not feel anything at all? I could be dying from the pain, and they would never know. Again, I wanted to hit myself for being pessimistic.

I felt the surgeon touch my head, trying to figure out what had put me into this deep, hopefully reversible sleep. I heard him mumbling to himself,

“Yes, I see. Hmm. Yes. Blood loss. Possibly fatal head-injuries. But easily mended. With time. Yes. All right, I think I’ve found the cause.”

The surgeons quickly started operating. I felt them straitening out my many broken bones, so they would set right. Thankfully, it didn’t hurt. Much.

“Good clean breaks here,” one said. “No bones sticking out, no fractures. She’s pretty lucky.”

“Any arteries punctured?” another asked.

“Don’t think so, but she’s lost a lot of blood. We’re going to need transfusions here. Someone attach that I.V. to her.”

The surgeons continued working on me for several hours. I was counting for three hours, but then I got bored of trying to see how long I had been here when I could find out later. A surgeon sighed.

“That’s all we can do for her, now.”

They wheeled me out of the operating room to (I think) an intensive care unit. They jabbed I.V. needles into by bloodstream, and I eventually (OK, two minutes later) felt better. But then a thought entered my head, and I knew it wouldn’t leave until I saw her.

Where is my mum?

Was she here, at the hospital, trying to force her way in to see me? Or was she still at one of her many jobs, trying to earn enough money to pay the bills? Where was my brother, Thomas? Who was taking care of him? Were they giving him jelly snakes? Did they know he was lactose intolerant? What about his allergies? And my best friend, Helen? Who was sitting with her at lunch today? Would the bullies tease her today? Did my teacher, Mrs. Roach, the Cockroach, know? Or would she think I was deliberately skipping class again, like that time when I got lost on my first day of school?

Similar questions ran through my head. I found my self getting hysterical, and extremely tired. I wanted to sleep. But, technically, I was. That was the problem. So, if I couldn’t sleep, why was I tired? Especially since, I was already asleep. Was it, please not, because I was dying? I didn’t want to die! I was fourteen for goodness sake! Not eighty! I was supposed to live a long happy life! No! No! No!

My internal hyperventilating paused when I heard my mother charge through the door, closely followed by Helen and Thomas.

“Lacey!” she shrieked. “What happened to my little girl?”

“I’m afraid that she’s hit her head extremely hard when she fell out of that window,” a doctor said solemnly. “A witness said it was on the third story. She was unconscious by the time we arrived at the hotel. She’s fairly lucky. Lace cracked her skull, losing several liters of blood, and has several broken bones, but other than that she’s fine. We’ve done all we can do for now, though. It’s up to her whether she lives.” I was irritated by the way the doctor said things. It sounded like I’d done it on purpose!

I lay on the hard hospital bed, listening to my mother begging me to live. Helen was comforting Thomas, who was sobbing, yelling at anyone who would listen that he was sorry. I was touched by their devotion to me. I had imagined only doctors with me. But now they were here, fighting the blackness that was closing in, I pushed it away from me for my friend and family. But the blackness was swallowing me up. I wanted to cry. Then someone stormed through the door.

“Where’s my Lacey!” he cried. Dad!!!

I fought harder than I ever have before, listening to my father’s apologies. Harder and harder… The blackness was fading!

I opened my eyes.

“Dad,” I croaked. “You came back.”

He ran to hug me.

“Of course I came back! I couldn’t leave you,” he cried. We all did. Me, Helen, Mum, Thomas, and Dad. We hugged each other until I lost consciousness again.

I recovered quickly. The doctors called it a miracle. Dad retired from the Army and moved back in with us. Helen and I are still best friends. And as for Thomas? Well, he stopped pushing people out of windows.