Читать книгу Paralyzed - Ashlynn Dee - Страница 3

I woke in a strange building, being rushed down a hallway. People were shouting, and when we passed by a room I saw a girl about my age, sitting next to an old man on a weird-looking bed thing, he looked pale. Then we were pushing through a doorway with big swinging doors. Blinding white lights were above my head, and then they were moving me to a different surface. I didn't feel my legs move at all, but when someone gently lifted my shoulders and another person my hips, it hurt so much that I almost blacked out again. When the slid me over onto whatever it was they put me on, my vision went black and everything sounded funny. One kind elderly lady kept asking me what my name was, but I couldn't talk. They put a mask over my mouth and nose and everything went black again, but this time, it was different, silky, and soft.

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I woke in a small, brightly lit room; machines were surrounding me, most of them with blinking lights and an annoying beeping sound. I tried to sit up, but I couldn't. I felt numb all over, and my mouth felt like it was stuffed with cotton. I heard footsteps, and then the elderly woman from before walked in.

“How are you feeling sweetie?” she asked.

I just looked at her, my face blank. She walked over and started fiddling with something attached to my arm. I didn't even notice, but they had tubes all over them, leading to clear bags hanging on poles by my bed.

Then she said, “Are you hungry?” I nodded, I didn't trust myself to speak.

“I’ll be right back with some food for you.”

I nodded again, and then croaked out, “Where am I?”

She turned around and replied, “You’re in the Agate Hospital, do you know where that is?”

I shook my head. I had never been in a hospital, only seen them from the outside. She left the room, and I tried to sit up again, the effort was exhausting. Still nothing, I wanted to sit up so badly, I couldn't understand why I was stuck like this. She came back into the room carrying a tray. She put the tray down on the side of my bed and asked me if I knew how to work one of “these things.” My thoughts were tangled, what was she talking about? She smiled kindly at my confused expression and walked over. Then she picked up a small remote and told me that it would move the bed to help me sit up. She pushed a button with an arrow pointing to the top of the remote and the top half of the bed moved, pushing me into a sitting position.

I ate the food she had brought over, and she took the tray and walked out, a lady in a uniform came in and injected something into one of the transparent bags. My eyes started to droop, and I fell into a deep dreamless sleep.

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It went on like this for some time. In fact, all I ever did was eat, sleep, and think. There wasn't much else to do. Almost three weeks later, a tall lady with brown hair and a pretty smile walked in behind the doctor. The strange lady smiled and told me she would be my social worker. I was confused, what did she mean? I didn't need a social worker, whatever that was. She explained that a social worker took care of the kids in the foster care program and that I was now in the program since I didn't have any family left.

But that wasn't right, my mom and brother couldn't be gone, and even if they were, I had my cousins and my grandparents. What was going on? I tried to tell her that she was wrong, that there was no way all of my family was gone, but she cut me off. The lady explained that my aunt had died from the Millant disease, and my uncle didn’t want a reminder of his pain. He had sent his two children Clara and Mathu to boarding schools. On top of that, he lost his job and was drinking himself unconscious every night. When I asked about my grandparents she said they had been driving, but when they had gone under a tube tunnel, it had collapsed, and they died.

How could this be happening to me? There were no words to describe how I felt at that moment. I was the only living Jacquell left. Both women left, apparently seeing my distress, or maybe it was the stupid machines. Anger and bitterness filled me, and I ripped the tubes out. As soon as I saw what was on the ends of the tubes I freaked out. I hated needles, ever since I had stepped on a sea urchin. I couldn't stand them. Somewhere to my left an alarm sounded, and nurses came rushing in, trying to get the needles back in my arms, but I was hysterical, there was no way I was letting those sharp little demons things, go back into my arm. One of the nurses left, she came back shortly with a doctor trailing after her.

I didn't get why I still was hooked up to these machines. Why was I still on these medications if I wasn't sick? I just wanted to go home, but since all of my family is gone, where was home? For me, home had always been where my family was, but now I was all alone.

The doctor finally decided if I didn't want any IVs’ (I found out later that the clear bags and needles were called this) then I didn't have to have any. The doctor and the nurses left, and I was blissfully alone. But maybe it was better to have something to do because now all I could do was think. I decided I wanted to get up and show everyone that I was healthy enough to leave this stupid place.

I sat up and moved my legs over to the side of the bed. My legs felt weird like they were disconnected from the rest of me. But I decided I was going to try and walk. So I pushed off the edge of the bed and fell flat on my face. I sat there, attempting to get up, I had to use my arms, I couldn't make my legs work right. Every time I managed to stand, my legs collapsed beneath me.

Why could I not remain standing for more than a second? Why? I just wanted to prove I wasn’t sick anymore. The therapy lessons they had me in weren’t doing anything; I never talked to the therapist. Why bother when they couldn’t possibly understand what I had been through? I knew they were keeping something from me; I just had to figure out what and then I could leave. But where would I go? I had nothing to live for; it didn’t matter anymore, why should I even bother. I couldn’t even stand up.

My life was worthless. I wished I had died in the accident, instead of living. Why did those stupid people have to find me? How did they find me? The plane had crashed miles from any living humans. It should have taken them hours, maybe even days for anyone to realize something was wrong. How did they know where to find the crash site? It was all so confusing. I sat there and pondered over it. I used my hands to straighten out my legs. There was a long scar on the back of my left leg that I hadn’t noticed before. What had happened in that crash? I knew that I had been injured, but this was a huge scar, it had been long enough, I should have been able to walk by now. What was going on? A cut on my leg shouldn’t keep me from walking, and if I couldn’t walk, then I couldn’t swim. That was a problem more real to me than almost anything else.

I tried to turn around and grab the bed, but my lower back was stiff. I bent over, trying to touch my toes, but again my lower back wouldn’t bend. I reached behind myself to feel my back, and there was a small bump, that went halfway up my back. A scar, almost like the one on my leg, but thinner and less rigid, along it there were three spots were my spine felt hard and wider than it should have been.

Then it hit me; I had broken my spine when I fell from the plane. It must have been bad for them to use old techniques of putting a substitute in. But why could I still not walk? Modern technology should have fixed the problem enough that I could walk unless it had been irreparable. There was a story of a boy born without half of his spine. They had replaced it with the special metal that could be used to replace most types of bone, but the boy still couldn’t move his upper half, there was no ligaments or muscle there to do the job. He spent his entire life in a home for physically disabled people; he ended up dying early.

I wouldn’t have the same fate, would I? But I couldn’t stand, so it must be true. I was paralyzed from the waist down, a paraplegic. My legs would never work again. I felt numb; this kind of thing only happened in movies, not real life. Right? But it had happened to me, so it must happen in real life too. Guess I was stuck in a wheelchair, I just hope the family that got me for foster care wouldn’t mind my handicap. I had no chance of ever getting my legs working again.