4.
I faintly heard sounds, the sounds of people speaking in hushed tones but with urgency in their voices. Then there was nothing but darkness and silence.
Sometimes I felt my body being touched with care, softly and gently, and then other times it was jolted and thrown around. The pain was a constant and with every touch whether gentle or not, it never left. A sensation of floating overcame me and I heard a whup-whup-whup noise above me. Was I flying? I was sure I was as I felt my body tilt from one side to the other and then descend until it was motionless again. Then there was nothing but darkness and silence.
Bright lights were flickering through my closed eyelids. The voices were around me again, muffled and varied between orders and questions, high-pitched and low-pitched. My body was a blazing inferno yet something around me was cool. The fire inside me forced me to try and speak and tell someone, anyone, about the intense and excruciating pain I was enduring, that my blood was boiling from the heat within me. Instead, I only groaned, unable to form a word.
A fluid flowed through my heated veins and with it a sense of slight relief from the agony. My jaw got pulled down, my mouth open to its full extent. Something was sliding down my throat, adding to my discomfort but my brain failed to tell my body to react to the procedure. I flinched as a cool liquid got rubbed over my skin, and at the same time, gadgets were attached to me. Then the cool feeling on my skin was being stifled by a wrapping movement. Over and over. Around my arms, my torso, my legs and then my head. Was I dead and someone with a cynical sense of humour had decided it would be funny to mummify me?
Then there was nothing but darkness and silence again.
How many days, weeks, maybe months did I lie there in that hospital bed, motionless like a corpse, wrapped like a mummy? At some point I became aware of people working on me, a woman's gentle voice was asking me how I was feeling today. How was I feeling? How was I to know how I was feeling? Did I even have feelings right now? No, I did not. Where was I anyhow, was I even alive or was this all a very bad dream, or was I in hell or wherever people went when they died?
I tried to tell her what I thought of her stupid question but instead, all that came from my lips was nothing. Not a sound. How did this silly woman think I could answer her when I had a thick pipe stuck down my throat? She did something with the gadgets connected to me and that familiar fluid flowed through my weak veins killing any feelings I might have felt before I rested in darkness again. I was beginning to enjoy this fluid stuff.
***
'Ms Burnstein, can you hear me?'
I groaned while someone fiddled with a file loaded with papers. He conversed with a few other staff members and then walked toward the nurses' station. My eyes gradually brought the room into focus for the first time. The light was so bright, but wait; all was not in place. There was no vision from my left eye. I felt a surge of panic as I tried to lift my arm to touch my eye and it did not react. More adrenaline rushed through me and I groaned looking wildly out of my right eye, searching for someone to help me.
'Hello dear,' a nurse said to me with a big smile.
I flung a desperate questioning look at her.
Please help me! I begged her without actually saying the words.
I hoped telepathy worked right now. The doctor returned and instructed the nurse to remove the thick pipe from my throat. They fiddled with tape stuck on my face making sure not to mess with the bandages they apparently had me enclosed.
'This is going to be very uncomfortable dear, but it will be very quick.'
The pipe reversed up my throat and out of my mouth. It was disgusting and while I tried to cough and vomit my lungs stung in pain.
'Slowly dear, it's all right, that nasty little pipe is all gone now.'
She gently wiped the spit from my mouth, chatting all the time. My right eye never left her face looking beseechingly at her hoping she would tell me what was going on. Finally, the doctor spoke to me.
'Ms Burnstein, hello dear. I'm Dr Ronanski. I have a lot to tell you, but first can you tell me your name?'
My name? My brain questioned the doctor. How did they not know my name, no wait, earlier he called me by my name I was sure of it! Were they just playing a nasty trick on me?
My right eye was obviously reflecting the panic I felt as he spoke in a soothing voice, 'I want to make sure I am treating the right person. Don't want to be giving you the wrong meds now do I?'
He smiled through a chuckle when he was finished speaking. I opened my mouth to speak but again nothing happened. I coughed and it hurt my chest so badly. I tried again after first clearing the phlegm that was sitting in my mouth. The nursed wiped my mouth again.
'Take your time dear, try slowly.'
'J…Uhm…Ja…' I coughed, clearing my throat once more, 'Ja…Jade,' I said very softly and slowly.
'Well done Jade,' the kind nurse had said with so much elation that anyone would think I had won a prize.
'Can I call you Jade and not Ms Burnstein?' the doctor spoke touching the bandages on my head at the same time.
I made an attempt to nod.
'Well Jade, do you know where you are and why you are here?'
I let my brain search my memory banks and dissect the room.
'Hospital.'
It was more a mumbled reply than a convincing one.
'Yes Jade, now do you know why you are here?'
Why? Why am I here? What happened to me? I shook my head and it hurt. I frowned to ease the pain.
'Don't worry dear, try not to move too much,' the nurse said patting my hand.
'You were in a car accident. Try to remember Jade,' Dr Ronanski coaxed me once more.
I clawed through my brain for memories of the accident. Flames flashed at me; smoke was choking me, I was crying for help. I remembered. Oh no! Did I want to remember this catastrophe? I would rather not! I nodded my head slowly and felt tears dribble down my face.
'Okay dear, it's okay, we are here to help you.'
This nurse was simply too kind.
'Jade, yes you were in a very bad accident, in fact, you are incredibly lucky to be alive. But saying that,' he paused and I had to wonder if the "but" was worth staying alive for, 'you sustained second and third-degree burns on your back and the left side of your body. You also have a broken arm and leg.'
He stopped talking to; I presume, allow me time to absorb what I did not want to hear. I just stared back at him, not wanting to believe a word he was saying. It was hard not to believe him positioned in this room attached to pipes and wrapped in bandages.
The doctor continued, 'That you did not do any damage to your left eye is somewhat of a miracle Jade. We have it closed as a precaution against infection.'
He looked at me for confirmation that I understood what he was telling me. I didn't want to hear any more. If I was not beautiful, if I was not perfect then life was not worth living, this was not happening to me; it had to be a bad dream. My chest ached as I sobbed and the more I cried out that I wished I was rather dead, the more the pain seared throughout my body until I was not sure whether I was crying for my imperfect body or the pain.
'I think that is enough excitement for one day. We will discuss treatment and perhaps taking the bandages off tomorrow. But for now, Nurse Mary, you give our Jade here a nice dose of morphine that she may get some much-needed rest.'
He patted my arm as he stood up to leave.
'Jade, do you have any relatives? The only person that we were able to contact was your agent.'
I shook my head; the morphine was delightful.
'No,' I replied pathetically.
'Okay Jade, have a good rest,' he said, turned around and left the ICU, the nurses all walking away with him.
My agent was the only person who was concerned about me. Or rather she was the only person in the entire world that was in contact with me. Was there no one else? Did anyone even care that I had nearly died and that I was lying here alone and would look hideous for the rest of my life? If my parents were alive would they have bothered to visit? Why me, why did this happen to me?
I threw the questions out into the realms of space until I was in the oblivion of sleep.