the (first) brush with death
The night was full of turmoil, bedspread growing hot under me as I tossed and turned while my mind tried to pick apart what had happened. Eventually, as the sun spilled over the horizon, I drifted into restless sleep.
The next time I wake up, there’s a throbbing pulse in my arm. The second I try to sit up, my body combusts in a ball of flames.
A deep ache begins in my bones, which is normal, especially after trainings.
Oh, man,” I groan as I drop back onto the bed.
"Oh Ven, I’m so sorry.” I startle, until I realise it’s my mom sitting beside me.
She is pale, and there are dark shadows under her eyes. There’s a surgical mask wrapped around the lower half of her face.
“Everything hurts.” I wince as I flop back onto bed.
“You’re having an infection. The wound from your ankle became infected overnight and you had a very high
fever by morning. Half an hour ago your degree was 102 degrees. How do you feel?” Mom looks concerned.
Her thin eyebrows are stitched tight together, locks of stray hair frame her face, and she’s wearing her crinkled police uniform. She is a lean, muscled woman who lost her youth at a younger age than most.
Mom also loves law-abiding citizens. They make her work “easier”, although too many of them also means she has no work. Irony, right?
"Ooh, my ankle hurts a lot.” Actually, it hurts like it had been cut to the bone, gnawed by a crocodile, burned by a bonfire, and crushed by a hydraulic press, but she doesn’t have to know that. I feel bad enough she hasn’t slept because of me.
Mom sighs as she tucks a lock of my hair behind my ear, which I love. She’s done that for me since I was able to talk. “They’ve given you medicine that makes you sleep so you can rest. I have a shift from evening to tomorrow morning. Call me to fetch you if you get discharged. Now, go to sleep.”
I do, and the next time I wake up, Mom isn’t beside me, but Liz is. Her homework lies abandoned in front of her as she watches Netflix on her sparkly phone. She is leaning on my bed, sitting on the floor.
“They have Wi-fi here?” I raise an eyebrow.
Liz jumps and turns. “You wake up from a deadly fever and that’s the first thing you say? You ask about the Wifi? Girl, you abandoned me at school, we had History today, you know. What was I supposed to do without you? Listen to Sowalski? The thing yesterday has spread all over school. There are conspiracy theories that there’s a hidden alien species at the reservoir now! And you, you stupid little piece of shit, just dumped all this crap on my life then suddenly up and flew away!”
I laugh through Liz’s rant. It’s only been a day, and I’ve already missed her ferocity.
“It is not funny,” Liz growls, her dark, short bangs flying as she huffs. I love it when she does that. We’ve been friends for about as long as I remember.
“So, did Sowalski call on you again?” Our History teacher calls on Liz almost every lesson. She often grumps about it (“one more time, I am going to bloody sue him!”), and this time is no exception.
Time flies with Liz, and soon she has to go home. “Dammit.” Liz checks her watch. “Mom’s going to freak if I stay any longer. Oh, the doctor said you can probably go home by midnight. Well, bye, Hav! Stay alive!”
She winks at me and goes out.
The silence without anyone is deafening. I try to work on one of my newer story ideas about a girl spy, but thinking makes my head pound.
Devoid of my greatest form of entertainment, the meds carry me off into a deep, twisted version of sleep.
*
[The woods are dark, with intermittent moonlight filtering through the canopy. I’m taking a walk through the forest, admiring the shadows of finger-like twigs, reaching out for the sky.
Rustle.
I turn, curious. What is this beautiful forest hiding?
Rustle.
I know I should be getting a little nervous, but somehow I don’t. The trees are spindly, welcoming cocoons, their branches the warm arms encircling me.
Two glittering green eyes appear in the middle of the darkness, and that’s where the wonderful dream goes wrong.
The initial peace and quiet is ruined as a large cat springs from the trees and bounds after me. The air is saturated by a thousand screaming voices, and for a moment I freeze.
The world pauses; the cat hovers over me. Then the clock restarts and the cat falls straight on me. It’s like a hundred pound weight has been dropped on my lungs. I gasp in shock.
“Haven.” The cat is saying my name. Oh, god, it’s talking. “Haven.” Those glittering green eyes morph into something that looks a little more human.
“Haven, you’re going into cardiac arrest. If you don’t calm down, you will die. Calm down. Don’t f-” The cat’s face morphs into a look of pain. “Wake up. This is a dream, Haven. Wake up. We need you.”]
I gasp awake to see my hospital gown is open and the defibrillators poised just above my chest. The female nurse holding them has her mouth open, eyes wide.
The face reminds me of The Scream, by Edvard Munch, and I burst out laughing at the mental image. My chest aches a little. The nurses, five in total, give me a pucker-lipped expression of concern.
“Sweetie, honey, are you okay?” The one holding the defibrillator asks. I grin and nod. The nurses take my blood pressure, murmuring among themselves as the move around me warily, like they’re afraid I’m going to fall apart anytime soon.
But I’m not in the mood for the present. In my mind, the dream replays again and again. There is no feeling to the dream, though, since it was only a dream. That doesn’t mean I don’t remember the cold dread trickling into my blood at the sight of the cat, or the fear as it pinned me down on the floor.
Yet how was it possible that a dream could tell me to wake up from a cardiac arrest? My brief brush with death has had no effect on my mental health; I feel perfect. The only thing I gained from the experience was a nagging feeling rooted deep in my skulls.
Think harder, it says. There’s something wrong.
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