Danny

Chapter 4

The cold makes me shiver involuntarily. The shiver reminds me of the pain all over. Everything is wrong. I want it all to end and when I feel like I might get away from the pain, something happens. If only I could stay asleep and stay away from this pain, but sleep is not a good enough escape. It never has been and is not working now. The problem with sleep is that anything can wake you up and something inevitably always does.

I slowly wake up and immediately feel the discomfort in my throat. Something is blocking my throat and I am struggling to breathe. Of course, I am still able to breathe but it is uncomfortable and unnatural. I try to reach and grab for whatever was in my throat. My hands are tied down. My heart starts beating rapidly as an apprehension of my situation dawns on me. This thing occluding my throat may be a cause of suffocation.

The world around me appears unfamiliar through the lense of one eye as my left eye is covered by something. I desperately search for someone to help. All I see is pale walls and tears start pooling in my right eye making images appear fuzzy. Finally I see a shadow walk past the door as I tilt my head to the side and she walks in.

A pretty petite woman stumbles into the room with a broad smile on her face. Her blonde hair is tied back neatly in a small tight bun. Small silver earrings dangle from her ears bringing a lovely shine to her triangular face. She is dressed rather smart with a checkered blouse and long black pants. Her slender arms reach for me and I try to edge back.

She felt me tense and she immediately backs away with pain written all over face. Her smile fades away with uncertainty. She knows me but I don't know her. My concern right now is not not knowing who she is, but taking the thing out my throat. She simply stares at me. I cannot take the discomfort any more and start violently jerking my arms trying to point at my throat. Her dark brown eyes widen in horror I start thrashing about. One look back before she escapes the room in a rush. A moment later she is back with a giant of a man. He stood in the doorway blocking almost all the light assessing the situation.

"Good morning, Danielle. I am happy to see you recovered nicely. I am Dr Booysens and I am one of many doctors who have been attending to you. I need to ask you a few questions so we are going to take that tube out of your throat."

He enters the room and walks first to my left side and then my right. When he first approached my left side I wondered what he was doing, but then I see he is undoing the things that had tied me down. With my wrists free I use one hand to massage the other.

After he untied the right hand, he looks up at me with a warm smile on his face. I see him in full view for the first time. His face is broad with a wide smile. His eyes are bright hazel. They are shaped like almonds. He appears warm enough but I notice that even though he has a smile that reaches for miles on his face, the warmth of that smile somehow does not touch those eyes.

He takes a step back and nods gently. He allows me to pull the tube out. I reach with my right hand and gently pull the tube. I start gagging as the tube moves through the back of my throat. Afraid I might vomit, I take action quickly and give the tube one good strong yank. The sensation is horrible and I feel my stomach retching already. I throw the tube on the floor and lean over the side of the bed. Quick as lightning the good doctor has a dish in my face to catch whatever I may bring up. Not much thankfully as it is hard to do much eating when you under. When my body calms down I lay back exhausted. He places the dish on the trolley next to my bed.

"Thank you," I cough at least smiling up at the doctor.

"It's a pleasure," he says smiling back at me and then looks at the woman who had originally called him to come help me with the tube in my throat. I look at her puzzled. She stares at me with tears in her eyes. I sense she is expecting something from me, but I cannot understand what she wants.

"She doesn't remember me," she finally says before sobbing loudly and rushing out of my room. The doctor watched her go with alarm on his face. He reaches for the door and at the very last minute changes his mind. He turns to me instead with a frown upon that handsome face.

"What do you remember?" he asks me coming toward my bed.

"Um, I am not sure," I stammer an answer. I frown looking down at my hands pondering what I am supposed to remember. Who am I? Why am I here? Where am I? There are answers that come to me. It is all blank. A dreadful despair consumes me and I simply lay down and cry.

The doctor places a gentle hand on my shoulder for comfort. He tells me that it is going to be a rough journey, but we will get to the end eventually. He is trying to encourage me, but with nothing to look back on, I am in a state of near confusion and frustration. How do I know if I will ever be the same?

"How do I know if I will ever be the same again if I don't even know who I am supposed to be? Who is that woman? Am I supposed to know her? Why can't I remember?" I cry out at the doctor sitting up in bed.

"You were hit by a car last week and you were in pretty bad shape. You suffered a severe head injury. You were transferred to another hospital for neuro surgery. The doctors managed to save you before any permanent damage could make things worse for you. They sent you back to us yesterday and we anticipated your recovery. Your dislocated shoulder has been manipulated successfully and has not been dislocated since. Your leg will take some more time to heal, but the orthos have kept it traction for successful healing of the fracture of you femur. The nurses in Albert covered your eye due to the swelling. You have been through quite a bit, but you seem to be a strong person so I am sure you are going to come out on top of all this. "

"I need to know who I am," I sob bitterly. "I don't know my name or why I was hit by a car. I can't remember anything and now you telling me all this that doesn't make sense to me. Where am I now?"

“Don't worry about that now. Just focus on getting yourself home, " he tells with a gentle pat on my shoulder.

Dr Booysens walks out my small hospital room leaving me to myself. I lay back down with my hands over face crying bitterly. I want to remember. With my hands on my face my fingertips are reaching for my hairline. I take a deep breath as I realize my hairline which should be there is not there anymore . Am I bald?

I take a small break from my crying as I gingerly move my fingers over my head. The doctor talked about a severe head injury and something about brain damage. It did not make sense at the time, but now it is dawning on me what I must appear like. I am horrified to feel stitches and tufts of hair trying to grow back. I am almost completely bald with a terribly big gash sealed with too many stitches for me to count right now.

I take a few deep breaths before hacking out a small cough. I sit up again and notice something on my left. I nearly scream with panic seeing a long orange tube sticking out of my chest hanging off the end of my bed. This really is too much for me to handle. My memory may not be clear, but it is generally known that it is not normal to have a pipe sticking out the left side of your chest.

To stop the panic from consuming me, I open my one eye and close it again. This is repeated a few times before I realize this is my reality. The fear of having this thing for the rest of my life creeps into the darkest corners of my mind. A picture of me walking down the street wearing a loose shirt lifted up on the side to reveal this horrible pipe materializes behind closed eyes.

"Miss," a polite little voice calls

I open the one good eye and answer, "Yes. What do you want?" My voice was a little more sharp than I intended. The young girl in front of me recoiled at the sound of my voice. She had rich copper colored skin and dark hair tied back in a single braid.

"I am sorry. I didn't mean to frighten you," I try to apologize, seeing her like that made me feel guilty.

"My name is nurse Gangapersad and I have come to check your blood pressure. I am sorry if I disturbed your sleep," she continues as she walks towards me with a trolley of all sorts of useful equipment.

I am not sure what it means to have my blood pressure checked, but seeing her relax a little after my apology made it easier for me to agree. I nod my head in approval and smiles broadly. She takes something from the main machine on the trolley and wraps it around my right arm before securing it with the velcro. She then presses the button on the machine and air is slowly pumped into this thing wrapped around my and starts cutting off the blood supply to my fingers.

Terror grips me like a vice and my reaction is to stop this thing from doing anything else so I instinctively start trying to take the thing off. The little nurse starts panicking unknowing what to do about the drama that was unfolding before her eyes. She quickly places her hands on the end with the velcro preventing me from taking it off.

"Please, don't take the cuff off," she pleads with me.

"It is hurting me!" I growl in response.

"It may be uncomfortable, but it needs to be done," she states.

"Why does it need to be done?" I ask still try to pull the thing the nurse calls a cuff off.

She shrugs her shoulders and answers, "To monitor your health."

"I am healthy. You don't need that to monitor my health. You just need to look at me and ask," I tell her angrily.

"You don't always know if something is wrong inside. Our jobs as nurses is to encourage better health for the patient and what better way is to catch potential problems before it affects you. Just by checking your blood pressure we can see if you are dehydrated, if your kidneys are functioning well, if you have heart problems or if you bleeding internally. "

I stare at her with a blank face. Half of what she told me made sense. It does make sense to try to prevent things getting worse by looking for signs of any potential problems. For me I don't like the idea of looking for problems because logic tells me look for something hard enough you will find it. This brings a new kind of anxiety to the surface.

"What if you find something is wrong with me?" I ask with caution. There is already so much wrong with me, I don't know if I can handle any more.

"If we find it we can see if we can fix it. The earlier we find it the better chance we can fix it. Please can I check your blood pressure?" she pleads with me.

I nod offering my arm out so she can reposition the cuff for the monitor. She presses a button on the machine and a slight buzzing noise can be heard and the cuff fills up with air and inflates around my arm. I feel the blood supply to my fingers decrease. They feel a little tingly with the lack of blood supply.

Slowly the cuff deflates letting the blood return to my fingers. I begin to feel some relief when she finally takes the cuff off and writes something down on the file at the bottom of my bed. She smiles politely to me before walking out my room.

I lay in that bed in silence not knowing what was coming next. There is nothing for me. I have no memories to lean back on. I have no recollection of who I am or any person I am supposed to be connected to. This moment of silence allows me to think about these. I close my one good eye to concentrate on these thoughts, but nothing comes to me. There is absolutely nothing. An inescapable emptiness passes over me. The blank slate inside of me is daunting and refreshing. How am I supposed to fill in the blank spaces inside of me? The refreshing thought though is that I now have an opportunity to live a whole new life with no regrets because of no memories of past mistakes.

The problem lies with who I am supposed to be and who I am supposed to know. The woman who was here earlier must have some idea of who I am supposed to be. She seems to know me quite well. If I pursue her, do I assume the same person I was before the accident. I could always start over as a new person. That has its own challenges. Where do I live? Where do I work? All these thoughts racing through my mind starts an intense headache.

I am startled when a new person suddenly appears in my room clearing his throat. My mind was not in that room at that time and it was quite surprising when he cleared his throat. He laughs at me and my shocked face with a loud deep throat raw. His warm face shines marvelously at me. I take note of the light tones of his olive skin that stretches over a triangular jaw. His mouth spreads beautifully into a warm smile revealing perfect white teeth. That smile stops there though. I don't see it touch his grey blue eyes.

“Chelsea told me you were awake, but I didn’t believe her. I had to come and see for myself,” he says combing a large hand through his light brown hair and then shrugging his rather broad shoulders. I can’t help myself and smile sweetly back at him. I have no idea who he is, but everything inside me doesn’t want him to leave the room. I remain silent for fear of saying something that might offend and chase him away.

“Are you alright, Danny?” he asks with some concern. My heart starts thumping loudly in my chest. I start panicking as I try to think of an appropriate response to this beautiful man. The image of the woman running out of the room in tears kept racing through my mind. Fear of the same thing happening again brings me close to tears. I am trying to hide all this for fear of embarrassing myself in front of him.

“What did she say?” I ask letting the words tumble out my mouth without any thought. Pretending like I know who this Chelsea is might be a good idea to start with, especially if I wish to learn more.

“She said that you were different. She said something about you acting like you didn’t know her. She was a wreck. I haven’t seen her cry that hard since you were in that accident. What did you say to her to break her heart like that? Danny, you know how much she loves you. How could you be so cruel?” he asks me sternly. That smile has now completely faded away. I sense trouble brewing.

"I am sorry," I apologize to this handsome man. I don't know why I feel I must apologize to him. He is staring at me with those grey blue eyes. He is expecting more from me, but I don't know what else I can do.

"Danny, what is wrong with you?" he asks. He is not happy. "You can't think this is okay. It is not funny. Stop fooling around and make it up to Chelsea. She loves you and deserves the same love she is giving you."

" I am sorry that you feel that way. I don't know what to say or do. You are telling me that she loves me, but at this point I don't know her. She is a stranger to me as far as I am concerned. I wish I could say the right things to make you happy."

It is now his turn to blink his eyes for a while before answering me. He had not expected such an honest reply. I see him working through what I told him while he assesses my condition. His eyes flicker up my sad scalp that is barely covered by hair. He is still frowning when he opens his mouth to speak.

"You think you start over new because you got hit on the head. You think all mistakes can be erased like that," he is now roaring as he approaches my bed and clicks his fingers for emphasis. He places his hands firmly my leg before he continues. "You are not going to get away with this. You can carry on like poor little Danny who lost her memory, but remember that I know who you are and I know that you are fine. You can fool everybody else, just not me."

I sense real danger now. This handsome man has now become a frightening monster. He is clearly threatening me, but he also knows something I don't. He knows more about me than I do. Something inside me tells me that this guy is very dangerous. Everything was telling me to run away, but I am stuck in this stupid bed.

A bell rings outside my room. Commotion is happening outside. I see a stampede of people walk past. This is my opportunity. I smile a small grin. I may be stuck in this stupid bed, but hospital procedures protect me from that monster.

He looks over his shoulder at the people leaving and the turns his head in my direction and sees my small victorious smile and frowns. I believe I am going to be saved when he lunges at my healing leg and gives one quick yank. If add insult to injury he slams a big fist into my leg. My eyes widen briefly at something familiar. He gasps as he turns to leave.

I scream painfully. The pain is tremendous. I feel lightning travel through my leg up my whole body to my head. I see someone at the door before I feel woozy and allow the pain to engulf me. Darkness consumes me again in an attempt to escape the trauma of my mangled leg.