❀2022 Watty Shortlister❀
❀𝗔𝗵𝗼𝗿𝗮 𝘁𝗮𝗺𝗯𝗶𝗲́𝗻 𝗲𝗻 𝗘𝘀𝗽𝗮𝗻̃𝗼𝗹❀
Much against his will, River Allen can't drag his gaze away from the new student, seventeen-year-old Dawn Gray Brooks. It isn't that she lives in a ragged, teal dress, and ca...
When I open my eyes, the first thing I notice is the brightness of the room. It stings. The second thing I notice is the array of tubes and wires that are hooked up to the person on the bed—me. The stuff you'd attach to a mechanical entity, a robot, an experiment. Not a human being.
There's a monitor beeping and clogging the padded silence I've craved. I'd clasp a hand around my mouth so my howls wouldn't surface if I could, but I can't move or make a sound.
Is this how dying feels like? That you are frozen in a limbo of pain, dozing off to somewhere you are not sure you want to go to?
I struggle to stay awake. My blurry gaze fixates on the crawling red line across the screen—just like you see in the movies.
Something fragile falls on my limp hand, the one that's not decorated with an IV drip. I turn my head in its direction, or at least I think I do, wondering what has landed on my ferny arm. It's not what I expected.
"Dawn, sweetheart... Can you hear me?" Mom's voice sounds a million miles away. Is it real? I try nodding, but I've gone numb.
"You are at Providence Hospital. The ambulance brought you here, my colleagues informed me right away." There it is again, she's saying something about being taken somewhere... While the world swayed, a piercing sound of sirens blasting invades my thoughts.
"You were in the ICU for a few hours, but now that you're stable, the doctors have transferred you to the psych ward." There's an awkward pause after these two last words. "This is where you must stay."
She looks diluted, dissolved. I stare at her and I try to say, "Sorry," but I'm so drugged up that I gape at her like a fish, silent, lost. My apologies ricochet in my head, bouncing off snippets of what happened.
She reaches out for my forehead but snatches her hand back, as if she's afraid to touch me. As if I might break. I want to tell her she shouldn't worry about that, because I'm already shattered. Splintered in gazillion pieces, unable to discern what's this all about.
"What happened, Dawn?" Mom's whisper is gut-wrenching. It's like she's talking to herself instead of seeking answers.
I try swallowing the lump in my throat. "Everything," I want to say, and "Dad's dead." but my eyelids close. When I open them again, she's gone.
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When night time comes, it's terrifying. There's a lot of crying and the doors echo when they close. I think of all the patients that are here, imagine them crumpled up in their beds like I am. I cover my ears so I won't hear them anymore. Their torn sobs... I can't help them. Nobody can.
A white ghostly light tiptoes into my room. It's the moon luring me. I stare at it against the dark, papery sky. I'm her. A bright, round, scarred ball.
Why am I not dead? I feel dead, but the tag on my left wrist says 'Dawn Gray Brooks, fern girl gone dry.'
"Look at what you've done to yourself, baby bee," Dad says, "Shall we go hang out over the moon's curl?" He laughs, and I wonder why it's such a strange sound.
