Crashing Colors

Chapter Six

At some point I had fallen asleep in his arms, but when I woke up it was morning, and he was gone. I reached towards the table without looking at it, feeling around for my phone. When I finally found it, I turned it on, looked at the time and checked my messages.

9:18

Eliana - Good morninggg! I'll be there after school to see you. Smoothie sound good?

Ethan - Good morning love. I would have woken you up when I left, but you needed the rest. Text me when you wake up,I love you.

Dad - I have to go to work for a little bit today, but I will be there around lunch to check on you.

I responded to Eliana with a thumbs up and a smiley face, and I texted my dad and Ethan to tell them I was awake. Within seconds I had responses from Eliana and Ethan, talking about who knows what.

It wasn't long before a nurse came in to check one me. Her name was Emily, and she was the middle aged brunette who helped Gabe take me to get my CT scan. She smiled at me, carrying on the usual small talk about how I was feeling, and told me the plan for the day.

"For the most part, you don't have anything you have to do. Dr. Kelley will come in around three to check on everything and go over a standard recovery timeline with you," she looked at the computer monitor behind the monitor keeping track of my vitals.

"So other than that I just sit in here?" I glanced at my sketchbook and pencil case in the chair next to the bed while Emily nodded.

When she left I immediately reached over and grabbed them, pulling them into my lap in the bed. I flipped through the pages that had already been filled with doodles and ideas for paintings. When I reached a blank page, my fingers hovered over my pencil case, staring at me, open and practically overflowing with watercolor pencils.

I surveyed the variety of hues in front of me, weighing the options of what kind of picture I wanted to create, and settled on picking up a warm yellow with an orange undertone. I moved my hand ever so gently in short motions on the page, making what looked like leaves on a tree in the peak of autumn. I found an orange with a hint of red that complemented the scene and the color scheme as well as I could, filling in the leaves with the same technique I used to outline the yellow leaves. After I had all the leaves drawn, I used different shades of the same colors to create depth and dimension within the leaves themselves before adding branches and a trunk to the tree. I sketched a horizon line about a quarter of the way up the page, drawing piles of leaves collecting underneath the tree itself.

By the time the drawing was complete, there was a young girl depicted in it, sitting on a swing attached to a branch in the tree. Her legs dangled, and her bare feet were visible directly above the pile of leaves beneath her. I looked at the finished drawing for a long while, and at some point Gabe had appeared in the chair next to me, looking at the page over my shoulder.

"That's beautiful," he leaned back into the cushioned chair.

"Thank you," I leaned back onto the bed, giving my back and my neck a break from sitting up to draw.

He put a plastic cup with a bendy straw in it on the tray in front of me, "I brought you some water."

I smiled, "That was sweet, you didn't have to do that."

"Well, it's a quarter till three and you haven't had anything to eat or drink since this morning, judging from the untouched tray of lunch," he pointed at the tray.

"Oh my goodness, I hadn't even noticed it was there! Wait, it's already almost three?" my voice got higher and faster as I talked more.

He nodded, and sure enough, when I looked at the clock it was 2:48. I checked my phone, which had blown up while I had not been on it. I had messages from Ethan and Aaron and Eliana, all asking if I was okay, and I decided to respond in our group message, letting them all know that I was fine, just drawing.