Shattered bones, everywhere, Internal bleeding, Scull and brain and spinal damage. Mum, Dad, Ant, Dylan, his Mum. Doctors. Surgeons. Nurses. Blue scrubs, Green scrubs. Disinfectant. Sour smells. Sickness.
I’m standing at the wall pasted with a ‘Be a Germ Buster!’ sign above a small stand holding gloves and hand sanitizer. Mum’s got Ant sprawled across three seats pillowing his head in her lap as she pulls her fingers through his hair methodically. And dad.. Dads being less than calm towards a nurse holding a clipboard. It’s been eight hours. I’ve been in surgery for five of those hours and now my body is in a resting stage before another three operations tomorrow. Nobodies seen her. Not even me. Maybe i could have stayed with my body. Perhaps i was supposed to. I didn’t feel tied to it in any way. I felt tied to my family. Obligated to waiting, suffering, pushing through with them. From what Dads gleaning from the tired nurse, nothing is certain about my state. She won’t say, Your daughters hanging by a thread held between Atropos’s scissors. But the weight of that truth is leaking to fill every corner of my mind like a poisonous gas. Every now and then i’ll feel a phantom twinge. The first being a feeling of a ball point pen dotting along my chest and then the bright solar flare eclipsing my vision another time. Ant’s cold, The tired nurse retrieves him a blanket. I look down to my own cold feet. Why would my feet be cold? I tug the my sleeves down over my knuckles. There’s this wheelchair across the room that looks so substantial, begging to be nudged. It’s different from the trashcan beside it. I’d wasted three hours trying to pick up a pen wedged below the chair Ant had been on. No such luck. It’s not that my hand went through it, I couldn’t walk through the walls either, But it was like the pen had been apart of the floor. Immovable. Now that wheelchair on the other hand.. I walked over to it. Making a circular inspection before placing a hand on the handle annnd..Push.. It squeaked forwards. Holy crap yes. I pushed so it would race right past Mum and Ant. Dad had left the room for what i had my suspicions would be a cigarette. They didn’t blink. I crossed passed them back to the chair and proceeded to repeat. Ants eyes were wide open staring straight forwards. I start doing a crazy little hopping foot stamping dance to take my frustration out on the floor. A snicker sneaks past me. I spin around to see a black shirted boys back walking down the fluorescent hallway. “Hey!” He doesn’t turn. Well the least of my problems are being caught doing embarrassing psychotic episodes as a phantom.
When Dylan had left, i felt relieved. He hadn’t been doing great with handling what ever he saw. Rushing out of the waiting area to the bathroom every now and then returning five shades paler and sweating profusely. He’d needed to get home and sleep. Have a few hours of forgetfulness. Mum took Ant home but Dad slept in the waiting room. I lay down on the other side of the seats.
The nurse comes and gently wakes him. She doesn’t look as tired anymore. She looks less stressed. “You can go visit Isobel, Andrew was it?” He instantly springs up, palming his sleepy eyes. She leads him to room 206. I follow in pursuit. I’m nervous, i can feel the black fluttering of worry bumping around in my chest. I walk through. Dad looks like he wants to take a hand, but one of my arms is in a cast stretching to my shoulder and the other is tucked into the blankets. Bandages are peaking out over my chest and the right side of my face is bruised all the colours of an ugly rainbow. Dad settles down to look like he’s praying with his elbows propped up on the bed. “Kid, I never thought it was going to be you who would put me through hell, I, It was always going to be Ant. But, Here you are.” He closed his eyes. “I don’t mean it’s your fault. Not one bit. But you are going to pull through this. There’s no world that exists without my Isobel in it. No world where i exist without my Isobel.” Sobs took both of us then. Mine silent. He got out his phone and started reading out loud. It was a story of a seal woman - A selkie, Who shed her seal skin for the charms of a man, But he stole it and hid it somewhere she could not find to return home. He planned on keeping her on the shores but unable to swim back to her own...
I was back at the cove.the fog was rolling over the edge of the water completely obscuring a horizon. It poured down from the cliffs. filling the cove like a cup before tumbling out to the sea. A man with menacing eyes and hair pulled back into a pony tale emerged from the mist. He was the notorious Selkie skin stealer. He walked towards me and suddenly i knew he was the one keeping me in the Limbo. He had my body. “Where is it!” He grinned maliciously, “I’ve taken it my child, You are going to be merely an echo forever bouncing off these walls.” He gestured around the cove. “becoming weaker and weaker until you are nothing more than a memory of a whisper murmured by forgetful loved ones.” “No! You give it back! Bastard!” I swung a punch at him, satisfied at the crack his jaw made. The stupid smile still plastered on his face. I hit him again and again. Feeling this helplessness drain down an invisible sinkhole as the smile he wore became increasingly bloodier.
Shafts of sunlight split through the blinds and onto the floor i was lying upon.
Sitting up i found dad sleeping with his mouth hanging open and his phone on the floor below a slack fallen hand. I snuck a look at the watch banding his wrist. Three past six.
At seven sharp ant trots in holding a carton of fruit loops for dear life. Mum only lets us eat sugary cereal on our birthdays, Nice to know accidents fall under the special occasion category. Mum floats in behind him. the darker sides of the moon have decided to rest under her eyes and her hair was all in tangles. She tells Dad they’re going to do the operation on my right hip and thigh. Apparently yesterday they had drained all these internal bleedings and casted my pulverized arm. She puts a small backpack in the corner of the room. I can see my pillow and the corner of a quilt pushing to be free from the buckle. Mum and Dad talk about miracle coma cases. Not reassuring. At all.
Four days have past in this odd limbo i’m between, Sophie had brought flowers. Dylan’s Mum, Maddie brought flowers. Ant picked a weed, (I like that one the best) putting it in a pot and stating that weeds are the hardest to kill.
My corporeal body looks even more bunged up even though the doctors say it’s healing from now on. The head trauma isn’t terrible. But it’s difficult to know what’s going on within me. What’s stopping me from consciousness.
Well, i may not no the answer to how, But i’m pretty sure my consciousness is here with phantom me, I feel more awake than i would like to feel.
It’s going to be Ants tenth birthday next week. He tells me it’s okay if i’m still sleeping. He’ll save me cake, and if he accidentally eats it. We can bake another together. “I love you so much.” Hear me. Hear me. Hear me.
There’s a wheelchair, A brown stained ticket stub, Receipts. Wrappers and A dead brick of a phone, that i can all pick up, throw, smash, scatter. You name it. It was all a bit curious. I kicked around with the phone on the floor, Mine must still be on the beach where i had fallen.
There’s a really attractive boy i keep catching in my peripherals. An athletic slim leg, A blue eye, peeping up from his little mess of dark hair. I was exploring the hospitals floor above where my little room is. He’s been sitting on the floor absorbed in his phone. Something tugged at a drawer in my head as i watch him from across the room in my little wheelchair i had claimed and placed the rubbish i’d found could be picked up in the little chairs side tote. I was steps away from being the invisible bag lady haunting room 203. But yeah, here i am. He’s looking steadily uncomfortable. Like someones got their gaze glued to him. Haha, not me. You can’t see me sucker. I abandon the chair and sit my self down right in front of him. Crossing my legs i lean on my elbow into the thinker pose.
Hmm, such hot hair. It’s a raven brown. So inky i think if i ran my fingers along a strand they would be painted in the pigment. His maker had used some top shelf pa–Crap izzy, Your not a creepy stalker who goes around caressing random guys hair. My fingers had involuntarily moved to sweep the pieces hanging to obscure his face. I could feel the silk of the individual strands as they slipped past the grooves of my finger tips.
Two very blue eyes set in a very pale face look directly at me. They were pouring cold angry sublimation freezing me to my core. His lips on the other hand, were twisting into a grin.
“Caught me.”
A symphony of Oh Fuck began singing behind my eyes. From the snicker on his face, i think he heard it too.
