Danny

Chapter 11

I see Chelsea crying in a corner. Her head is down resting on her arms stretched over her bent knees drawn towards her. Her shoulders are shaking violently and I can hear her sobs. She is crying terribly in the corner of the room with one little light.

The small lamp with a round white base illuminates a small portion of the room. It allows me to see the dirty rug under Chelsea's small weight. It is speckled with red, brown, black and purple colors. It is a square patch of dirt on the bare cement floor. Chelsea's small frame pale with a pale coloured dress looks out of place on the dirty rug.

My eyes scan around for more information. A little to the left the edge of a bookcase is seen. The bookcase reminds me of a time as small children we make friends with our neighbour's and often make ourselves comfortable in their home more than in our own. One particular neighbor had a bookcase that seemed unremarkable at first, but the books inside were of tales with tremendous stories. The bookcase itself was a simple wooden design that was about as wide as the end of a couch but as high as an adults shoulders. It had two doors of glass and at least six shelves of books.

The memory brings a small collection of tears to my eyes. The tears affect my vision. I am forced to blink them away. The tears fall down my face to drop on the cement floor. I look down at the two small patches of moisture on the floor. A loud cry disturbs me and I look up at Chelsea. I notice her dress.

Her dress looks as small as the person who is wearing it. The sleeves are cut off and the bottom of the skirt is torn above the knees. Her fair hair falls over her shoulders freely. Her hair just long enough to touch her mid thighs as she continues to remain in the corner with her head resting over her arms.

I want to reach out to her, seeing her so vulnerable in that way. I want to make things better, but I am struck by the obvious fact I don't know how. I don't know enough about this woman to help her feel better. Anything I say or do could make things worse instead of better. I fear that I may sound condescending if I say anything.

“Go on," a voice whispers over my shoulder. The sound of that voice instills fear in others. It makes me shiver. The tone is non threatening but demands you to listen to instruction. His voice is stern and deep. The accent thick with the Afrikaans he used to speak.

“Go on then, " the voice whispers again. The fear in my stomach is over ridden by curiosity. Something about that voice sounds familiar. I want to see who is encouraging me to go speak to Chelsea. Who is behind me?

I turn around slowly moving my head before the rest of my body to get a glimpse of the owner of the voice. The vision before me startles me. The room is gone. I turn to see lush vegetation. Thick bush all around. There are giant trees which the canopies go higher than my eyes can see. The trunks are as wide as three or four men put together. The grass all around me is so high, the tips or tickling the inside of my thighs.

I take a step forward and feel a tingling inside me as I take the next step. The grass feels like hands reaching under my skirt. I look down and see only blades of grass. No hands.

I try take another step. Something doesn't feel right. The grass are the hands. The strange thing is I want those hands to touch me. I feel a need in me that needs this. I move some more to allow those grass hands to touch me more and creep a little higher with each movement. I come to a stop at the top of a little hill. The touching however does not stop. The grass reaches higher beneath my skirt to find no underwear beneath. I am open to this and the grass knows this. I reaches inside me and makes me tingle more.

I lay back in that tall grass allowing the grass to play with me. The feeling is so good. I feel the excitement grow inside of me the grass plays with me. The grass is penetrating me like nothing I had felt before. The feeling is so wild and good that a loud moan escapes my mouth as I come all over the place. The c****x is fantastic and I am lying in that tall grass gasping for breath.

A cool breeze washes over me. It flows over me cooling the sweat over my body. I close my eyes and open them again. The sky between the branches of the tall trees is a brilliant blue that almost blinds me, but slowly it starts changing into a deep purple. The clouds swirling around above are a dark ominous shade of grey that threaten rain.

I slowly lift myself up to a standing position. The grass no longer interested in touching me. I look around for a shelter but only the thick trees and bushes show any hope of shelter. There are no houses to be seen in the immediate area.

I walk lazily down the hill forgetting where I am supposed to be. The good feeling from the c****x is almost hypnotizing. I look around a little at the bottom of the hill. All around me is still the thick vegetation. Bushes, shrubs, trees and vines are all around me. I push some vines out the way as a drag my feet through the tall grass. I pass a tree as wide as the length of a car.

I turn left around the tree to see some low branches from another tree reaching over covered in vines. I try ducking under the branches to be tangled in the vines. The vines are thick and slimy and wrap themselves around my arms neck and chest. The good feeling slipping away as slowly as the vines start tightening their grip. Suffocation registers in my slow mind.

Panic takes control of my body and I start trying to remove the vines around my neck. The vines are so slippery my hands are unable to get a good grip on them. The vines are tightening a little more with all my effort in struggling to get them off. My mind now focuses on not losing oxygen.

Finally the slime wares off on the vines and I feel flesh. My short nails start digging into soft non slimy flesh. The vines are no longer vines but human hands. Someone is strangling me. Their hands are pressing hard on my wind pipe. I am struggling to get air into me. My vision starts going hazy.

Then I see him. His angular face. The skin drawn thin over bulging cheekbones and jutting jaw. Bags of wrinkles hang below his dark brown eyes. The hair that is left barely covers the top of his aging scalp. His bushy eyebrows frown on me. The wrinkles around his eyes and mouth give away his age, but show he struggles with smiles. His lips are thin and pulled even thinner in his frown. I see sagging skin around his neck. His face is there for a second.

“Wake up, it time for your bath, " a voice tells me as my dream disappears and reality comes to me. It's a nurse who has brought me a large bucket of water and soap. I look at the nurse's back she leaves and stare at the doorway while trying to think of what I had been dreaming about. As with most dreams they disappear as you become more aware of the surroundings.

After a short time of failing to remember I look away and start the difficult job of getting myself clean without moving my leg. I pull myself into sitting position and reach for the large basin. I then begin the process. As I reach down between my legs I realize there is some moisture there. I wash with the cloth there. I pull the cloth away and look to see blood. Now I am embarrassed. I don't know what to do.

A small nurse walks past my door and I quickly grab her attention. She stops and comes into my room. She is a pretty little thing. She doesn't stand much taller than my bed with thin arms and a small face. Her hair is done with many braids tied back into a single pony. She is wearing a dark lip color over her pouty dark lips to match with her dark skin tone.

“How can I help you? " she asks gently. Her round eyes move quickly to the basin where she sees the soapy water mixing with the blood I found between my legs.

“Please help me with a pad. It seems to be that time of the month for me," I say quietly feeling the color raise to my cheeks. She smiles gently and nods as she leaves my room.

Waiting in that bed in a puddle of my own blood makes me feel uncomfortable and dirty. I stare at the door eagerly waiting for the nurse to come back. She really did seem sweet enough.

She returns with not only the sanitary towel but some large papers that she calls linen savers. She gives me the sanitary towel and tells me to lift my bum up so she can place the linen savers underneath. She says I am going for theater soon and when I go they will put fresh linen on. She smiles gently before walking out my room.

As she leaves I hear her talk to one of the other nurses. She expresses her displeasure in having to clean my bed and hopes the sister will choose someone else to come clean my bed. I am in shock to hear such talk. I suppose some nurses are more genuine about the job than others. It makes me feel a little disappointed.

Before long the porter is there to fetch me. With extreme agony I move from bed to stretcher and then I am wheeled to theater. Again we wait for a lift to come fetch us and again there is only one available. The others are all broken and stuck on random floors. We finally get into the only one working and make our way to the operating theater in the lift as it rattles and scrapes on the walls outside the metal box. My heart is racing uncontrollably.

I am wheeled in through the electronic doors and am asked a few questions. One of the questions asks me if I am pregnant. After hearing what the small nurse said about me after she gave the sanitary towel, I am cautious. I quietly disclose I am currently bleeding. She nods her head and finishes up her questionnaire.

I recognize Dr Singh from my previous operation as he walks by my stretcher. He takes my file from the nurse who had her questionnaire. He tucks it under his big heavy arm and indicates to the nurses to wheel me into the main surgical area where the op will be done.

When I am in the room, he has a small trolley with syringes and needles. He moves the trolley closer to me after I move from stretcher to the hard bed, which he calls the operating table.

Laying on the operating table in a semi-conscious state as the anaesthesia starts taking affect a memory comes to mind. It means a lot to me considering memories are escaping me at the moment. The feel of the hard cold surface beneath my back encourages the memory. I listen to the machine beeping and focus on the feeling of the blood pressure cuff on my one arm. All this helps jog the memory.

The memory that comes to mind is the night of the accident. In the memory I am laying on a cold hard surface with machines beeping and recording my heartbeat. There were doctors all around talking to each other. The words they were saying were not clear to me. Some of the voices were so distant that I could not actually hear words.

The blood pressure cuff inflated and cut off the blood supply to my hand. At that point a gentle deep voice speaks near my right-hand side. He was clearly talking to someone else who was there. He was telling the other person what the next step should be.

“Her GCS has not improved, so we need to take her to CT scan. The radiographers said they will meet us there in 15minutes. Please make sure she goes up on oxygen because she is intubated. Last time I asked you to take a patient with oxygen there was a problem. Please sort it this time,” he said sternly.

All this made me feel anxious. I could not feel the tube in my throat as they were talking about. I could not open my eyes. I could hear all things, but I felt drowsy and could not feel anything. I heard the machine beep slightly faster as I felt my heartbeat pick up.

“I am sorry doctor for the inconvenience. We should be able to get the patient up in no time. Let me just find a porter to get a gauge,” a female voice nearby replied.

“Some nurses are much easier to work with than others. I can’t say is a dunce, she knows her medical knowledge, but she is a little lazy. A patient we had a few weeks ago actually fell off the stretcher. Her excuse was that she was busy sending report to the matron. I am concerned because another nurse complained that she needed to be on the computer for something like and hour and a half.”

“Dr. Govender, perhaps we shouldn’t be talking about Sr Jackson in front of the patient,” another voice spoke. This voice seemed to be melodic and he seemed to be almost singing when he spoke.

“I suppose you are right, Dr. Booth. You are a good intern. Please don’t change,” Dr. Govender said before a strange song starts playing. “Hello, yes. Where is the stab? What are the vitals?”

His voice trails off. I thought maybe the strange song was probably the ringtone of the doctor’s phone. His random questions, and the fact that no one was answering suggested he was talking to someone on the phone.

The anesthesia the doctor in the operating theater gave me is affecting more now. The memory of that night is fading as is the awareness of my surroundings. The beeping of the heart monitor starts flowing in a more quiet rhythm. It almost seems like the machine is starting to whisper my heartbeat.

There are voices all around me talking to each other. The noise is like a market hub and now it is like I am floating away from it. The voices starts out loud and slowly become distant whispers.

The drugs are taking me away from everything. I feel nothing. I see nothing. Slowly I float away and eventually I hear nothing. The floating helps me to drift into a dreamless sleep to allow the doctors to do their magic. A kind of magic which will help me get out of this place so that I can find out who I really am. 

My thoughts no longer racing through my mind. They mix and mingle in ways that don't make sense and then make absolute obvious sense. I am happy and sad. The feeling of surrender brings me peace. The darkness and silence consumes me and washes all other thought away until there is absolute emptiness.