I shouldn't be here.
That's all I can think as I walk down the sidewalk that will inevitably lead to Josh's house. I went through my door. I know I did. I opened that door and looked back, and the last thing I saw before Heaven was Josh. I hadn't wanted to die, of course – I mean, who wants to die? Things were finally starting to get better for me and Josh. I had hope again – hope that he and I would finally work through the things that had torn us apart. I had wanted to trust him again, I really had.
Then he became a monster before my eyes. Or started to, anyways. My first thought was to turn and run, I mean, my sweet, funny Josh was changing into something very unhuman right before me. And as I turned to run, something in his eyes made me hesitate for just a moment, and I turned back to look at him again – that's when the car hit me.
After that, after I took my door - everything got very dark and very foggy – just flashes of light and sound. I could feel them working on me to save my life. I knew people were there, and I knew how bad off I was. And then there was nothing for a long time. No pain, no voices, no flashes. Just darkness. I don't know how long that lasted, but then there were flashes again, just words drifting in and out of my brain. I knew Josh was there, I could feel his hand clutching mine, I could hear the worry in his voice as he talked to my doctors. If there is one thing Josh Levinson is good at, it's worrying. He's been like that his whole life, according to his parents. In school, he would worry about his grades, impressing me and his parents, whether he'd get into MIT – anything that could be worried about was on his mental list. That cute little furrow in his forehead he gets when he is in worry mode is going to be permanently etched into his skin, I think.
When I woke up this morning, perfectly alive and in the same hospital I work at, my first thought was of Josh and how happy he would be. There are some perks to being a doctor and having a vast knowledge of anything medical, and it had only taken a moment's careful thought to realize that I was intubated – at some point I had apparently needed a machine to help me breathe. It didn't take long for me to carefully pull the tube out of my body, even though alarms were ringing to alert the nurses. I almost want to laugh recalling the looks on their faces – clearly none of them thought I was going to survive.
The hardest part was letting the doctors and nurses poke and prod at me for the next two hours. Of course, they weren't exactly thrilled that I extubated myself, but honestly, how could I tolerate having that thing jammed down my throat when I was awake and breathing on my own?