Five Lost

Two Girls are alone inside a hospital when one starts having flashbacks about a disaster that she can't remember, and is losing something that is of grave importance to existance.

There are some things that we take for granted, happiness, life, love, but all these elements are necessary for our existence. Another vital ingredient in our world is our senses. Imagine living without being able to hear the voices of those around you. To never feel the strong bark from the trees or see the sunrise climb up from behind the mountains, greeting the new day. Yes, there are some things that we take for granted, and when we lose them, we realize that it all went too soon. You never notice what you have until it’s gone, and by then, it’s usually too late to go back.

  My eyes flutter as they open to the bright white light that surrounds me. It’s blinding at first but then my eyes adjust to the new light, making it clear that I wasn’t in my room. I could feel a soft mattress underneath me with large heavenly pillows that are keeping my head at a 75 degree angle. On both sides of the bed there was a white bedside table. On the right table there was a simple lamp and a bowl of fruit, and on the left a bundle of lilacs in a black vase. I could smell the sweet scent of the flowers from the bed, sharing its fragrance with the rest of the room.

  I try to look around me when I feel the tugging of cords on my skin. I look at my arms to see wires attached to them leading to a heart monitor, the small beeping noise of the machine monitoring my heart rate became more noticeable to me now that I knew its source. I try to sit up again when I hear a movement from the floor. I look to find what made the noise but the answer shows itself to me almost immediately. A pale face looked my way, long black stringy hair covering all of her features apart from glimpses of emerald eyes. She was sickly thin and looked as though she hadn’t eaten in weeks. She walked over to the fruit bowl and picked up a blood red apple, then held out her hand to give it to me. I tried to refuse but she wouldn’t accept no for an answer, she just continued to hold out the apple and nod at me, as if to say that I could trust her.

  I look at the white hand in front of me, clenching at the fruit, begging me to take it. Her baggy blue jumper practically swam on her and a belt held up her black jeans. How long had she been here, and why? Usually I’d be concerned about a sickly girl watching me as I lie on what I can only assume is a hospital bed, but something about her seemed comforting, familiar. Behind the oily mass of black hair her green eyes look into mine, showing misery. No emotion showed on her face, but those eyes told a story of their own. Tears had been shed, but she was trying to be strong.

I took the apple from her politely and bit into its crunchy core, the sweet juice overwhelming my taste buds. It was then that it all started. I started to get dizzy and the beeping of the heart monitor was getting faster. I started getting visions of myself eating on a bench and then suddenly the visions became clear. I was sitting eating a sandwich when alarms started blaring over my workspace. I ran towards the building when I tripped over a tree root and fell face first into the dirt, some of it getting into my mouth, the sandy dry texture making my mouth feel like a desert.

  Then, as quickly as it came, the vision stopped. I was back in the bed surrounded by white walls, drained off all of my energy. The women stood in a corner cowering. The red apple was still in my hand, with only a single bite out of it. I dug my teeth in to take another bite when I noticed something was different. I could feel my teeth digging into the apples core, but the sweetness that it had before didn’t occur. I started to chew but still nothing. I panicked and reached for a different piece of fruit, but it was still the same result, I couldn’t taste anything. I could feel the textures of the food, but my taste buds seemed to have shut down.

  The women came over to me with a worried expression on her face, as if she were slightly scared. I could only focus on her eyes, the steady stare that they were giving me as she crept up to the side of my bed.

  Keeping her distance she spoke, her voice low and mournful, “It’s happened, hasn’t it?” At first I had no idea what she was talking about, but then it clicked, she knew what had just happened to me, she knew that it was coming, and yet she didn’t warn me. The confusion that I had felt before was replaced with frustration. Not even the sweet calming scent of the lilacs in the vase could calm me down.

  I began to hear my heart rate get faster through the machine, and it wasn’t long before I felt the same terrifying feeling that had come to me not that long ago. The room began to spin and the visions started again, this time clearer than the ones that appeared before. I could smell smoke all around me, the alarms still ringing fiercely. I ran towards the building, heading towards where I suspected the accident was; if it was what I thought, I could turn it off. The smell of burning chemicals became clearer as I got closer to the chemical chamber; it was then that I saw it, the outline of a person in the chamber, trying to shut off the source of the problem. The person looked at me as all went black.

  Coming back to reality I was less drained than what I was before, but much more confused. Who was the shadow that I saw in the chamber? Why was I having memories of an accident that I was clearly involved in? And what had happened to me that day?

  I look around the room and notice that something’s different. The woman was still there, back in her corner, shivering with fear. The white walls still surrounded me, haunting me. The black vase holding the lilacs was the only source of joy in the room, but still something was different. The slight sweetness of the tormenting room had disappeared. The scent of the flowers had gone, no longer surrounding the room with its fragrance. But it hadn’t been replaced with a different smell, it was just gone. All scents were gone, not even the polluting smell of the machinery was lingering in the air.

  I needed answers, and someone in this room knew what they were. I looked at the cowering girl in the corner, covered by the shadows. She was clearly panicking, but I didn’t care. I wanted to know what was happening to me, and she was the only one who knew.

“Hey you! You clearly seem to have some idea of what’s happening to me, and I’m waiting for answers, so if I were you, I’d tell me right now before I get really pissed off!”

  I don’t know why I was angry, only that I was, and that if this woman didn’t tell me what I wanted to know, no machine would be able to stop me from taking action. She stuttered her answer, I don’t know if it was due to fear or if that’s just who she was.

“I can’t tell you, I don’t know why it’s happening, but… it’s doing something to you brain. The chemicals have affected it, and it’s… it’s shutting down.”

  The new information spun in my mind, as I try to comprehend what this girl had just said. It can’t be true. You know that feeling where you think that you’re dreaming and that any second you’re going to wake up and find that it’s not real, that it was just your imagination playing tricks on you, this wasn’t like that. I knew that I wasn’t dreaming, because if I was, it wouldn’t feel this real. Your dreams can only take you so far, but reality can turn your life around.

  To think that I would never taste the sugary taste of meringue again, or to never smell the salt of the ocean. I’ve never appreciated what I had, and now it was gone. Instead of the fury that I’d felt only moments ago, I could feel tears forming in my eyes. What had I done to deserve this? To deserve to be punished in the worst way possible, and be left as nothing but just a body, lying there without even the lilacs smell to cheer me up, to make it as though there is still some hope.

  “Why me, what did I do to deserve this?” Tears began to fall from my eyes and slide down my pale cheeks, getting caught in my ash blond hair as the strands of it cover my face. My throat began to dry up and hurt, but even the pain wasn’t distracting me from what I had just learnt.

“Sometimes bad things just happen, and there’s nothing you can do to stop it. It’s not your fault though.” A new soft voice came from the mystery girl. She was trying to comfort me, but I didn’t want comforting right now. I just wanted it to go away, to be normal again. Not to be stuck here in this bed for an accident that isn’t even clear to me.

“Well if it’s not my fault then whose is it?! I don’t even remember what happened apart from flashbacks that I seem to be continuously getting before something goes wrong and my brain takes one more step into shutting down, and then all goes to hell!” I’m screaming at the woman now, my heart rate increasing from anger. She’s not going through what I am. She can’t just stand there and say that there’s nothing that I can do to stop it, and then expect me to be all cheery about it.

  The dizzy feeling came again, but this time I was prepared. I braced myself for the blackout as the room started to spin. This time I was determined to find what had happened to me, and then find a way to stop it.

  I’m running through the building, banging against the people going in the opposite direction fleeing towards the door, trying to escape the catastrophe that’s happening further on inside. I look towards me to see the door of the chemical chamber, wide open with clouds of smoke gushing from the doorway. I rush towards the opening to see a shadowed figure standing inside the chamber, staring at the controls that operate the door.

  “Hey! What are you doing?” I shouted as the person turned in shock to face me, but what I saw was even more surprising. A pale thin figure with long black hair looked my way, her emerald eyes glistening from a distance. I ran towards the open door to stop her but it was too late, the door was already slowly beginning to close. I get through the door and push the woman out of the way of the controls, reversing the closing of the door. She charges towards me but I dodged, pushing her out of the door and slamming the emergency shut button. The door slams closed and the room begins heat up like a sauna. I can feel the heat on my skin as I start to boil alive, and the sharp pain as I collapse to the ground, where all goes black.

  I’m back in the hospital bed, staring at someone who was all too familiar to me. The same emerald eyes that glistened from a distance were fixed onto mine, with the same shocked expression lingering in them. She was thinner and more sickly looking, but there was no mistaking that it was her, the woman who was trying to close the doors in the chamber.

  “Who are you?” After the words had left my mouth silence fell as I waited, for what seemed to be ages, on an answer. Her expression changed from shock, to fear and eventually, sadness.

  “Bree, my name is Bree. You don’t remember me Kel, but… I know you.” She was almost chocking on the words and she said them, as though she were trying to hold back tears.

 “Oh I know you just fine; you were there, behind the controls in the chamber. You tried to shut the door, but I got shut in instead. And barely anyone calls me Kel now, so why did you? Why did I risk my life for you? I wouldn’t do that for anyone, so tell me… who are you to me?” The words sounded harsh, but it was the only way to get what I was looking for. She paused before answering, tears now running down her face in small drops.

  “You don’t remember, do you? You’ve known me your whole life, but your memory was lost when you collapsed. You have to believe me on this. I tried to shut the doors, but you stopped me. I should be the one in your position right now, not you! It’s my fault, I’m so sorry.” The small teardrops that were running down her face multiplied as the whites in her eyes went red. She shielded her face and started to wipe the tears from her face.

  I put my hand on her shoulder to comfort her when I noticed it. The texture of her skin wasn’t there. I used my other hand to pinch my skin, but still nothing. No pain or even the slightest trace of feeling, just emptiness. I panicked. Losing my taste and smell was bad enough, but not touch. More than half of my senses had vanished, leaving me with only my hearing and sight left, and I could only guess that those weren’t going to last much longer.

  “How much time do I have before it happens again?” I was dreading the answer, but if I knew when the next one was coming, I could brace myself and hope for the best; though the response came much sooner than I’d hoped. The room started to go black as I slowly crept into unconscious state, preparing myself for the visions that were to come.

I could hear the warning alarms blaring in the distance as I fell towards the floor, trying to stop it with my hands out in front of me. The smoke was getting thicker and blocking my vision, but I could still hear Bree banging on the door from the other side, trying to open it from the outside. Emergency sirens were getting closer as my vision started to fade, and I could only pray that they got here in time. Suddenly, the slamming on the door stopped as all went dark, and the only sound I could here were faint voices in the background, speaking too fast to comprehend, and coming closer to my rescue.

I already knew what to expect when I woke up, but that didn’t make it any more endurable. I think that I screamed, because Bree was trying to calm me down, but I couldn’t understand what she was saying. It was the worst moment of my life, not being able to do anything other than see the misery on someone else’s face, and not being able to tell them that it’s going to be okay, because I knew that it wasn’t.

  It was then that I remembered. She wasn’t just the girl in the chamber, she’d been there forever. The same green in her eyes that were in mine, the same pale complexion. From a young age she’d been there for me whenever I felt alone, or hurt. I now understood her misery, why she had remained dormant at my bedside while I lie there motionless. I’d forgotten my own sister, the person who I care about more than anyone, and I had almost lost her.

  I don’t know how much had passed before the final vision came, but it was the worst one that I’d experienced. The doors of the chamber opened as Bree ran to my side in tears, holding me in her arms screaming for help. The ambulance came quickly after that and I was rushed to the emergency vehicle, but Bree never left my side. For the months that I was in that bed, unconscious, she was there, never giving up hope, and praying that I would awaken just so then she could apologise.

  That was the last thing that I ever saw, my sisters face streaming with tears and she wrapped her arms around me, holding on to the last ounce of faith that she had. People would say that going through was I had to would be hell, but I think that she got the worst of it. She had to live thinking that she caused my injuries, and that me being motionless in the hospital was her doing. Many would crumble and fall, but my sister survived, just to see me one last time.  I don’t know what happened to her after that day, but at least she knew that it wasn’t her fault.  

  There are some things that we take for granted, like seeing a sunrise or hearing the birds’ song, but it’s those little moments that we need in our existence, without them, we are nothing. Hold on to those little things, because in the end, they’re what you’ll remember. So as I wait for my lights to go out, I remember all of the things that I’d lost that day. The smell of the lilacs that sit in their black vase, bringing hope to that room, the taste of the ripe apple, as its sweetness overwhelmed my taste-buds, and seeing my sister as she stood there, waiting for me to remember her, and to say that it wasn’t her fault, and that she’s forgiven. Hold on to the little things in life, because you never know what you have, until it’s gone. My breathing stopped, and the world plunged into darkness.

Reviews

[bronayn]

Aly I like this piece a lot. Morbid and abstract, the pain of losing someone. I just joined this sight and I am glad to get to see your work. Keep writing everday!!