Morphine

fourteen : tumbling

"Hello." He tells me. He comes over and stands beside my bed next to Milan who looks like Gemma Arterton just died and that is saying something because Gemma Arterton is one of his favourite actresses.

"How do you feel?" The doctor asks me, giving me a nauseatingly fake smile.

"Stiff."

"That is quite common. You had many injuries."

"I had no idea, thanks." The words leave my mouth unguarded.

My family's head snaps up so fast, I'm afraid they'll crack their necks.

The doctor nods, smiling to himself. "Do you know what happened to you?"

"I died."

Mum whimpers I think and Milan turns away and kicks something. Dad is a stone. He is a stone with no feelings for his daughter or son or the baby that he killed. He is a sharp stone that is cutting me right now.

"That would have been true if you weren't brought here immediately." Blunt. I like it. If he would just take off that stupid white coat, I can start considering whether or not to believe him. "You went into a coma. It wasn't very serious. You would have woken up in just a couple of hours but there was an infection in your lungs that reached the brain and induced the coma."

Infection? It was actually more along the lines of "deflation of my lungs". But he's the doctor in the white coat. He should know what it was. 

"Luckily, you were not stabbed anywhere near your heart. The knife grazed past your lungs causing some bruises. Which was what caused the infection." The doctor flips a page on his clipboard. "A dirty knife was the problem. Nothing else." He chuckles. Milan looks like he's ready to fling his fist and break his nose. Mum sobs. Dad does what stones do.

The doctor composes himself. "You can go home in a week. I will need to see if you need therapy in that time. Do you have any questions?"

I take a moment to think and they wait. With a deep breath, I ask, "Long I been have here?" It all comes out wrong.

Everyone looks confused. The doctor nods and says, "Four weeks."

Mum gathers herself and wonders out loud, "Why-why is she talking that way?"

"Due to injury to the brain, she looks like she lost some of her speech skills." Mum starts outright crying and buries herself into my dad's shoulder. Why is she behaving like this? She is much stronger than he is. He is just a stone. Good for support but bad for emotions. "No no, don't worry Mrs Esmund. That can be recovered quickly."

No one says anything anymore. The doctor leaves telling us to call him if we have any problems or questions. He also assures me that he will tell me in detail about my injury once I've had some time to recover. Dad follows him out taking Mum along with him, claiming that he wants to talk in detail about my condition but I think it's just to get away from me so that he doesn't provoke me, so that I don't tell Mum and Milan the truth.

Milan stares at me. He looks like he's about to cry. I put my fingers on his cheek and he leans in. I smile and he sobs. For about half a minute, I admire my brother. I can't imagine how the scene must have looked to him. It was so wet, so bloody. Looking at his face, I tell myself that I'm stronger than him. I can take it. I can do this . I did do this.

He asks, "Was it worse?" It's barely above a whisper. "Before?"

That's something to think about but comparing them seems irrelevant. It's not going to help anybody. But I answer him anyway. "No."

"I'm sorry." He's so apologetic. I don't understand why. "For earlier, for hitting you. I was so..so fucking frustrated. I lost you. I lost you Meira. That is not fucking acceptable. And you were not waking up. Every night I went to sleep," He says. "Every night I went to sleep and I woke up the next day but you didn't."

"It's fine." I take a deep breath to tell him to calm down but my lungs ache and all the air gets locked up inside.

"There was a knife inside you Meira." He moves away and my hand falls to my side. "A fucking knife." He gets up and paces. "Some arsehole was driving a knife through your body. And you weren't fucking fighting back! What were you thinking? Why the fuck wouldn't you hit him?"

"Sto-" It's coming back. The guilt. It was not my fault. Why is he making it seem like that. But the words hardly make it to my tongue.

"And there was so much blood. Broken bones and bruises and almost all your body parts were swelling. And you didn't do shit!" Milan screams and it echoes all the way into my head. "How can you think it was okay? How can you let him do that to you?! What the fuck-"

"Stop!" It takes everything to scream, but even then it barely comes out as a whisper.

Milan takes a few seconds to calm himself and sits on the chair beside my bed. "It's not your fault. I'm sorry. I don't know what to do, how to help..."

"Shut up."

And he does.

For what seems like twenty minutes Milan just rests his forehead and on my hands and holds them tightly. And then it hits me.

"Where's Zahid?"

"Where's Zahid?" Milan repeats. He's starting to become angry again. What is happening to him? Where is my brother? "You care about him?! He fucking tried to kill you!"

So I say it again. "Where's Zahid?"

Milan's gaze pierces into mine and I don't know what he sees but I know he'll never speak to me like that ever again. "He's in prison."

"Chase?" Why isn't he here? Maybe I should tell Milan to call him because I really want to see him.

Milan sucks in through his teeth and doesn't blow it out. "Chase is..Chase kind of.."

"Alright is he?!"

"He's fine." He rubs his thumb across my face, soothing. "But he left."

"Where?"

"U.S."

"Did visit he me?"

The look that Milan gives me hurts more than I thought it would. I don't need words to know the answer. Tears roll out of my eyes unrestricted. I don't think anybody really understands me in this world. Every one is either trying to kill me or hide me or make me feel guilty or simply leave me.

"What wrong I did?" The sobs hurt more than breathing. Milan leans down and moves my body a little to the left so he can lie beside me. He doesn't try to defend Chase; even though I don't know the details I know that he's on my side.

"Nothing." He says as he strokes my hair. "You did nothing wrong."

I cry into his shirt, quietly. The tears wet his shirt but he doesn't care about that. The breaths don't come out but the tears do. My lungs feel like someone is running a piece of sandpaper along them, rubbing them raw until the blood vessels crack open and out comes the blood.

"You did absolutely nothing wrong." He whispers.

I don't feel calm. Everything has fallen apart. The world has shattered along with me and I'm the only one left to deal with the mess. No one's helping me or even offering.

After all that's what I wanted, isn't it?

____

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-Nymisha