Don't Look Behind You ⇒ Lucaya [DISCONTINUED]

girl meets hospital

{m a y a}

Hospitals.
Hospitals brought back bad memories for me. Once, I'd broken my arm in a fight with a relatively scary gang that I'd bumped into in the middle of the streets. Some stranger called the police and I was driven to the hospital, where Mom couldn't even meet me due to her job. I'd been eight years old at that time, and had been terrified of them, so much so that they threatened me in my nightmares.

The doctors were proficient in physical recovery, but they didn't know what to do about my nightmares and constant terror. I remembered that one of the thugs, just before escaping from the incoming police car, had whispered to me: "We'll find you again. We always do."

Now I know that this was all bullsh*t. But at the time I'd been eight, a small, tired girl yearning for love, and for a straight four months after that unfortunate encounter, my anxiety was higher than it had ever been. This was until Mom finally had enough time to hug me and tell me that they were never going to get me if she was there. This didn't settle me as she wasn't really, physically there most of the time, but I felt comforted in a way.

The next time I'd been in a hospital, I'd gone as a visitor, as a daughter, as an orphan. She was already nearly dead by the time I reached her, crystal eyes fluttering, fighting to stay open, and cold breath fogging up everything else. Her skin was as smooth as porcelain and her cracked lips were parted open in the slightest.

A silent tear. A silent heart monitor. The green digital line that I stared at was a sword digging into my chest. She had left the body of Katy Hart, and had also left me.

So of course, I wasn't all too eager to go back there. It was eerily cold inside each ward, like the ghosts of the patients roamed the halls. Maybe my mom's could be found here. I didn't try looking for her, though: these people would dismiss me as crazy and I would be sent to a hospital that was much, much worse than this one.

This time I was the one sitting in the uncomfortable plastic bed, with anxious faces all staring at mine. I realised that I must have been sleeping for this whole time, so as I stared back, all of them lit up.

"Maya! Oh my god! I'm so glad you're awake!" yelped Riley, submerging me under a bear hug, which was quite suffocating: a feeling I knew and didn't welcome.

"Riley, you're...ch-choking me."

"I'm sorry!" she said, leaving me to sit back in the chair that was placed next to the bed. There was a big smile on her face as opposed to the faces of Topanga and Cory, Riley's parents. They were still looking at me in confusion, like they were trying to figure out what I was feeling.

"Maya, sweetie, could you tell us what happened in there? We're so glad that you're okay, but why didn't you come out?"

The memory hit me with a thud. 'Xo'...it had to be them. But who was 'them'? And how did they manage to lock the door without a key? (I didn't ask myself why in hell the school had a lock to the bathroom door.)

"Uh..."

"Don't worry, take your time."

"Well, I..." I wasn't about to tell them about 'xo'. It was weird enough to get an anonymous note at that moment, but with that message written on it? I wanted to figure out who this person was alone. Besides, it was too early right now to claim that they'd been the one to do it.

It couldn't have been a coincidence though. I could understand the door being locked, perhaps by mistake (I was new to this school as well, and as much as I knew about the secret passageways, I didn't know too much about misbehaving doors). But the fact that all of the exits were blocked? The fact that someone else had to break the air vent in order for me to leave the building was astonishing. This was definitely planned.