Chapter 9: Understanding
All tries of Marianne to get me to calm down failed. I sat in front of the door that lead to the hospital room, my face buried in my hands and my legs shaking. I was so nervous that I ignored everything my friend told me. After almost an hour the door opened. Immediately I jumped to my feet and pulled Marianne with me into the room. The smell of the corridors of a hospital stung my nose but I didn´t think about leaving again. At first I had to find out what had happened to Nataly.
I found her sitting up right in her bed. She was deadly pale and her usual tidy hair was messy. As she noticed me a smile appeared on her lips. I tried my very best to return the expression but I was unable to. I gave myself the fault for everything that had happened.
Sitting down on the edge of her bed I asked her: "How do you feel?" This was a stupid question. Nataly looked so weak that she could faint every moment again. But she just shrugged. With her hands she gestured over to an antidote that stood on a small table beside her bed. Then she pointed at her throat and shook her head. I didn´t understand a thing of what she said. It made me even more nervous than I already was. Why didn´t she speak to me? What was going on there?
Suddenly a hand landed on my shoulder. I jumped off of the bed in surprise. Turning around I found Mr. Vankovic looking at me. "I didn´t mean to scare you", he assured me but that didn´t matter. With soft force he pushed me behind a curtain, out of the space Nataly could hear us talking from. "What happened?", I demanded to know. From the look on his face I could tell that it was something serious.
"All the blood in her body seems to have disappeared. There was no wound, not even a scratch or mark to be found to proof the reason", he said.
I swallowed hard. It reminded me so much of Dracula´s victims but if there wasn´t even a mark it couldn´t be him. I confess that my thoughts were selfish because I only thought about my advantage to meet him someday while Nataly was ill.
Mr. Vankovic continued: "Something with her throat has happened. As we brought her here she could hardly breathe. Then her voice was gone. I don´t know where or how this could have happened so I can only speculate. Regaining her strength may take her a few days, then she´ll be well again but it looks like her voice will never return. The doctor told her that it´ll be gone for a while from the medicine we gave her-"
"Why did you lie to her? Why are you doing this?", I shouted at him.
During his speech my patience had gotten very thin. I was so angry at him, at myself. Just at everyone! I turned away from him and thought about his words. It made me so mad that they gave Nataly any medicine to calm down and then lied to her. So that was what she had meant. And it was probably also the reason for her being so calm while talking to me. She didn´t even know how bad the situation was that she was in.
"Rachel, listen,...We just mean the best for her. I know that lying is wrong but there´s no other choice. She has suffered enough already."
Shaking my head I wanted to walk out already when I heard Mr. Vankovic start talking again: "There are more things I need to discuss with you. Starting with your behaviour and then also about your family problems."
My eyes narrowed at that. What did he mean with that? Okay, that he noticed my own way of behaviour was not to avoid but there were no problems between me and my parents. To me my family seemed like one of an old but wonderful tale. My mother was such a sweet person and always there for me. My father spent most of his time working but when he was home on holidays it was always fun. At least I had to thank him that I was able to visit this expensive boarding school. I was never a kind of shower but I had to mention sooner or later that I wasn´t poor. Then a special thought caught my mind: What if something really serious had happened? Maybe someone was sick or even worse!
I still remembered their warm hug before I had to attend school again and all the pictures I had from them as reminders in my room. "I´m sorry. I shouldn´t have talked about the topic so abruptly. I know it was hard for you to grow up without a father."