Wednesday Part 1

I promised myself that I'd tell my mom today. I made that promise during first hour when I saw Troy. I couldn't stand missing any bit of him to be in the hospital. I don't want to die or get hurt either. So, now that I'm home from school why cant I bring myself to tell her. Well, to start, I don't want to hurt her feelings. Secondly, I don't really want to kill Aya off. And to top it all off, my mother scheduled the surgery for next Wednesday at 3 PM. I guess the sooner I tell her the better. I don't want to see what happens if I wait until the last minute. Here I go. Wish me luck. I'll need it!

Later.

I told her. It went...umm...well...here.

"Mom?" I called when I finally gathered my courage to go and talk to her about the surgery.

"I'm up here!" She yelled back to me. I followed where I thought I'd heard her voice. Sure enough, she was standing in the laundry room ironing clothes. "Hey, hon. What's up?"

"Uhh, Mom? I need to talk to you about something." I began.

"Sure babe. Anything." She set the iron down on the board and put her hands on her hips.

"It's about the kidney surgery." I looked away from her; out the window. "I can't do it."

"What do you mean you can't do it?" she hollered at me. "What about your sister? Don't you know that Aya will DIE with out that kidney of yours?"

"Yes Mom. I know that. I just can't. I can't do the surgery." I could feel the lump rising in my throat. I tried to swallow it down.

"Gabriella Rose! You are being very selfish," she said her voice rising, "Give me one good reason as to why you cannot do this surgery!" I hid my face and turned towards the washing machine opposite the ironing board.

"Mom, you don't get it do you. Aya's suffering and wether or not she gets the kidney, she'll die anyway. You can prolong her life, her hurt and pain, but you will never cure her. She'll eventually die, even if you successfully transplant each organ in her body. That's the truth." The tears stung in my eyes.

"YOU CANNOT SAY THAT! How do you know that some scientist isn't going to find a cure for APL tomorrow or even the next day? Huh, Gabriella?" She thundered.

"Because," I gulped, "even if that does happen, it will be to late for Aya."

"Is that what you want? Do you want her gone?"

"No Mom. You don't understand! I love Aya. She's my twin. My other self. It hurts me to lose her just as much as it hurts you. I'm just the one being real here. I know what's going to happen SOON and I'm just trying to prepare myself. I'm sorry that you don't see it the way I do." At that moment, she turned grabbed the hot iron and pressed it against my arm. I felt my skin crawl. It burned so bad that after a few seconds I couldn't feel the pain anymore. I tried to pull my arm away but my mom is strong. I started to scream. My tears flew freely now. All of the sudden my mom removed the iron to reveal a patch of blistered, bloody, bright red skin, if you could even call it skin. My mom just stared at what she had done. I had stopped crying and just stared at it too.

"I'm so sorry Gabriella. I can't believe I just did that. I will never ever hurt you again. I don't know what got into me." She reached for my hand. I just turned and ran as fast as I could up to my room and locked the door. I went to the bathroom to try to bandage some of my burns. Good thing I took that first aid class. I could still hear my mom at my door, crying and saying sorry all over again. I just wanted her to go away. I can't deal with this. Aya and Mom. My life is harder than I had planned.

It looks like I have either a second or third degree burn. It's hard to tell. I need to get to the hospital. It says to immediately see a doctor in this medical book I have. I'll have to sneak out.

I took the "Troy-way" out from my door and quickly ran to the hospital which was about a mile away without my mother knowing. I stood at the reception desk. It was Anna. I knew her. She had sat with me and Aya before one of her dialysis treatments. Anna was really nice. "Anna?" I questioned. Her head shot up. It took her a moment but she finally recognized me.

"Oh, Hello Gabriella. Here to see Aya again I suppose. I'll have to warn you, visiting hours are over, but I think I can pull some strings." Anna smiled getting up from her chair.

"Oh no. I'm not here to see Aya. Actually I'm here to be treated." I smiled back at her. I reached up to tuck my hair behind my ear, but I quicky drew my hand back and winced in anguish. A shooting pain shot through my arm. Tears pricked my eyes.

"What happened, Dear?"

"Uhh, I had an accident, ummm, cooking. Cooking, uhh...pasta. Pasta, yeah pasta." I said as the thought came to mind. I pulled up my sleeve to let her see my burn.

"Oh my! That doesn't look like a cooking accident." Anna fished.

"It was pretty crazy." I tried to force a smile through the burning agony.

"Does your mom know that you're here?" Anna asked me suspiciously.

"Yeah, she drove me here." I said maybe a little to quickly.

"But she didn't come in?"

"Nope! She had some stuff she had to take care of." I lied. I tried to smile, but again it looked fake.

"Oh, I see. I'll page you a doctor." Anna grinned at me. She turned away and did her thing. I just stood there staring blankly around waiting for some doctor to come and cool my burning arm.

A few minutes later I was lying on a gurney with some guy sticking me with a needle. Apparently, I needed an IV for treatment. Since I was such a regular here with Aya and all, they already had my records. They decided that it was OK for me to go through with the restorative procedures without my mom being here. They stuck me twice before they could finally get a good vein. They drew three vials of blood and shot a whole bag full intravenous solution into my "unburnt" arm. A nurse came with some scary news.

"We're going to inject a numbing solution into your burn, so we can throughly clean the wound. We need to get all of the blisters and obstructions out of the way." I could not believe it. I mean I've been given general anesthesia before: Aya's bone marrow transplant. But I haven't been injected with a numbing solution. Will it hurt? Will it feel weird?

I guess I was wondering out loud, because the nurse said back to me, "Well, Gabriella, the actual injection is very painful, but almost instantly your burn will become numb. And as for the weirdness, I don't really know. I have never had a numbing shot before."

"Oh." I said, turning to look at the burn.

"That's a pretty nasty burn," the nurse said, "How'd you get it?" I decided to stick with the same story I told Anna. All my doctors and nurses will have read the charts, so they should have already known this.

"I burned myself cooking dinner." I told her. She walked over still talking to me and sat down by the burn.

"What were you making?" The nurse made conversation. She took my arm and pulled out a needle with a pink solution in the syringe.

"Pasta. I was going to make lasagna. My mom's favorite."

"Hmm," she said, "OK. One...Two...Three!"

"AHH!" I screamed when she stuck the needle into my raw skin. She was right though, almost immediately I couldn't feel any more hurt.

"That's better, right?" the nurse soothed.

"Yeah." I smiled a real smile this time.

"The doctor will be right in." she turned and left my room. Well, I wouldn't exactly call it a room. It was basically a cubical made with curtains. I could hear the moans from the half-dead old man in the next 'room' to me. About thirty seconds later, a young man came in. He looked about my age. He better be a real doctor.

"Hi Gabriella. I'm Dr. Sanders. I'm a burn specialist, and I'll be treating your's tonight." Dr. Sanders winked at me.

"Nice too meet you." I gave him a fake grin. It was only fake because I was busy worrying about the tools he had in his hand: a medical brush and a razor blade. He came over and sat right where the nurse had just been.

"OK. This wont hurt one bit." Even though he had said that I was still nervous.

"Uhh, OK." I murmured. Dr. Sanders began to scrape my burn with the razor blade. Blood gushed from all the blisters he was genuflecting, but I couldn't feel a thing. I turned away. The blood was all too much. I silently prayed as the burn specialist went on treating my injury.

About ten minutes later, the doctor finally got up and smiled at his work. There was blood all down my arm, but the actual burn itself looked a lot better. It no longer had those hideous blisters. It looked cleanlier.

"You wanted to be an outpatient. Right?" Dr. Sanders asked me. I just nodded at him. The more I look at him the cuter he gets, not as cute as Troy of course.

"OK then. I'll get a nurse in here to tell you how to clean and change the bandages for your burn." He turned and walked out of my so called 'room' and into the hallway to find the nurse.

A few minutes, a nurse with beautiful long blonde hair, whom I've never seen before came in.

"Hello, Gabriella. My name is Kim, and I'll be teaching you some basic burn care." She flashed a smile full of perfectly straight teeth at me.

"OK" She came and sat were Dr. Sanders did to scrape my burn.

"Alright." she began as she pulled out some cream from her bag, along with a bottle of something. "Here," she said holding up the bottle, "is rubbing alcohol. It stings a lot when you put it on, but since you still have that numbing medication in your burn it wont hurt. All you do is squirt some on and rub it in with a hand towel. Like this. See? You don't need that much. Got it?"

"Yeah, I got it." I told her as she gently blotted the over flowing alcohol.

"OK, then," she picked up the cream, "you put this stuff on. It's a cooling gel that also prevents infection and heals the burn. It will help the sting from the alcohol and heal the wound quicker. You just put about this much on and rub it around. Be sure to cover the whole burn. Don't miss any." She showed me how to do that too.

"After all that, you need to bandage it. First you take this gauze," she held up the white scratchy stuff, "and wrap it around your arm about three times. Then, you take some medical tape and wrap it around the gauze to make sure it doesn't fall or slip off. Then your all done. Change your bandaging three times a day and after any showers or contact with water. Put the rubbing alcohol and cream on only twice a day. In the morning when you get up, and before you go to bed. It's that simple." Kim winked at me.

"Sounds easy enough." I said.

"Yup. Do you have any questions?"

"Nope. I think I got it. Wait, when do I get to get out of here?" Kim laughed at me.

"Hopefully sooner than I do. I don't get off my shift until midnight, then my girlfriend Sammi is gonna pick me up. We're going to her mom's house for the rest of the week." Eww. Lesbian. Gross.

"Sounds cool." I forced a smile.

"I'll go get Dr. Sanders and see when you can go home." She turned and left me alone to hear the moans of the scary guy next to me.

Wednesday Chapter TO BE CONTINUED!

A/N: First, thank you so much for all of you who reviewed. All of you gave me great suggestions and I really appreciate it! Secondly, I'm not anti-gay or anything. I actually have no problem with it. It's just Gabi's a little freaked out by that. :). Just an idea that came to me off the top of my head. I was just like why don't I make this girl lesbian. lol. One of those weird things. Wednesday pt. 2 should be up sometime this week. That is if enough people review! Have a nice day!

Ciao.

Jess