Frank

I woke up to light. My hands hurt, my head was sore and I basically felt like shit, but I was awake which was something. I felt like I had died several times over. The first thing I thought of was Sapphire. Was she worrying about me? Everything confused me, the lights disorientated me and I lay there blinking for God knows how long. Lights changed, the light was turning from orange to purple. Huh? Did Sapphire know they changed the colour of lights in hospitals?

"Good, you're awake. Are you hungry?" asked a voice. I sat up with difficulty, finding myself in a crisp hospital bed and in a shitty hospital robe. A nurse stood by my bed, smiling. I managed a smile. The drugs were wearing off with speed now.

"Starving, where am I?" I croaked.

"Do you remember coming in?" she asked, confused. I shook my head. All I remembered was looking at that nodding dog and then a bunch of questions. Where they before or after the dog? Why did I like that dog so much?

"You're in Bleaker hospital, you came in because you were badly hurt. We operated to get the glass out of your head and stitched up your hands. You can go home tomorrow morning, you're too weak to go home tonight," she told me like I was dumb. I didn't care, it meant I didn't have to think. It was evening then. The lights were from outside, the sun setting. Not lights changing colours. They must have operated that morning and now I had come round. Bleaker…so I was still in the same town as the Depression.

I remembered I had told someone I didn't have a home, or parents. I didn't want to be caught out now. I needed a phone though. I had to tell someone who knew me enough to know my last name I was alive and ok.

But when I turned back to talk to the nurse, she was gone and I was alone in the recovery ward. Someone came to wheel me through the hospital to a ward with three other patients. Dinner was waiting. I was still numb, and I couldn't stop staring at the drip in my arm. It creeped me out, but fascinated me at the same time. Was that my arm? Was that water dripping into it? Wow, was that a doughnut??

Food was amazing after my whole day. I hadn't eaten since I helped Sapphire dye her hair and pigged out on popcorn. I was starving and the nurse who helped me eat found it hilarious the way I eagerly ate off the fork she offered me. My hands were too heavily bandaged to be of much use, but I managed to go to the bathroom but myself. My feet were sore and stiff but I could walk well enough. I'd be throwing myself around in moshpits in no time I told myself. The scar on the side of my head given to me by Kleaver was hidden by the bandage to hide the new one. I wondered what the new one would look like. Back in my bed, the nurse had brought me a second dinner with two doughnuts instead of one because she knew how hungry I was. I wondered if my hunger convinced her I was living on the streets, but I didn't care. She talked to me as I ate, trying to find out more.

"You're Frank Doe, you know. What's your last name?" she asked me, offering me a fork of spaghetti Os.

"Don't have one,"

"Never?"

"Maybe once. Now it's Doe apparently," I liked pretending to be a street kid, making her believe I was a hard luck case. It made me feel special, like I could influence someone even wrapped in bandages and forced to eat off someone else's fork..

"How did you get the scar on the side of your head? The other one?"

"Got in a fight,"

"With the same person you gave you these?"

"No, I fell asleep on a bottle," I said truthfully. It sounded dumb, but it was true.

"Were you drunk?"

"No," I answered once again, remembering I had answered these before.

"Were you on drugs?"

"No,"

"Have you ever been on drugs?"

"Only the ones you gave me,"

"Have you hurt yourself before?"

"No,"

"Was this intentional?"

"No,"

Her questions started to bug me, I felt like I was being interrogated. I frowned as I ate.

"Am I upsetting you?"

"Why do I get the feeling you won't believe me even if I tell you the truth?"

"I don't know Frank, are you telling me the truth?"

"Yes,"

"Then I believe you. What do you remember of last night?"

I sighed, and decided I might as well tell her. Maybe I'd feel better if I talked about it.

"I was at a club with some friends. I was with my best friend, a girl I'm in love with. She got pulled onstage and started kissing the singer. I got upset and confused and ran out and I fell asleep in the middle of a graveyard or something. I woke up and found all this glass around me and I got even more confused and then someone brought me here," I told her. She smiled at me and reached over and wiped away a tear I never even knew I shed.

"What's her name?"

I smiled softly. "Sparkle,"

"You love her?"

"Ever since I knew I could love a girl,"

"When was that?"

"When I was about 9,"

She laughed.

"Would you like another doughnut?"

"Oh hell yeah,"

She left me alone later that evening and I watched TV. I watched some shitty Simpson's episode, then a documentary on a new way we're all going to die and then I found the Powerpuff Girls. Wow. I loved those girls. The little girl in the bed next to me came over and watched it with me. She reminded me of Sapphire when she was smaller, she had gentle black hair curling around her shoulders and a sweet smile. Her skin was dark though and she didn't say anything, only watched more cartoons with me. Her shoulders were bandaged and she had to drag her drip around with her.

"What happened to you?" I asked her. She didn't look at me, her huge brown eyes fixed on the screen.

"I got hit by a car," she said sweetly, her voice small.

"It broke your shoulders?"

"No, they got cut up," she said softly.

"By a car?" it sounded unlikely that a car could cut up a girl's shoulders. She nodded fiercely.

"Yes. It was a car. It's always a car," she said firmly, still staring at the screen. Her words scared me and when she looked up at me I saw fear in her eyes.

"He says it's always a car," she told me, her huge chocolate eyes shining. I felt a terrible sinking inside. Looks like I wasn't the only person lying that evening.

The next morning I sat in my wheelchair in a private examining room. The doctor in front of me was mumbling more and more nonsense to me, talk of procedures and fancy names. It didn't mean anything to me. My name was full of dreams I had suffered. Sapphire running towards me, throwing her arms out as if she would wrap herself around me and never let go. She ran with a smile, her eyes fixed on mine. But why wouldn't she reach me? She ran and ran but she never touched me. I called her name, reached out my hands and then she was gone. I screamed her name and she was still gone, hidden from me. Then I would turn and she would be running towards me again. I was exhausted. With dreams like that, I hadn't been able to rest my body properly and I felt like total shit. My legs and feet had returned to their normal colour, my bones and muscles reset themselves. I could walk without limping, which felt fantastic. But my hands were still bandaged and my head still throbbed. My doctor turned to me and finally the shit he was coming out with seemed to make sense.

"You will be fine,"

"Oh good. When can I take the bandages off?" I asked him, flexing my fingers inside the itchy bandages and finding them sore.

"The bandages can come off before you leave, but leave the stitches to fall out on their own. You won't be able to use your hands fully for a few weeks," he told me, looking into a folder with only the name Frank on the front. The fact they still believed me to be an orphan living on the streets amused me, but I had began to feel guilty. I had sent away the woman who came to talk to me about government policies and opportunities at universities and all that shit. I didn't need it and I didn't want it. I had a future, I just had to figure it out first.

"When can I go?"

"After the blood test results come back, which should be just before lunchtime," he said without a hint of a smile. Was it just me or did I think doctors should always be smiley and pleasant?

"Blood test?"

"Just a test for any waifs who come drifting in. We screen for drugs, illnesses, anything unusual," he told me, looking at me accusingly as if he expected me to suddenly blurt out that I was, in fact, an AIDs sufferer or on heroin or something. I didn't say or do anything. What would I say? I'd told them a million times I didn't take drugs, but they continue to not believe them.

Well, fuck you.

I waited all morning for my test results, wanting to get out of there. Not only would my parents be going mental that I had been gone for two nights without getting in touch, but my friends must have been going mental. Sapphire would be distraught…wouldn't she? Damn, depressing thoughts again.

"Can I use the phone?" I asked the nurse who had been nice enough to get me extra doughnuts. She left me to call someone, but I couldn't decide. Not my parents, not Sapphire. Gerard.

"Hello?" He sounded like shit.

"Gee?" I asked.

"Holy fuck! Frank! Where the fuck have you been? We've been going fucking insane! What the fuck?" he started yelling down the phone and I had to hold it away from my ear.

"Dude, shut up,"

"Where the fuck are you? I'll yell at you as soon as I pick your sorry arse up," he grumbled, leaving his grievances to himself for now. I turned away from the nurse.

"I'm at Bleaker hospital, I need you to pick me up,"

"Hospital!?"

"Dude, shut up. Just get here for lunchtime and wear something old. Don't tell Sapphire or my parents yet ok?"

"I told your parents you were crashing with me last night, I didn't want the police ringing up,"

"Good thinking," I said, leaving a question about Sapphire unsaid. He answered it anyway.

"She's going insane. Seriously. I've never seen her so fucked her before,"

"She's not the only one," I said miserably, looking at my hands.