I have never been a guy who believes in God or a guy who says that I am a son of anyone else other than my parents. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t have anything against people who do believe in a higher being, I just always thought that I was in control of my life and that I wasn’t a puppet to a higher being. If I had to believe in something, it was that.
I guess you can say that I’ve changed since she came into my life though, but I think that’d be too early to say at this point in my life.
She and I only knew each other for a couple of months. She was someone who began to slightly grow on me at that point in time, I had never talked to anyone outside of my family as I often as I had talked to her. We weren’t really the most compatible of strangers, but the topics we exchanged between the two of us interested the other to an extent. It was entertaining to get a peek at a life that was so different from mine, the innocence that resonated from her persona seemed almost unreal. She was becoming a light in my life, I looked forward to each encounter the more we got to hang out together.
One day after she and I were doing some “illegal activities”, as the nurse put it, she got an extremely bad migraine. She looked broken and shattered as she crouched into a fetal position in front of my room door, clasping her hands over her head, exclaiming, “It feels like my head’s cracked open”.
Her screams were like none I had ever heard. They pierced through the screen of my windows which I quickly closed so no one else had to hear any more of her invisible pain. I didn’t understand what to do other than to hold her down. I picked her up and we struggled onto the bed together. The longer and stronger I held my hands above hers, her breathing calmed, but what remained loud and dangerous was the growing beating inside her head. The pain kept coming back to her in increments, a few seconds she would breathe heavily, the next few she would wail through the pain, “Make it stop. Don’t let my head crack open”. I noticed that when she felt the most pain, her head beat stronger under the weight of our hands.
This wasn’t anything I’ve experienced before, so we called one of her friends for a ride to the nearest hospital. During our ride, her friend sped past cars as she was laid out across the back seats, her head on my lap. The invisible pain was getting a little better, it still kept coming in and out as she whimpered that she needed my hands to cover her head. I looked at her with worry as I felt her tears of pain fall onto my jeans. I bent over to lightly kiss her temples, every time I did this she and her pain calmed.
She started to freak out when she realized that we were parked in front of the Emergency Room. The way she moved emulated contortion-like moves that actresses on exorcism movies made, both her friend and I tried to drag her through the dimly lit parking lot. However, as soon as we were touched by the fluorescent lighting of the hospital, she calmed down as if not to be disrespectful of the employees. She was asked the preliminary questions that any patient would be asked, and soon they had a room and a gown for her. She had a surprisingly calm demeanor about her, as if she was not in pain at all, but after she turned to me from changing, I could see the pain and worry in her eyes. I held my hands out for her as I led her to her bed.
All I could remember of the nurse was that she was heavily criticizing her. What was the point of criticizing the how she got into the hospital instead of trying to attack the present issue? Soon after all the bullcrap the nurse put her through, she was under pain killers that were inserted through a couple of IV’s on her arm. She kept tossing and turning, “This is so uncomfortable!” sounding like an unhappy child. She held a hand out for mine, and I grabbed it lightly, but with every fiber of my being I placed my thoughts on her. She tried to give me a smile, but it came off thin and unconvincing. Soon the drugs overcame her and she was asleep.
Like I said, I was never a godly guy. But as I looked at her lying on the hospital bed, she looked almost lifeless. Her face and lips lost its color. Her hand was relaxed, but eerily unmoving in mine. Her breathing was similar to that of the nights we slept together. She was alive, but I couldn’t help but think that after this she would be ruined. I ruined her. The innocence that she personified before this would be cracked as soon as she woke up, what will she be like? Will she ever forgive me for having had done this to her?
I continued to look on at her, but then I started to pray. Begging an unfamiliar god to help the hand that was in mine, to get her better. I clasped both of my hands on hers as the time moved slowly, my prayers and pleas growing louder and louder inside of my head, it might as well have been as loud as her screams earlier in my room. When I realized I was overcome with stress and worry, I relaxed. What was the point? It’s not like he would answer my prayers the minute I asked them. I let my mind wander.
After what seemed like seconds, she opened her eyes.
