29. Stranger to one's self

Playlist for this chapter;

I Miss You - Nasty C,

Wait - M83.

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Life is too short to waste a second.

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VOICES.

They're often audible and clear. And most times, they faded away like I was on a speed boat, leaving the voices as the frequent influx of darkness descends and posses my all.

Vision.

It represents an unending roller coaster of black and white, all varieties of shapes on a plain background. Or black patterns on white background and white patterns on black background. Sometimes, a harsh bright light is directed at me as I wallow in my darkness, making me want to let out stridents. But I can't. I don't even know if I belong to the lucky persons who owns voices with mouths.

Limbs.

They feel numb. Paralyzed. I'm unable to even feel them, or know how they were before when I used them.

I don't know who I am, or even where I am.

But I've heard a weak masculine voice call me Katherine thrice, so that means I'm female.

We all dream at night, and we all forget most of our dreams in the morning when we wake up. I've tried to wake up from this dream for as long as I can remember, but I can't. It also doesn't help and lends an extending hand to endless distress because the same things keeps repeating themselves.

I'm I dead or alive?

Neither. Because I've heard both male and female voices saying it'd take time for me to recover.

But this sure doesn't feels like heaven or hell. It feels like I'm floating with my numb limbs, the voices, sounds of footsteps, puzzled vision all on the sum of everything that exists on the cosmos.

Maybe I'm in between Heaven and Hell.

* * *

Finally, after what it seems like forever, my heavy eyes lazily flutter open.

And what they first register, is a moist blurriness, but I can make out a figure in white moving about.

I slowly blink the away blurriness until its haziness becomes transparent.

The place looks oddly familiar like a shithole, and I can't perceive if it smells like one too, because my nose and mouth is on a freaking breathing tube.

Whoever I am, or was before I was magically summoned here, I have no idea. But one thing is for sure. I'm at where I've always hated.

The Hospital!

And on coma. With my body twisted in different angles and decorated in several bandages.

A nurse who walks to my side with a yellowish liquid contented injection like urine, widens her eyes in suprise when she sees me struggling to move.

Her mouth forms into a medium size 'o' as she gapes at me.

'Why I'm I here! I Inquire, but my mouth doesn't produce any sound.

"Miss Jones, just calm down and stop moving, you may hurt yourself if you keep doing that." She instructs me, slamming the landline against her ear.

But I don't listen to her because I can't feel anything. My limbs are moving but I can't feel them.

The breathing tube finally succeeds in falling off my mouth.

Thank fuck! I can speak now.

"What have you done to me?! I croak out, as the mucus on my throat midly disperse, making my voice sound like I was a mute who's now using her voice for the first time. And I attempt fidgeting my body. Dread envelopes me because my hands are changing their places and positions but I can't feel them. I can't feel them.

"Dr Flynn, this is Nurse Olivia. Patient at the private ward in room thirteen is on a concious state. She's moving with violent and irregular actions. You need to come right away." Her voice doesn't deny the panick she's trying so hard to hide on her face.

The door bursts open and in comes a doctor and a nurse.

"What the fuck have y'all done to me?"

"Miss Jones, you were involved in a terrible car accident. You have rib fractures, a lot more damages on your lungs and internal organs and also pelvic fractures." The young doctor informs me with calmness and gentleness in his tone and eyes, hoping I'd calm down. But his eye balls suddenly turns into black, even his white labcoat.

I snap my eyes shut, and reopen, but everywhere instantly becomes dark this time, like the lights were all out.

An accident? Fuck! How? My ears makes out the loud and frequent beeping sounds of a bitchy machine.

"I can't see, I can't fucking see. Put the lights on!" I shriek and right at that moment, I start feeling my heart beat, thumping agitatedly in my chest, like it wants to rip itself out.

"Help!" My main vision returns, and I can see the doctor injecting something into my wrist, causing the walls getting thicker, and closing in.

The chains of darkness binds me again, shutting my mouth and shoving the screams back into my throat. And I think finally died.

* * *

"Were we involved in some sort of non-platonic relationship before my accident?" I ask the blonde hair guy with blue eyes, curiousity laced in my voice. He shouldn't be more than sixty.

He chuckles, but sadness is still evident in his eyes.

He kisses me on the forehead, again. And places a bouquet of roses at my side.

Yes, I didn't die. I woke up and found myself on a bed this time, with the thin hospital gown on me. I don't even have any undies on. And if my period thankfully comes on, the hospital bed would resemble a wannabe Turkish Delight.

Note the sarcasm.

It felt like my body was smatched into pieces and patched up when I first woke up.

The pains all over are currently unbearable. I'm feeling like a doll that had all the body parts dispatched, and sown together again all over again.

I stare at the handsome man again, who's looking at me with something like love and sadness cloud in his eyes.

I take a hard dry gulp. I can feel my throat itchy, filled with lesions. The pain from the banging earth shattering migraine is worst than excruciating.

"If you're going to play deaf, then don't stare at me like that." My face hurts all over, but I still manage to scowl at him. "What are you doing here anyway, sitting your ass on my bed like I was pregnant with your child and lost it. Please excuse yourself out."

"She's having traumatic brain injury - brain dysfunction caused by an outside force. It was a violent blow to her head during the accident." The doctor informs The Blonde Mute, from where he's pointing a tiny touch inside my eyes

Why is he telling him anyway? It's not like it's his damn business. I can feel my frown deepen.

Oh God! I just hope I wasn't his lover before the accident.

"What are the symptoms?" Blonde Mute finally speaks up.

I was beginning to think he was mute after all. I try concentrating on the flower at my side, but they seem to be falling off one by one. I blink and stare at it, none of the flowers had pull out. I try to read the words written on a banner, on a spot in front me on the wall. But I can't. I can't read anything. All the words and letters are changing their orders, which adds a stamp to the fact that dylexia is additional to my condition.

Fuck!

The doctor clears his throat in preparation to speak.

"Persistent headache, difficulty in concentrating and memory loss." Doctor Flynn leaves my side, carries a file on the table, and holds it out over to the blonde hair blue eyes guy who hesitates, eyes lingering too long on the file, before he reluctantly accepts it. "Here, the tests results confirmed that she has Retrograde Amnesia - loss of memory access to events that occurred or informations that was learned in the past."

"Oh My God!"

"What?"

We exclaim in unison at the doctor's report.

I swallow a huge hurtful lump on my throat, battling with the revelation that I'm having memory loss due to my accident.

"Retrograde Amnesia is the most common form of memory loss following a car accident." The doctor's expression is unchangeable, indescribable as he breaks the bad news, directing his eyes at me. And I imagine him falling off a cliff and getting eaten by sharks. And his skeleton pieces getting flushed away by a high degree of current.

"You're going to be needing a therapist." He directs this announcement to me.

"Really?" I don't even bother to hide my displeasure. " Are you kidding me?" If not the pains and bandages, I would've raised my hands up in frustration. I settle at gritting my teeth instead.

"No, I'm only helping you."

"But she was on a bike." Blonde hair persists waving his hand away in clueless frustration, after sighing and facepalming. The shadows on his face becomes visible when the reality of my condition impend to hand over the atmosphere.

"I was on a bike? Was I a pizza delivery girl, or some delinquent running away from cops after trespassing? " I ask no one in particular. "Who the hell is this guy sitting on my bed?"

"She wasn't driving the bike, which resulted to her flying away and colliding with hard bricks along the road side during the accident. She also has a concussion right now and has lost the ability to form memories, that's the main reason she doesn't even recognize you, Mr Jones."

"Oh, that's quite nice." I say sarcastically, wondering why they even bother to take the trouble of dressing me in a hospital gown, when I have a cast on my neck and clothe clad bandages allover.

"But the good news is, it's only temporary. You and everyone close to her will have to help her regain her memory."

"How can I help her?" Blonde hair face falls as he demands, he looks frustrated and thoughtful the same time.

"We'd have to discuss that in my office." The Doctor says, pushes his glasses up and makes his way out of my ward. Leaving me with the Blonde earlier mute guy.

Silence relapses in the air, while the Blonde earlier mute guy looks away from me and swears under his breath, face palming.

"How long have I been here?" I ask, giving him a cool look.

"Two weeks." He replies jerking his fingers aggressively through his hair. "God, I'm so sorry, Kate. Shouldn't have agreed with you to go with him. It's all my damn fault!"

"What are you talking about?" Confusion stuns my ache stirring brain, and I wince in pain. Suddenly I feel so dizzy and exhausted.

"You.." He exhales, still avoiding my eyes. "I can't even look at you and not feel guilty. I'm so sorry you have to go through this."

"Are you my boyfriend or something?"

"I'm your dad, Kate." Stealing a glance at me, he covers my hand with his.

Oh, my Dad. Everything starts drawning in. Now I get why he was acting like that earlier on. It all makes sense now.

"It's just so fucked up that you cannot even remember me." His face crumples in pain as he sniffs freeing my hand, while I bite on my buttom lip, unsure of what to say as I stare around me. There isn't much in the room. Just a chair, the tiny hospital bed I'm on, that is supplying more pains to my body.

"If you're my Dad, where is my Mom and siblings." I ask, eyeing him with suspicion because I don't think I can trust him. My paranoia towards him stays the same.

"It's just you and me, Kate. Just the two of us. Your mom passed away right after birthing you."

That's sad. But I don't feel anything at all. I don't even know how to feel.

"According to the doctor, I wasn't riding a bike, but was on a bike when the accident happened. Who was the other person on the bike with me? I bet the person's condition would be more critical than mine." I purse my lips.

Blonde..my Dad stays silent for some moments before speaking up. "Just someone who isn't important."

I manage to nod. "I'm starving, like I can eat a whale." I pick up the file on my bed, and try to read out of it. But the letters are changing their orders in each sentence. I keep the file back down, and exhale in defeat because I forgot I'm having dylexia.

My blonde hair, ocean blue eyes Dad, purses his lips, casts his head and shoulders down, with both his hands on my bed and say nothing, but sigh momentarily before staring out my window.

It's late, and dark outside.

"Wait, don't tell me we're some homeless street panhandlers, and the course of my accident is that I was trying to steal some rich kid's bike." I Inquire, and when he doesn't respond I feel my eyes widen in dismay. "Oh my God, can you even foot my hospital bills? I'm on a private ward for fucks sake."

"Language Katherine." My.. Dad warns, giving me a business-like look. It makes him look like a socialite business man, a man of authority. But he's just putting on plain skyblue shirt, pair of black washed jeans, and white converse like some old school janitor. I just hope he isn't poor enough to be unable to put food on the table.

I wonder how our house would look like. If we even have a house or live on the streets.

Do I even have friends? Attend school?

I can feel knots building and tightening themselves in my stomach

"I'll be back in a few with some food." He's already at the door, and he pauses with his hand on the door knob. "And Kate?"

"Yeah?"

"I'm just glad you didn't die."