The first thing she remembers are the lights. Flashing, blurring, blinding her vision, which seems far from sharp. There are footsteps and questions and then there's darkness. And then there's nothing.
The next thing she remembers is a room bathed in muted grey and an uncomfortable feeling stretching her face, crowding her mouth. She can hear a bleeping and very loud breathing as if the devil's whispering straight into her ear, straight into her soul. And despite the numbness, there's a pain too, a pain that makes her realise she is very much alive. She closes her eyes and wishes otherwise.
And finally there's voices and faces looming and a kind foreign accent, not from Newcastle, not from England - she feels like a child and doesn't understand what she's doing in this foreign place, disorientated and weak, too tired to fight for recollection.
They tell her she's a very lucky girl, tell her she's in Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Los Angles. Explain the machines she plugged into, breathing life back into her bones, serum seeping into her veins.
They ask her how she's feeling and she tries to shake her head, shake them all away, and fails. They've taken the thing out of her mouth and the inside feels like cotton wool, like she can't breathe. She begins to panic, asks for her mother, a droning, almost wailing sound punctuating the air, bringing on a sudden and violent wave of nausea. They won't let her sit up, tell her to relax and breathe slowly, but the droning sound is increasing and frightening her further. Eventually she realises it's coming from her, that it's all her, with staccato gulps for air in between desperate cries for help.
And then there's many hands working around her and a soothing stroking along her arm. They put the thing back in her mouth that stops her from talking and she feels a coldness shoot into her blood. A calmness descends and she slips back into grey.
It begins to feel like a dream when she wakes to see her mother's face. She's at her side in an instant, stroking her hair and cooing in reassuringly familiar tones that makes Cheryl question the elasticity of time. Her reality stretches and weaves around her, her exhausted body fighting to end the confusion.
"Mam?"
"I'm here," she says. "You're in hospital, poppet. In America."
"Am I sick?"
She can see the quiver in her mother's hand, an infinitesimal pause before she resumes her gentle stroking.
"You're getting better," she says softly.
"What happened?" she croaks, voice thick with sleep and weakness and the taste of the respirator lingering on her gums.
Her mother is staring at her in that way she used to as a child, wracked with fever on Christmas Eve, her father out searching for a 24 hour chemist while the turkey lay abandoned, uncooked on the kitchen counter.
She can see the tears crystallising in her eyes and it immediately triggers the same response in her own.
"You made a mistake, Cheryl," she whispers with a small, comforting smile.
"I'm sorry," she husks out, battling the heaviness in her eyes, the threat of this, her mother, being taken from her once more.
"I know you are, sweetheart, I know."
* * * * *
