Chapter Eleven

Nate

When I woke up, I did not know where I was. It did not take long to figure it out though. I had been here before – even if I had not specifically been in that location before. My eyes felt heavy, weights that I struggled to lift as I came to. My head felt like it was going to explode with pain.

Around me, I could hear several different beeping sounds coming from automated machinery. Throughout my entire life, the sounds that those machines emitted had never changed. They were a reminder of where I had been and where I would always end up. I sighed, instantly regretting it as my head throbbed.

My eyes open, I looked around the room that I was in. There were three other patients as far as I could see. They were still fast asleep. The sun was shining through a window on one side of the room. I could feel the button near my side and I stretched my finger out, pressing it softly. I could not hear the ringing but I knew that someone would come. Someone else would hear the alert go off. I needed pain medication desperately.

I was right. A few moments later, a woman walked into the room. I felt drowsy as I looked at her, as though I was going to pass out at any moment even though I had only just woken up. The nurse looked familiar to me but I did not know how. She was speaking to me. I could see her mouth moving but she sounded far away.

“I… am… sorry…” I said. Each word took a lot of effort to utter and I could hear that I was slurring my speech slightly.

“You don’t have to speak,” she said gently as she fussed around the drip. I noticed that there was a needle in my arm as she moved and adjusted things. “How are you feeling?”

“I… tired. What happened?” I asked.

The nurse stopped moving and stood in front of me where I could see her. I figured she had seen me swinging my head around to see her and whatever she had been doing around my bed. She came over to me and helped lift me slightly, elevating my head with the pillows on the bed. She was very gentle but I still winced in pain at the movement of my head.

“I’m so sorry,” she said. “Are you in pain?”

“Yes… That is why… I pressed the button.” My own voice sounded frail to my ears, tired. It felt like each word took a huge amount of effort for me to utter and it sounded like that, too.

The nurse turned away from me and pulled a syringe out of her pocket. She popped the cap off of the top of it and pulled my drip bag to her, inserting it into the pipeline that ran directly into the vein in my arm. In seconds, I felt better.

“Does that help?” She asked, turning back to me. She looked kind.

“Yes… Thank you.”

“No problem, Nate. Do you know why you are here?”

“I… had another attack…” It was getting easier to speak the more I did it. “I had a seizure.”

“Yes. You did. You managed to press one of the panic buttons situated in your house and the ambulance was alerted.”

“I… pressed the button…” I said. The surprise must have been apparent on my face. I felt so relieved that I had actually done something as it all started to return to me. I had moved on the kitchen floor, somehow.

“You did, indeed,” the nurse said softly. “You saved yourself, Nate.”

“Where am I?”

“You are at the local hospital in Mulberry.”

“Okay…” I said. I was at the hospital. Of course I was. Where was Carlos, though? “Is there… Has anyone come to see me?” It was a struggle to find the words that I wanted to say but I got there eventually.

The nurse looked at me nervously, her brow furrowing. “I know who you are asking about.”

“You do…?”

“Doctor Ramirez was the general practitioner who was on-call when you were brought in last night, Nate. He has been here. He wasn’t allowed to treat you due to his personal relationship with you.”

“I see…” I said. “Is he here though?”

“Doctor Ramirez went home after his shift ended, I’m afraid.” She said. Her face reflected worry, though whether or not that worry was reserved for me I did not know. “I’m sorry.”

Suddenly I realized who she was and why I recognized her. “You were there when I came to the hospital. You went and fetched him for me. I remember you.”

The nurse gave a small, tight smile. “Yes. My name is Jade.”

“Thank you, Jade,” I whispered.

“Please press the button if you need anything else, all right? I’ll be here as quickly as possible. For now, I think that you should get a little more rest.”

“I’m fine,” I murmured in protest. “Really.”

“Nate, I know that you are used to this and we both know that isn’t entirely true. The painkillers will help with that headache but only sleep will help with the exhaustion that you are feeling. I’ll wake you when food is ready so that you can eat if you feel like eating at that time.”

“Okay…”

“It is going to be okay. I’ll be right here the whole time. I’m just a button click away.”

I did not respond. There was nothing to say. I nodded once, barely moving my head at all, and Jade left me. I saw her check on the other patients in the ward, giving them all the once over before leaving the room. I turned to the window, glancing out at the sun. I could not see the hospital gardens from there and I thought that that was a real shame.

There was nothing for the sinking feeling that I felt in my chest. Carlos knew that I was here but he was not. I had not wanted to tell him about my illness yet, especially since I had believed that things might have finally gotten better, and I feared that I may lose him because of it. I would not be surprised. I did not know if I would be able to ever love someone who might die at any second, after all.

It was my own fault. I knew that. I had forgotten the last appointment to the doctor. It should not have happened, sure, because that just made no sense. It was not fair that I should miss only one appointment to the doctor and all of a sudden nearly die due to it. Such was my life, though. Murphy hated me and this was his Law.

I closed my eyes and gave in to the exhaustion. Of course the nurse had been right. I was dead tired. For once, I did not want to stay awake after an attack. I wanted to escape the hurt that was threatening to bubble to the surface and overwhelm me.

***

The next time I woke up, it was dinner time. Nurse Jade was in my room again. I watched as she injected first one liquid into the drip leading up to my arm and then a second through the syringes. I did not ask what they were. The hospital knew how to treat me. They had done so a million times.

Jade helped me eat. My muscles were sore and stiff. They felt heavy and sluggish as I tried to move them. I had insisted upon attempting to eat the food on my own at first but the fork had proved almost impossible to lift and the food had fallen off of it the one time that I had managed to raise it off of my plate. I did not give up. I tried once again after that, which is when my fingers jerked uncontrollably. I should have known that it would happen. My muscles always jerked after an attack. It lasted for a few days as the electricity pulsed through my veins. Jade watched over me as this happened. She did not approach until I had asked her for help, respecting my wish to try on my own.

“Did he say anything?” I finally asked her, once I had eaten as much as I thought I was capable of eating. An entire day had gone by and I still had not seen Carlos.

“He did not. I’m afraid that we don’t really know each other well outside of these walls, Nate. I can’t give you the answers that you seek.”

I nodded sullenly. Jade cleared the plates and removed the tray. She left the room for a moment before she returned. It was time to go and bathe. We both knew that I would not be able to manage a bath on my own when I could not even manage a meal on my own. I did not think that I would ever be unashamed to be bathed by another human being but I had grown used to it nonetheless. I simply allowed everything to happen to and around me.

The nurse took me back to the bed in my hospital gown with the drip trailing beside me after my bath. She raised the back of the bed and placed the pillows behind my head so that I could sleep with it slightly elevated again. She tucked me in thereafter.

“You will be discharged in the morning,” she said to me before she left. “Personally, I don’t think it is a great idea but it isn’t my decision.”

“I’m used to it,” I said. “Most people are not admitted to hospital after a seizure anyway, right?”

“Yes, but yours was a grand mal. It was near-fatal. Plus, they happen far more frequently to you, particularly since you don’t even have epilepsy.”

I shrugged my shoulders. “No one knows how to fix me. There is no point staying here. Besides, I haven’t needed to be kept for observation since I was a teenager.”

Jade looked sad as she gazed at me but she said nothing more on the subject. “Good night, Nate. Sleep well.”

“Thank you, Jade.”