Little Miss Babysitter

-- 34 --

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"No, no, no! Don't wake up now!" 

The pain is what I first noticed.

Excrutiating, toe-curling, agonizing pain. It was consuming. In doctors' offices, they always say, 'don't focus on the pain and it will go away.'

In this case, that was not even remotely possible. 

Some people say headaches are sort of imaginary because they're not really physical pain, but this one was more real than the time I broke my tibia in the 6th grade after falling on a rock on the Seneca shoreline. 

It felt like my skull was used as an atomic bomb test ground, and sixteen of them were set off. As if my head was a balloon, filled with air until that thin layer of rubber was bound to split at the seams. 

I struggled to open my eyes. Had I glued my eyelashes together? Or were my eyelids as heavy as bricks? After a minute's preparation, I had summed up enough energy to crack open one eye, and then the other. 

Jason. His face was all I could see. He looked troubled. 

"Damn. You're awake." He voiced loudly, triggering me to cringe into whatever cushions surrounded me. "I was hoping you'd stay asleep."

"Wha...?" I whispered, my voice not having recovered from yesterday's screaming fiasco. Why was I screaming yesterday, again?

The track race. Driving an hour. Finding Nekou and not Nate. Nate casting me off. Nate saying he didn't love me.

I shot up like an arrow, and I bolted to the bathroom, slamming the door behind me. My sobs broke out relentlessly and I crumpled against the door. I couldn't even begin to guess where I was at that moment, not that it mattered. Had we gone home? 

The cracks in my chest were unbearable. I had to pull off my shirt and check through foggy eyes to see if I was breaking, if I could see the crevices that were forming on the inside of me, on the outside. My heart felt like it was between two walls and they were slowly pushing inwards, and I cried out into the prickly air. 

I couldn't handle it. My head was two seconds from falling off, and my heart was nearing my stomach with every thought that flew through my brain. I had been ripped and torn, shredded into tiny slivers of what I once was. 

What was my purpose now? What did I have to live for? 

I made love to him. I gave him everything. 

Is this what heartbreak felt like? The devoid of any purpose or feeling whatsoever? What was my reason to wake up every morning? 

When did I become this? So needy... No wonder Nate left me. I'm a waste of space. 

"Els." Jason knocked softly on the other side of the door. "Please come out."

I couldn't respond. Maybe he'll forget that I was there. I brought my knees to my chest and prayed quietly that he couldn't hear my breathing. It was fast, ragged, and broken: everything that I was as a person. 

"I know you're in there." He leaned against the door and slid down. "Look in the mirror. I still have to stitch you up and I don't have an anesthetic." 

My ears perked upon their own free will. Anesthetic? Stitches? Why would I need stitches? 

The events of last night hit me like a slap in the face. I trembled to one knee, then to both feet, and summoning every bit of confidence that I had in the little bones of my body, I looked in the mirror.