Twilight: Frigid

I was going to die.

I knew it was so, for my life was flashing before my eyes as they wheeled me off the ambulance. I was alert, but unconsciousness kept creeping up behind me, tugging at the back of my mind; I refused to give in.

We were at the hospital now, zooming down the long white corridor, and the lights passed over head, blinding me, then not; its repetitiousness was enough to make me close my eyes, but that sent a flurry of words into my ears, and being the good listener I always was I tried to process them, which made my lightheadedness even worse, so I fluttered them open again, seemingly using the last of my strength that I could muster forth.

"You're doing great, honey, just keep it up, we're almost to the emergency room," one of the nurses said sweetly, her blonde hair bouncing up and down as she jogged alongside the stretcher, her teal scrubs crinkling as she moved. Her voice was the only one I heard between the six of them crowded around my stretcher, all mumbling encouragements. I didn't know why I only heard hers, perhaps it was because she reminded me of my mother so much, who I could almost see screaming behind the stretcher, a knotted Kleenex held to her face.

"She's bleeding out of control, is she going to make it?" I heard a man say, and I feared a look down at my torso. It was the same as when I left the house; a large, open gash that went from right below my rib cage all the way down to my hip, bleeding profusely. I know, it's gross, but trust me, never let your little brother play with a knife. You need all the blood you can get, especially when you're eight.

Everything felt numb at this point; I suppose the blood loss had done all of that, its sweet, sticky smell still oozing out from my wound. I tried to turn my head the other way to look at something other than the kind nurse, for she reminded me too much of my mother, and then that set my thoughts off. What if I never saw my mother again? I didn't want to die, I had my whole life in front of me. I wanted to be an airplane driver…a pilot, I think mommy called it. I wanted to soar above the skies, and fly with the birds, since my daddy said I couldn't be a bird when I grow up, which would have been my first choice. I wanted to live to be a hundred and three, and have five kids and ten grandkids and six great grandkids and maybe even some great great grandkids, 'cause I wanted to be known as a great great grandma, because normally grandmas are either just plain old grandmas or great grandmas, and I wanted to be the greatest grandma there could ever be.

I didn't want to start crying, because then I would be leaking everywhere, and I wouldn't have enough energy to even last through the surgery. Besides, I cried too much anyways. I cried when Tommy pulled my braid and stuck it in paint. I cried when Andy stepped on my finger and hit me and gave me a big bruise. I cried when Angela's doll fell in the mud because I accidentally dropped it there (it was the prettiest doll, with lots of lace and ribbons and a green dress, my favorite kind). I cried when my little brother tried to play surgery on me, only he had a real knife instead of his little plastic one that he always used. So this time I wouldn't cry because I was going into actual surgery where they would make me all better. So there was no reason to cry, I hoped.

I tried to turn my head to the other side to keep all that pain away, and my neck wouldn't move. My muscles wouldn't work! When they did, it sent spasms of pain up my spine, and my stomach hurt very bad.

"Oh, sweetie, I know it hurts, but you have to keep still," the nurse said, reaching out to stroke my head. I stared at her blankly – I didn't have enough energy to pull my face into a smile, or a frown. I could tell that the nurse got a little scared at one point, for she looked so like my mother that I had stopped blinking, and she thought I was dead; I was having trouble breathing, and I could feel my chest not moving very much. But I thought that I shouldn't make this nice lady so scared, so I blinked and refocused my gaze.

My heart was beating very fast now; I could feel it bumping and thumping in my chest, and another memory flashed behind my eyes. It was a good one, of course, the one where Ms. Burns, my teacher was teaching us about our hearts. She had us hold up our fists and flex and unflex them for a long time. She said it was to stimulate our heartbeats, and how our hands got tired after a few minutes, but our hearts kept going on, and if it stopped - like our hands did - to take a break, that that would be a very bad thing. And then Bobby punched Tommy in the stomach, and the memory ended. I wondered if my heart was getting tired right now, and if it would have to take a break soon.

Come on, Mr. Heart, I thought to myself, getting a somewhat determined look on my face. Just work a little longer until the doctor can make me better.

Two doors at the end of the hallway opened, and people moved so fast around me they were blurry, as they rushed to save my life.

A man with dark hair came up to me, wheeling in a big tank hooked up to a clear tube and mask. I assumed that it was the stuff that makes you sleepy. Annasneezia, I think my daddy called it. I still didn't get how it made you sleepy though. Maybe you sneezed yourself to sleep. "Here, sweetheart, I'm going to put this around your nose, and just breathe in as deep as you can, and close your eyes and fall asleep," he said gently, fitting the mask around my nose as carefully as he could. The straps caught at my hair, but the numbness took away the small and almost insignificant pain that was so much different from the pain that had come from my stomach. I braced myself for the sneezing, and even closed my eyes, just to make it easier because that's what you do when you sneeze.

I felt myself going to sleep as the numbness began to take over my mind too. At first I was scared that I was dying, but then I remembered what the man said, and he was a doctor, and doctors take care of people, so I quickly put that thought in the back of my mind. My breathing got somewhat more normal, and I quickly fell asleep to the murmur of the doctors…

. . .

But the voices wouldn't go away. It was a couple hours later; I could tell because I could squint my eyes open just a tiny bit, and there was a clock positioned just barely in line of my vision.

I could feel only the most noticeable movements, but the sensation wouldn't come, as in: I could feel when they were stitching me up after giving me large amounts of donated blood (which I'm assuming I slept through), but I wouldn't feel the pain of the needle coming through my skin. That was good because I knew I would be hurting a lot after this surgery. In my couple hours of rest, I had concluded on one thing; surgery always hurts, whether you're pretending or it's happening in real life.

Nobody had noticed that I was awake, although I hardly knew I was awake myself. It's what my mommy calls 'half-asleep', I think.

The nice doctor with blonde hair asked for something, and another doctor went around to get it. I liked the blonde doctor. He was always gentle with what he was doing with me, and he always told the others to be quiet, and to handle me carefully, like I was some sleeping doll that might wake up and start crying. Which is probably what I would do if I did wake up, but I couldn't wake up. Not fully.

But there was something nagging at me whenever the blonde doctor was working on me. Whenever he touched me, whether it was to hold my body in place, or merely holding the stitches tight, it would feel like buckets of ice were being poured on me; in my mind I shivered, and I wasn't sure if the annasneezia was letting my body do the same. Sometimes it got so cold that I wanted to scream, but I thought that I had better let the handsome doctor fix me up first so that I could scream later, when it really mattered because I knew it was going to hurt later.

"There, she's all done, and she's going to live," I heard him sigh with relief, and the tension in the room immediately diminished. The nice blonde doctor pulled off his gloves and I heard water running and I heard the soap bottle squirt as he washed his hands after his gruesome, seven-hour surgery (I took another quick peek at the clock again).

I felt the mask come off, and I closed my eyes as I began to feel refreshed; more refreshed than I had felt in what seemed like an eternity. I could even feel myself breathing more deeply. They wheeled me into a room that smelled like my mommy's cleaning supply closet, gently lifting me onto a crinkly and squishy bed, propping me up with pillows that I could have just buried myself into forever.

"We'd better get all these stuffed animals out from under her or she's going to get a backache," I heard a nurse say. "Let's hope we don't get any more in for her, or we'll have to swim through them to check the monitors."

I smiled a small smile; Ms. Burns and all my other classmates must have given them to me, because word traveled fast in our small town. Then I smelled my mother's perfume come into the room, a smell I missed so much. She took my hand and talked soothingly until I fell asleep again.

. . .

I woke up, this time all the way, and I finally had just enough strength to look around my colorful room. Stuffed animals were littered everywhere, piled on all the chairs, on top of the curtain, by the bed, in my arms, and I think there were even some stuffed under the bed. I looked at the tag from the one on my arm, and I saw that it was from Tommy, and in his barely legible scribbles I made out, Hope you feel better, I hope it wasn't from paint-poisoning, Love, Tommy.

It didn't make any sense to me, but I still thought it was nice.

Mommy was sleeping next to me in the chair, six stuffed animals squashed together in her lap. Her head was laid back against the back of the chair, and her mouth was slightly open. I looked up, but I saw no clock, and the shades were pulled, so I had no idea what time it was. A small beeping was sounding next to me, and I turned to my left to see how many machines I was hooked up to, making sure that I could still remember my numbers 'cause I might have lost some threads in my thinking cap, as Ms. Burns called it, in all that blood.

There were seven, but that wasn't what made the beeping on the heart-checker go faster. The nice blonde doctor was there, writing down some stuff on his notepad, gazing at the monitors for a little while, then scribbling down something important, I guessed. He obviously heard the spike in the heart-checker, and so he turned to look at me with a small glint of surprise in his eyes.

"You're awake," he smiled, his perfect white teeth flashing softly. He was even more handsome without his doctor's mask on, almost as handsome as my daddy, who of course was the handsomest guy in the world. "How do you feel?"

I stared at him blankly for a second, then found my words as best I could, giving him the best description I could give him. "Mmmm." I also tried to shrug my shoulders a little bit, but it must have looked like I was in pain, and just a little bit after I did that, the pain did start to crawl up my side.

"You don't have to move, sweetie, it looks like you're doing just fine." He knelt down next to me, his sweet breath making my nose tingle. "Do you have any questions about what went on?"

I decided that I shouldn't move, and tried to make my lips and tongue form words that my mind was trying to shove through them. "No," I croaked weakly, my voice barely above a whisper.

"All right then, I'd better be going and checking up on my other patients. You've been a very good little girl," he chuckled, though it wasn't a cruel chuckle. He turned to leave and walked a couple steps before my curiosity got the best of me.

"Mister Doctor, sir?" I asked in my sweetest voice, as best my voice would allow. I was beginning to feel lightheaded and sleepy, and wanted to make this quick.

He turned back to look at me, his eyebrows raised to show he was listening to me, although I am still amazed that he actually even heard me.

"Why…Why are your hands so cold?"

His eyebrows rose even further in surprise, and I just stared at him innocently. I sensed him trying to give out an answer that would make sense to an eight-year-old girl, but all that came out was, "You were awake during the surgery?"

"Just a little, not a lot," I replied, still curious about his answer.

"Oh, I'm sure they weren't that cold, now, were they?" He seemed like he was avoiding something. My daddy got like that when he was trying not to lie.

"They were like ice."

"Hmm," he said, his eyebrows furrowing together now. "I guess I forgot to wash my hands with warm water before your surgery. I'm sorry, and I hope I didn't freeze you too much." Now he smiled, an angelic smile, and I almost forgot about my curiosity as he left the room.

I recovered a few weeks later, of course, but I never saw that nice, handsome blonde-haired doctor again. Maybe I scared him off with my curious question, but I still want to know the truth about those chilly, perfect hands.