Please note, I've barely been to the hospital before and as far back as I can remember, I've never slept in a hospital bed/woken up from fainting in a hospital/visited a sick relative in hospital/been any further than having my temperature checked in the hospital, so yeah, sorry for any inaccuracies!
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I awoke with a start. The world was a blur in front of me. I smelt disinfectant and soap. I could barely keep my eyes open, and it was like someone had set a heavy rock on me because I could hardly move. I took a deep breath in, and my whole body was battered with pain. Giving up on attempting to move, I tried to open my eyes to focus on my whereabouts. Based on the fact that I was so tired, and everything hurt, it was pretty hard to force my eyes open, but I wanted to know where I was.
I slowly became more awake, and although the crisp sheets of my bed were beckoning me back to sleep, I started hearing the beep-beep of a monitor, and people's footsteps rushing around, and visions of white and blue. And then everything came into slight focus, and I could see the wires that I was apparently hooked up to, and the people in blue gowns whisking by with stethoscopes, and little girls clutching onto their dad's hands, and out of the corner of my eye, countless flowers by me.
In fact, this didn't even feel like my bed. It smelt funny and felt funny and wasn't soft like my sheets, but hard and white.
I was wondering why my mum had somehow remade my bed or something, when it clicked.
I was in a hospital.
A hospital.
And then I remembered everything. The note, the crying, the scissors, the fields, the frost, the tree. Levi. Jumping.
I didn't die.
I didn't know if that was a bad thing or not.
Natural instinct told me to attempt to sit up, and I did, but then felt an unbearable pain in my entire body. I tried to scream, but whilst lying back down again, my voice stopped working and I had a coughing fit, which shook my whole body, which hurt so much.
This brought a group of nurses to my bedside, and a literal cry of, "Lexi, oh my God, you're alive, sweetie, you're awake, oh sweetheart, why did you do it?"
My mum.
I shut my eyes again, being too tired to concentrate. There was fiddling with tubes, checks on monitors, writing on paper and then a light being flashed into my closed eyelids. And I just wanted to rest, take a break, and stay like this until I died, but they didn't stop attempting to give me a seizure.
"Lexi? Lexi? Can you hear me?"
I groaned inside my head, and tried to blank out all thoughts.
"Lexi? Are you awake? Could you please respond, if you are?"
Sigh. I'd rather not face life again. Being out of reality was the bliss I had always wanted, and if I couldn't die, I'd rather live in this semi-consciousness for as long as I could. I knew I'd eventually get woken up, but to be honest, I just couldn't be bothered right now.
"Lexi?" They continued to turn a light on and off, seeing how irritated I could get with that. I couldn't really turn over, since I was hooked up to so much that if I attempted to move, everything hurt, and I had had enough pain. I was just going to sleep. It was their fault if they killed me with a seizure or something.
Could you even die from seizures?
"Wait, I know exactly what to do to wake her up," a sly voice said. My mother. She hadn't used that voice in so long, and although it alone annoyed me to no end, I kind of missed it.
And then I realised what she was going to do.
"Alexis! Alexis!"
Stay calm, Lexi. The name Alexis doesn't annoy you anymore.
"Guess what? Today I'm going to be changing your name to Alexis, on your passport, on your NHS card, on your bank accounts, because Lexi is too informal!"
It's fake, Lexi. Don't react.
"Alexis?" She fake shouted. "Hurry up and take out the recycling! Alexis? Why aren't you up yet? A-leeeeex-issssss!"
"My name is not Alexis," I insisted before I could stop myself. It came out in a husky voice, most of the words in a half-whisper. I sighed to myself inside my head, and then opened my eyes, since due to my stupid intolerance of the name Alexis, I had proven myself awake.
Not that they ever thought I was dead, but still. I liked not hav-
"Lexi! Oh, Lexi! You're awake!" Gone was cheeky mum again, and back was my worry-guts mum. "Oh goodness darling, does it hurt? Are you okay? Oh gosh, I had no idea, I'm so sorry, I've been a terrible mum-"
-not having people fuss around my idiocy.
"Mum," I mumbled, and saw the hospital again. Squeaky clean walls, a monitor moving up and down in the corner, and about four people crowded around me. I was on a hospital bed, curtains drawn beside me and the door slightly open in the corner, allowing me to watch nurses rush past for an operation or something.
"Okay, Ms. Lewis, Lexi needs some rest," the doctor said. He looked like a kind man, middle-aged and with round glasses, and when he smiled, a slight dimple showed up on his right cheek. "Hello, Lexi. I'm your doctor, Dr. Wilson, and I'll be keeping watch over you whilst you're at New Cross Hospital. With me today is Nurse Ashton, who will also be looking after you."
This seemed impossibly cheesy right now. I had never even been to hospital before. In fact, I couldn't even remember the last time I was physically sick.
Of course, I had figured out I was practically insane, but that was different.
"Ms. Lewis, can you please exit the ward for now?" Nurse Ashton said in a posh accent, and my mum obeyed, walking out with a tissue in her hand and a little wave with the other. Nurse Ashton was young and had a brown ponytail hanging out of her cap, and had a lot of red lipstick on.
I closed my eyes again, but was jolted awake by someone taking the tubes out of my arm and chest and lifting me, propping me up against the head of the bed. I looked down at myself. I was dressed in a white hospital gown, and I had a few plasters up my arm. My leg was still hooked up, and I felt a thumping pain in my head. A woman at the front of the room was furiously writing notes on a piece of paper, and then Dr. Wilson spoke again.
"So, Lexi, you tried to hang yourself from a tree, but ended up falling from the branch?"
I refused to talk.
Dr. Wilson touched my shoulder with slight pressure. "You can talk to us, you know. You're in safe hands with us."
What on earth were they trying to convince me of?
Dr. Wilson sighed again, and looked me in the eye. "Well, you have concussion, as well as a sprained ankle and a twisted wrist. We found you, after your brother Levi called the emergency services, lying on the ground, on your right side? You were completely knocked out. You're lucky you landed on soft ground - you could have gotten a lot more serious injuries that way."
Levi.
I stabbed him in the eye.
Oh shit.
No.
No.
He was probably blind.
Wearing an eye-patch.
He might be dead.
Because of me.
Because of my stupidity.
"Levi?" I choked out, launching into a choking fit. Dr. Wilson smiled, and patted me on the back.
"Yes, Levi Lewis, your twin brother? He was also admitted to hospital, with a severe cut on his eyelid to his forehead. He's just being healed up right now," Dr. Wilson said.
I didn't kill him.
He isn't blind.
"Wait, so the scissors didn't hit him in the eye?" I said, my voice getting slightly happier. At least I didn't have to live with the guilt of killing my brother or causing him to go blind.
"Ah, now we're getting somewhere," Dr. Wilson said. "No, they didn't, but they merely missed his actual eye by around an inch. So, as you had fainted for a few hours, we had to put your lower leg in a cast while you were asleep. Are you fine with that?"
"Yeah," I said in a lazy voice. I honestly didn't really care.
"Okay, Lexi. We're going to let you stay here to recover overnight, but I'm sure you will be fine to go home tomorrow. Have you ever sprained anything before?"
"Nope," I replied, looking again at my bedside table. On top were a stack of chocolates, as well as a few flowers. Flowers.
"Well, you'll be in crutches for a while once you are dismissed from here."
I raised my eyebrows. I would look like a freak, but then again, I already looked like one. I had no reputation to keep up, unlike Levi. My current only reason for living was to see the Populars' reaction to Levi's temporary facial stitching, probably making him look like an old teddy bear. And that was definitely disapproved of in the Populars' group.
Oh, what did I know?
I didn't utter a word though, and although Dr. Wilson sent me reassuring smiles, I just grimaced at him. Then his happiness faded, and he looked at me seriously.
"Lexi, although we're going to let you out tomorrow, that's only for your physical health. However, we have booked you with a therapist, as you falling out of the tree wasn't an accident, was it?"
I showed no reaction.
"You intended to take your life in that moment, didn't you?"
I still looked at him as if he wasn't even speaking.
"Now, I don't specialise in mental health, but the cuts on your arm were self-inflicted, weren't they?"
Oh crap. Everyone had seen my cuts. I still did nothing though.
"Are these linked?"
I groaned loudly, and tried to push myself back onto the pillow. I just wanted to sleep.
"Well, if you don't want to talk to me about it, that's fine, but all of us are willing to help you, and I hope you'll talk to someone about it, because we believe in you."
How soppy.
With my left arm, I pushed myself back into bed, and buried my face under the sheets.
"I'll be back in a while," Dr. Wilson said, and walked out of the ward. Nurse Ashton placed a drink on my bedside table, asked me if I wanted the radio on or something (I replied with another groan) and then she moved on to some other children.
If I couldn't die, sleeping was the next best thing.
***
Sadly, I was woken up around an hour later by Nurse Ashton who was insistent on giving me macaroni cheese for dinner, and with no response, it appeared that my nurse had managed to learn my mum's trick.
I wished it was a rule in hospitals that you shouldn't wake up sleeping patients, but then those silver carts only came round a few times a day and getting your 5-a-day was so much more important than rest and hiding from the inevitable world of reality.
"Alexis? Alexis, it's time for dinner!"
I sighed, and even though the clattering of metal trays had always woken me up and now my body was refusing to fall back into a deep sleep, I didn't feel like interacting with anything real. Maybe they'd keep me here so I didn't have to walk into that horrible spray-painted bedroom again, or that school made out of endless torture, or have to face everyone asking where the heck I had gone all Christmas.
"Alexis, could you come and eat your dinner? Alexis!"
That woman was driving me crazier than I already was.
"Alex?!"
I had reached my threshold. Alex was a nickname for Alexis, which was even worse than Alexis itself. "My name is not Alexis, and I would like to sleep, thank you, goodbye," I said, pulling the blankets over my head again.
Nurse Ashton chuckled. "Keep wishing, because it's dinnertime and you're not going to rest without food. Even if it's stinky hospital food."
I winced.
Nurse Ashton continued after helping me sit up, saying, "By the way, you have visitors and I've told them you are sleeping, but they're still here and you're awake."
"Who are the visitors?" I asked, taking the tray from Nurse Ashton.
Nurse Ashton knelt beside me, and thought for a moment. "Well, there is your dear mother, and your brother has been stitched up and he's out now as well, waiting, and there's a young boy with glasses, reading an information book-"
Thomas.
Wait. What?
"-and also a red-haired girl waiting for you, away from your family and the boy with glasses. She looks as if she's a bit estranged from your relatives."
I raised my eyebrows. "I don't know anyone with red hair." Because it was true - I didn't, and if a stranger was waiting for me, it was time to get worried again. I had barely seen any red-headed girls in my year, and hardly in the entire school. And seeing as the entire school agreed that I was a slut, attention-whore and loser, it was either someone coming to pester me even more, or I had a stalker.
Neither seemed good.
"She's around your age, maybe a little older? I'm not sure, but she's waiting to visit you. She doesn't appear to be very sociable towards your mother either," Nurse Ashton said, and gave me a knife and fork. "Well, I'd better be going to feed the other kids, so I'll let your friends in after you've finished."
I nodded, and watched her walk away with her trolley. I ate my macaroni cheese as fast as I could, and when Nurse Ashton came back a few minutes later to take my plate away, she also brought with her a few visitors.
My mum.
Levi.
Thomas.
And trailing a few metres behind them was the red haired girl that Nurse Ashton had been talking about as she served me my meal. I stared at her for a while. She was wrapped up in a winter coat and scarf, with a book and her phone under her arm, and her cheeks were red from the bitter weather. She must have taken a stroll outside before now. But when she smiled at me, I recognised her.
"Mikayla?" I said in disbelief. This couldn't be her in the flesh. I never even thought we would meet, and her coming to see me in hospital was ridiculous. I was sure I was just hallucinating, but then Nurse Ashton had seen her as well.
But we hadn't really ended on a good note, had we? Why did she bother coming to see me now she knew I was an attention-whore? She didn't need me in her life. Mikayla was past being bullied now, and she was one of the lucky few that now had friends and were only still stuck on How To Get A Life for the sake of it. I was just a depressed idiot who thought she was the same, but I knew what she thought of me. She wasn't wrong, but if she hadn't wanted to talk to me for days after I stupidly wouldn't shut up about myself, she was probably here out of sympathy for the selfish brat I was.
"Call me Miki," Mikayla grinned, and her red waves flew out behind her as she ran up to me and gave me a soft hug. I hugged her back, maybe with a little bit less enthusiasm, because everyone attempted to make suicide victims better. But if she liked me enough to let me call her Miki, I was probably a friend to her.
I over-thought things too much.
"I missed you, Lexi," Miki smiled, and I attempted a smile back at her. Nurse Ashton signalled at the three other people who had come to visit me to sit down, letting my online friend bond with me first.
"I missed you too," I said in a quiet voice, not unlike the one I had used to Skype her for the first and only time. "You know, I can't believe you're real."
Miki sat down on the chair next to me, and handed me a bar of chocolate. "Neither me, but we're visiting my grandparents this Christmas, who live in Wolverhampton, so we've come down here, and I just thought I might want to visit you. You know, time for an apology, huh?" Miki grins awkwardly, and I realise for once, there's someone who isn't lying to me anymore, and I forget about the fact I want to die.
I stared at her. "How did you find me?"
"Phone directory at gran's, a bus journey to Seisdon, one of your kind neighbours telling me you were in hospital, and here I am." Miki grinned. "You know, Lexi, you shouldn't put that much personal information on the Internet."
I laughed a little. "It's nice meeting you for the first time. You know, you were just a Merlin fan on the Internet that I chatted to every-so-often, but in real life, it's almost as if we've known each other forever."
Was I being sociable? Was my shell breaking a bit?
A bit?
"Yeah, I know right?" Miki said, and she clutched my arm. "I'm sorry for calling you an attention-seeker. I didn't mean it, I was just tired and moody."
Oh, even if you were tired and moody, it doesn't make it any less true. It's just suicide sympathy or whatever. "Don't worry about it. I'm sorry for being an attention-seeker in the first place." I couldn't be bothered to give a silent treatment anymore.
"You aren't."
"Yes, I am," I insisted, and looked right into Mikayla's eyes.
"You aren't, and don't you dare get yourself stuck in hospital like this again, because I'm only in Wolverhampton for a few more days and I want to hang out with you."
Wait. Mikayla wanted to be real life friends with me?
Me?
"Yeah, I do too," I said, hoping I didn't sound too clingy. But then she looked at me, without the dirty look I was accustomed to, or the scornful one, or any of those. It was a friendly gaze, and although I knew it wouldn't last, and I knew she'd figure me out soon, I was appreciating it whilst I could.
"Well, my parents expect me back at Gran's house soon, but do you want to exchange numbers?" Miki smiled.
"Sure," I said, and I couldn't believe I was earning a friend after all of this. "But I kind of crushed my phone." I saw the image of my iPhone dropping to the ground, and suddenly it was all getting too much, too quickly.
Miki scribbled her number on a Post-It note, telling me to call her when I could, but I could barely hear her, everything was screaming, no, no, no...
I bid Miki goodbye and then suddenly everything was too much, the jumping, the scissors landing on Levi, that note, my phone tumbling to the ground, my laptop thrown against the wall, the scissors piercing my own skin, tying a noose, and I had made a friend after all of this, it was just too much...
How was I going to survive this madness? This darkness, this insanity, this doom, everything...
Everything was screaming, I couldn't live, it was my fault, everything was a mess...
Too much...
Then I felt arms around me.
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Edited 3/5/15
MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE! Hope you're having a wonderful time right now :)
Bit of a long chapter this time round, but don't worry, it's going to become less sad from here onwards. Haha, the last chapter received more comments than any other chapter and most of them stated that it made you cry/made you emotional, thank you for all the lovely comments!
You know, I've been on Wattpad for over a year now, and looking back on my life since then, I'm surprised at how much it's changed, with my writing as well. My first story was Who To Trust (which you can read on my page!) and that started off as a crappy little thing with the most horrifying front cover ever, but in March (?) I posted the first chapter of this, and never did I believe that this story (which I, at first, hated, but then I tweaked the plot and characters a bit and I now love it) would get 1000 reads, never mind 87,000! I'm so thankful for all the support I've received on this, and it's cheesy, but reading your comments makes my day :)
Thanks for reading, please comment, vote and fan! :D
Song on the side: Demons by Imagine Dragons