The Death of Colleen Rivers

Chapter 44: Baylor

Many high school athletes have a life changing injury in their high school sport careers. These injuries come from over exhaustion or simply from just playing the game they love.

But no, I didn't break my ankle playing football, or basketball, or lacrosse. I hurt it by simply running down a road. Then I broke it falling out the window.

Gee, that was a great story to tell the doctors.

"Yeah, we had to jump out of a window to escape our kidnapper."

"Your kidnapper?" he asked.

"Yeah she trapped us in an old abandoned house in the woods and was trying to experiment on Colleen because of how she survived in the coffin, you know?"

"Yes I know. It has been on the news for some time."

"Yeah she's my girlfriend and she's perfect too. But we had to jump out the window and run away and I had to run on my bad ankle so then it broke completely the end."

"Yes, that's a great story, son. You need some rest now." And then the doctor left my room.

The next morning I woke up, my head spinning. The nurse was in there, changing out my fluids.

"What happened yesterday?" I asked, groggily.

She giggled. "You were on laughing gas, Mr. Bennett. They had to make many incisions into your leg to fix your ankle it was so messed up. You're feeling alright now, yes?"

I nodded.

"Great." She smiled, turning to leave the room. "Doctor Hanson will be in here shortly to check up on you."

No one came to visit me, which I expected. If Colleen was still here, she was most likely with her brother. It was a miracle that he survived a head bash like that, anyways. The nurses told me he would be fine, but wouldn't be awake much for the next few days.

My parents wouldn't come see me because I doubted they even knew I was here. The nurse said she couldn't contact my parents until I told them to do so, and I didn't do that yet. I didn't know that was a rule, because I thought they had to because of my status as a minor but I'm glad they had to have my permission. I didn't want Mom and Dad to worry about me more than they were already. I would return home today on crutches and tell them what happened. But until then, it was easier not to bring them in this.

I picked up the TV remote and turned it on, the screen coming on slowly, first only static before showing the news. A reporter was standing outside of what looked like a hospital. Was it the one I was in? I turned up the volume so I could hear it.

"...just yesterday they came to the hospital in an ambulance.  Jamison Rivers is on life support, but the doctors tell us he will be off of it shortly. He will have to be in the hospital for some time, but if all goes well he will recover. His sister, Colleen Rivers, is being treated for acute stress disorder. We have no further details from her doctors. Her friend on the other hand, Baylor Bennett—"

"Boyfriend, actually," I said through gritted teeth.

"—has been recovering well. He will be released today. Now back to you, Jerry," she said. Suddenly a man in a suit appeared on the screen. He was behind a desk with papers in his hand.

"Thank you, Missy. We will be going to Danny with the weather shortly. See you after this commercial break folks." And he also disappeared, replaced by an ad for beer. I immediately turned off the TV.

I hoped my parents weren't watching the morning news, because if they were, they now knew about my accident and would be here shortly. Ugh, that's not what I was hoping for. I thought they couldn't put news about minors on the news anyways but I guess I was wrong.

So James was going to be fine, but was Colleen going to be? I couldn't find out until my nurse or doctor came back, so I decided to sleep until then.

My nurse came in a couple hours later with my lunch plate. "Here you go, sweetie," she said with a smile that almost persuaded me that this food was actually great.

"Thanks." I took the plate from her and she disappeared back into the hallway.

I looked down at the plate to find something that wasn't actually going to taste that bad — a slice of pepperoni pizza and a cup of grapes. Well, it should be extremely had to mess up pizza, although it had been done before.

When I was in 5th grade, Colleen and I — when we were just friends — were at my house making pizza. My mother had let us try it by ourselves, only keeping an eyes on us to make sure we didn't burn down the kitchen. We knew we needed dough, sauce, cheese, and pepperoni, but were clueless as to how to make the dough. We asked Mom to help but she told us we wanted to do it on our own, so we did.

We mixed together flour, salt, and oil like the cookbook said to do. Colleen wanted to taste it and when she did, her face cringed up. "It's too bitter. Needs some sugar," she decided. She added a spoonful of sugar to the bowl, mixed it up, then tasted it. She smiled as if to say it was perfect.

We spread our "amazing" dough across a pan and dumped the sauce on top, spreading around cheese and pepperoni around the pan. I stuck it in the oven and we waited for it too cook. When it was finished and it had cooled off, Mom came and sliced it up for us to eat. We each took a slice, almost instantly spitting it back out.

"Ugh! That's disgusting!" Colleen announced.

Mom came over and took a slice, tasting it herself. "What did you all put in the dough?"

Colleen told her that she added sugar, and that's the day we found out sugar and pizza are bad together.

After that, all of our pizza attempts were basically flawless. 

But this pizza was much more better than our 5th grade pizza fiasco. It was so amazing that I would consider getting sick or breaking another ankle to get this pizza.

After I finished eating, I flipped on the TV to pass the time before my doctor came to visit me again. Maybe this time he would tell me I could go back home. And maybe Colleen could come with me.

I wanted to see her. I needed to see her, to make sure she was okay. The news said she had acute stress disorder, but I didn't quite know what that meant. I guessed she got it because of all that had happened to her. I'm actually surprised I'm not having mental problems too. But hopefully she'll be okay. 

Suddenly there was a knock coming from my open door. A cherry hair colored girl stood in my doorway, her green eyes glimmering. She had on a pair of black sweatpants that sported our high school, and a t-shirt that had my lacrosse team logo printed across the front of it. The socks she was wearing looked like hospital socks, and were a little too big for her petite feet. "Can we talk?" she asked.