Between the Grapevines

23. Thalatha Wa'Ishrun

"I am here, my soul. I will not leave you."

After years of an unforgiving drought, she'd felt the merciful rain of her mother's gentle voice and never-ending love. How could she still hold herself together with her feigned bravery? Even if both worlds kept them apart, just the sound of her mother's voice was enough to break every bone in Fayza's body and begin to sew it back together so that her will may carry on.

A gentle hand brushed her cheek, wiping her tears away and Fayza hiccupped. She lifted her head but did not find her mother standing before her nor did she find herself standing within her bedroom.

"You're awake?" A light-skinned woman gasped with eyes filled with wonder. Fayza swept her eyes slowly over the dim room that surrounded her. It was one of white walls, a hanging television, and a sink beneath medicine cabinets. It was not the prison cell; it was a hospital.

She wasn't sure when the nurse had left because with her regained consciousness came the memories of the moments before she'd lost her awareness. Fayza's entire body ached as it laid against the thin mattress of the hospital bed, covered by the white sheets placed over her. Her arm laid across her chest wrapped in a thick white cast that spanned from above her elbow to her fingertips.

The fingers of her other hand were not wrapped, but she saw the metal tied around her thumb to keep it straight and the healing stitches between her the knuckles of her pointer and middle fingers. A thick bruise and raw skin drew a thick, red line around the bones of her wrist.

"Do you know where you are?" A white-coated man asked her from his place at the end of the bed, not allowing himself to hold her dazed gaze for longer than a few seconds at a time. Fayza hardly heard much of what he said to her.

Some things she picked up while he spoke to the nurses accompanying him in his language. Like his diagnosis of severe hearing loss in her left ear and how many weeks it would take for her broken arm to heal: seven. He also told them to keep from engaging in unnecessary conversation. The door, he instructed them, would remain locked. Key access had to be granted by him or the soldiers standing outside.

She may have been in a hospital, but it did not mean Fayza was out of her detainment. The two uniformed men she saw standing outside every time the door opened revealed just as much.

Fayza spent most of her time in silence and solitude, abandoned by the medical staff whose shadows she saw cross the obstructed window as they curiously tried to peer in. When she tried to rise to cleanse herself and pray, a debilitating pain shot up from the base of her spine and thundered against the inside of her skull. There was no movement for her. They did not have to chain her to the bed because they were aware the damage they'd caused on her body was enough to keep her down.

No matter how many hours she considered it, Fayza could not understand their reasoning for bringing her to receive medical attention. They always left her to struggle alone of the floor of her cell until her body repaired herself. Had her body not been able to this time?

Had the damage been too destructive? Had they raced to revive her so they could wreak more havoc on the girl's failing body?

When the younger and wordless nurse entered to wrap a plastic glove around Fayza's left arm, the silent girl finally spoke up. "How was my state?" She asked, turning her head to meet the eyes of a nervous woman who did not seem any older than her. "When they brought me, was I living?"

The nurse met her gaze with eyes that wanted to speak but, when their eyes met, quickly averted her attention as if fighting the urge to reply. Fayza continued to watch her. When this person lifted her arm to take her blood pressure and placed the thermometer between her lips, she did not seem condescending or violent.