The room was a pure white silk as her eyes fluttered opened; they felt heavy and sore as if they were beyond swollen. Every once in the while the high pitched beep she recognized from the past three hours filled her ears. She couldn't recall the name of the device but as her heart beat, rose and fell; the screen mimicked precisely and accurate. Her head wasn't clear and the name kept slipping from her grasp, all she could think of to name it was the "Heart-Beat Tracker".
Smells remained foreign to her since she didn't receive any. And her eyes hurt from the virgin white of the ceiling her gaze possessed. Silently they sat there, as if guarding a precious item.
Where am I? She thought quizzically. The glare of the light directly above her head burned her eyes, the fight to not lose to the temptation to cry out her hardest challenge. The frail limbs connected to her body felt frozen and numb, although the full of cotton pillows and sheets brought comfort to her panicking mind.
The girl began to let her eyes fall to darkness just before icy, chilling fingers held them open firmly. The contact of a doctor's cool latex gloves startled her as he caressed her eye lids. Every time pressure was added, a searing pain ran all the way from her head to the farthest point of her spine. Vision blurry, and flashes of the blinding light hitting her eyes; a humungous wave of relief engulfed her as the doctor grumbled something to his nurse or assistant, and scribbled messy notes on the clipboard before mumbling and placing it on a desk.
The door's screeching creek sounded as two pairs of eyes gazed at the doctor walking out the door. It swung wide enough to gift both occupants of the room a view of the waiting area, jam-pack with anxious and dead to the bone worried family, friends, and acquaintances. Footstep disrupted the whispery sounds within the room and slowly the door closed.
The deep pain in her arm was the cause of a tube lodge inches beneath her shoulders, inside the dark scarlet liquid pooled, it made her very queasy while a body trembling shiver ran up the length of her body.
Blood always made the girl feel sick, whatever cause blood to be drawn had to be bad. The first time she saw blood gave her goose bumps as the paramedics carried two large plastic masses into the white van, the red cross a taunting symbol. The Saturday three weeks after the incident two pictures sat in front of the rows of pews and beneath the pulpit. She sat there as neighbors and her own parents, or she thought they were her parents shed tears over the faces of the people she hadn't seen for weeks.
Suddenly a small pinch interrupted her thoughts as the needle the nurse held injected clear fluid inside her arm. The walls and decorations merged and the white colors blinded her vision. The last thing she saw was the deformed plant beside the window sill. The cool sheets and pillows comforted her as darkness overpowered….
Inside a trashy little kitchen were two women disputing with each other. There were around the same height and look almost nothing alike. It would be hard to believe that they were mother and daughter. Cooking on the stove the mash potatoes burned in the pot.
"Why can't you just get over her, she's dead!" A lady with silky brown hair raged with anger at her nineteen year old daughter. "We haven't seen her for years and yet you still have faith," the mother screeched. "That day we lost her, what's left is nothing to me. Once the papers come that announce that she's dead we'll move far away from these California sands to the hills of West Virginia!"
Before Midori sat her daughter Ami with a defiant face, her mouth frowned deeply. She was slightly taller than her mother and had a punk attitude for style. She had charcoal, shoulder length hair laced with a pony tail behind her head. Growls escaped her lips, the strong barrier crumbling at a fast rate.
"She's my twin mom, why can't you get that?" Whispered the daughter. Her mother Midori always reminded her of the absence of laughter that rung through the house. Once her sister left, so did the light and happy demeanor of the household.
"How did you get this way," Ami's voice was so light you could barely hear her. "Is Sejii telling you this? Is he the one convincing you to abandon your own daughter!"
She hated her mom's new husband. Not even three months ago she divorced her father. She divorced her father four years after Amu was hospitalized and lost faith in her after the doctors came to the conclusion that she underwent a coma. Slowly the world passed as she visited her sister every day until her mother forbids her to any longer.
Sejii came into the picture two weeks after the divorce and ever since he has been with them. He was controlling, demanding, and was very bossy. His expectations were the highest of anyone she ever met. She couldn't do anything while he was there! All of her high school parties, sports, sleepovers; he didn't allow her to do anything but her mother was alright with it.
"How could you think that Sejii would think of something like that?" She knew her mother just spoke a lie; all she could ever tell were lies.
She knew her mother wasn't to be trusted, she'd rather trust the mafia then her own mother. Now that she's a legal adult she won't have to always listen to her. Through family tradition though, she'll have to remain under the household of her guardians until she is married. Sejii already had recommendations of who her husband should be.
"You just follow every little thing he wants and desires, you'd be stupid enough to agree to let him be with another woman just to satisfy him." The daughter screamed. "As soon as you saw him you thought oh goodie, meat on a silver platter. It's sickening how close you stand next to him, afraid that he'll leave," the punk daughter bellowed, "Sometimes I wish I could have been there with Amu that day and I could be with her right now as well. Home isn't the same and neither are you."
With a twirl of her feet her cheasnut hair whipped around as she sped past her mother. The stairs became her escape route as she ran up them and padded to her cherry oak bedroom door. Inside sat her black and pink bed with the Kiss band as her comforter. Pink pillows lay at the header of the mattress.
"You're such a brat," her Midori, her mother hollered, "Just grow up for once because not everything happens the same way they do in your perfect magic world!" The smoke alarm screamed as the kitchen fogged with grey. "Dammit, the potatoes!" Midori began to tend to dinner once again, and Ami knew she was satisfied that she somewhat disturbed her daughter. Midori believed things were changing. And once Amu was gone nothing would stop her from living her fairytale.
She couldn't be any more wrong. For some reason she didn't have to see her even go back to the stove. Midori always did that; not wanting to get too deep into a fight without backup, thought Ami.
She let herself sigh as she snuggled into her covers. Maybe tonight she'd act sick again so she won't have to face Sejii. Knowing her mom, she'd probably make them all eat in her room like they did last time. They scolded her and laughed then they bickered her one by one.
Ami would never give up hope on Amu. She'd wait until the end of the Earth. Amu you can count on me. She thought boldly. I'll never betray you, you're basically the only unchanged thing I have left…
The surroundings felt cold and enclosed and her body remained numb. Around her the beeps and shuffling of a machine voiced loudly filling her current thoughts, leaving her to panic, hoping she could fall back asleep. When sleep never came, her eye lids lifted slightly, enough to know her whereabouts.
Crystal white and blue basked light on her. Restraints kept her from jumping up and leaving. Above the machine shuffled and screamed before it all stopped, a loud unfamiliar sound filled her ears before the source of the light died. The tray she laid on slowly slipped out from the dark cavern and into the pure light of the outside.
She was panicking but she slowly took ten breaths to calm herself, again, and again until she felt her heart beat return to normal. Inside that closed up space she felt claustrophobic. She could hardly breathe without fearing the walls would fall down. She never wanted to experience that again but fate doesn't ever make promises.
Beeps and calls came from every direction leaving her hopeless to find the source. It wasn't until she was slid of the metal tray did she take notice to who accompanied her in the room. Another doctor stood before her in the long white coat with a foreign object around his neck. He was fat, short, and chubby, not much taller than her but his large dark dress shoes carried him a whole three inches taller. Underneath the coat his dress shirt screamed as his chest stretch the buttons, obviously he needed to pop up a size.
"Hello miss," His voice was calm and soothing, "we just ran a cat scan and you'll shortly be lead to your room." The doctor gently carried the girl to the moveable stretcher, before attacking a sack of water to a tube that ran through the top of her arm.
Behind me a nurse, surprisingly male, came and rolled her from the MRI room; she remembered this room when a girl fell at the ice skating rink and crashed into the wall. When her parents slid her from the wall, her hair was covered with blood and drool pooled from her mouth. Slowly the saliva vanished and scarlet red replaced. Her lips were tinted red, like roses, a pretty flower no one could forget.
The white van came with its screeching call that always meant something very bad had taken place. The red cross once again mocked me, angered me, she thought. But that time her parents came and dragged the little girl in the van. I remember the ride was silent expect for the wails that came from my mother and father, she thought.
The wheels of the stretcher hummed lightly as the stretcher carried me through the many white corridors the building supported. While passing one room an old lady was dragged by nurses in blue scrubs as her tears streamed down her cheeks. "He's still here, you can't tell me he's gone!" She cried. "That's my son, he's not dead; bring me back to my son, he needs his mother!"
Her voice was rushed as the nurses began to attempt to soothe her. Around her everyone in the hallways paused their movement, then resumed to their activities. The corridor was crowded but not enough to block my view of the room. Inside doctors whispered with each other, their heads dropped as if they lost an important game. One tall doctor blocked my vision from the bed before he strolled out of the room. On the bed the blond hair of a boy lay messy on the white pillows. His skin looked oddly pale and his lips were a chilling blue. But his eyes, oh his eyes were the worst part about him. They remained open. Their green store lifeless at the ceiling as they held begging.
She started to panic. His lifeless eyes caused her to fear her about remaining time in this hospital. Actually she didn't know if this was a hospital. All she wanted was out.
Her lungs burned as she forced herself to scream, they felt hot and made her throat feel scratchy. It felt weird to finally use her voice after the long period she went without it. The nurse hurriedly rolled into an elevator where he grabbed a needle and stabbed it into her neck. And once again her world became a horrifying blackness.