Chapter 1A Chapter by Hannah L.I open my eyes but I see nothing. All I remember is the doctor giving me a needle to make the pain go away, then I passed out. Why wasI given a needle? Because apparently... Wait... No! It was a dream, all a dream, this is not happening!
"Kayla, can you here me?" I still cannot see, but I know that voice. It is my mom, and it sounds like she has been crying.
"Yes. Why can't I see?"
"You don't remember do you? Do you know where you are?" she sounds worried.
"Please don't tell me I'm in the hospital. Please tell me it was all a dream." my voice cracking slightly every few words.
Everything was silent. You could have heard a pin drop.
I feel like a building just fell on top of me. I cannot breath, I feel like I wam having a heart attack. I am starting to black out again.
"What's going on?" says a voice I do not recognize.
"We don't know. We've taken her to doctors, psychologists, everybody, but no one seems to know what it is." my mom tells the mystery person.
"Well, what do we do?" says the unknown person, who I am guessing is a doctor.
"We've been told to just leave her alone and let it pass, or something bad might happen."
This always happens when I get worked up or stressed. We call them my "attacks". I cannot talk, I lose my breath, and my heart races so fast that I feel flustered and about to pass out. My heart pounds so fast that my chest starts hurting, my stomach tightens up, and I feel paralyzed because it is so hard to move. But I cannot do anything about it. My mom is right, we just have to wait for it to pass.
They usually only last about five minutes, but since I have been getting older they have been getting longer, and worse.
They started when my dad died. He was everything to me, my best friend. He drowned when I was eight. We were at the beach on a hot summer day when he got stung by a jelly fish. He was really allergic to any kind of sting. He started to puff up, then he went under. I thought he was just playing so I did not really pay much attention. But when he did not come up for a good minute, I got worried. I called to my mom, she came running from where she was tanning on the beach. She saw my dad and pulled him up. He had all ready breathed in too much water and he died in her arms. That was the worst day of my life, until now. I do not think anything could be worse than this.
The attack finally dies down.
"How are you feeling?" my mom asks.
I stare into nothingness and do not answer. Because that is all I can do, stare into an endless black hole. I am blind.
It all started yesterday afternoon. I started getting a pain in my head, I thought it was just a headache so I took some Advil and put an ice pack on my head. Later that night it had still not gone away or died down. It was actually worse, much worse. My head was pounding furiously and my vision was going blurry. I called out to my mom, it took a few times because I was in so much pain I could barely talk. She came running into my room and saw me curled up in a ball on my bed. I quickly explained what was going on and she rushed me to the hospital. That was when the horrible news came. Apparently I had internalized or been exposed to a chemical that took over the vision sector of my brain, and I was slowly and painfully going blind. Only two or three other people in the world had been diagnosed with this before, and they had not yet found a cure to get rid of it. But they had made a drug that increased the power of the chemical so I immediately went blind, which may sound horrible, but it was made so the victim did not have to go through the pain any longer. So obviously they gave me the drug, and that is when I passed out.
"I'm blind." I finally say, actually, I yell. "A seventeen year old girl, with a whole life ahead of her, and now I'm blind. How do you think I feel?"
All I can hear was my mom nervously shuffling her feet, obviously surprised. I have never yelled at her like that before. We always get along so well.
"I'm sorry, I shouldn't have lashed out at you like that it's ju-" but she cut me off.
"There is no reason to apologize, I could never imagine the mental pain and stress you are going through right now. I completely understand your anger."
I cannot see her, but I can tell she is giving me one of her comforting smiles. So I smile back.
"Thanks mom. I love you."
"I love you too honey."
"So do we know when I can leave this awful place?" I say after a moment of silence.
"No." my mom slightly laughs. "I know you're eager to leave, but right now we just have to focus on you recovering from the trauma of the news."
"I don't need to 'recover'," I put my hands up and make the quotation marks with my fingers. "From anything, I feel fine. Other than the fact that I can't see anything, which is a bit different." I say sarcastically.
"I know you're a strong girl, but you've only just woken up and haven't had time to realize all the things that are going to have to change. I remember when we lost your father. At first I kept telling myself that things happen, and they all happen for a reason, so I felt fine. But then after a few days, after not having him around, realizing how different it really was without him, I felt like I had the weight of the whole world on my shoulders, and it felt awful."
"Well thanks for that mom. I definitely feel better now!" I say sarcastically.
"Sorry honey, but it's the sad truth. And also, like you said, you can't see anything, so they're going to keep you here for a bit and teach you how to, well, do certain things without your sight."
"Can't I just take classes for that later?" I ask hopefully.
"Maybe." my mom says with a small laugh. "Just make the best of your time here. I will try to get them to let you come home as soon as possible."
And with that someone walks in the room, I am guessing the doctor who I heard leave earlier to give us some time to talk.
"I'm sorry Kayla, but we have to do some check-ups so your mother is going to have to leave."
I stay silent. I do not want her to leave, not now. I do not want to be left alone with these strange doctors who I cannot even see.
"That's alright." my mom tells the doctor. "I'll see you tomorrow sweetie. Love you." I feel her kiss my forehead.
"Well, you'll see me, but I won't see you." that sounded a bit less harsh in my head.
My mom sighs.
"Goodbye Kayla."
"Bye mom."
And then she leaves.
***
The next few weeks in the hospital go by pretty slowly. As I cannot see, there was really nothing to entertain me.
I hear someone come in, obviously a doctor. I know it is really early so mom my would not be here yet.
"We have some good news!" says the doctor.
"My sight will be coming back? Because at the moment that's the only news that will sound good to me." I say, sounding rather lazy and uninterested.
"Unfortunately it's not that good, but I still think you're going to like it." I could tell the doctor was rather annoyed with my tone. I do not think any of them like me. "We've decided you are ready to go home. We have already called your mother and she will be picking you up as soo-"
"Finally!" I scream.
I hear the doctor sigh.
"We will send someone in to help you get dressed."
"I think I'll wait 'till my mom gets here, thanks." I wasn't letting any strange doctor see me naked, especially since I could not see them.
"That's fine." says the doctor, and then he leaves.
A few minutes after the doctor leaves, my mom arrives. Good thing we do not live far from the hospital, I cannot wait any longer to get out of here.
"Hi Kayla." my mom says cheerfully, coming into the room.
"Just get me into my clothes and get me out of here." I say as kindly as possible.
"Alright, miss impatient." my mom laughs.
My mom gets my walking stick (it is this thing the doctors gave me that I wave in front of me while I walk so I do not run into anything) and leads me out of the hospital and into the car.
"I have a surprise waiting for you at home." my mom says excitedly as I feel us pulling out of the lot.
"Really? Maybe if it's good enough I'll feel happy for the first time in weeks." I say, trying to sound excited.
"Oh, I think you'll like this." she says happily.
I missed this. Just the two of us. No doctors, or interruptions for check-ups. Just us.
We are driving along the road when I realize something, something big.
"I won't be able to swim anymore." I say, barely above a whisper.
I have been swimming since before I could walk, and competitively swimming since I was eight. I always feel the happiest when I am in the water. My mom always called me a mermaid, because to me, the water was my home, and now I will never be able to swim again.
"I know. I was thinking about that on the way over. I'm so sorry honey."
I stay silent in my seat, tears streaming down my face. I do not even bother to wipe them away. My whole life has changed, and there is nothing I can do about it. I am sitting in my seat, running over everything in my head that I will never be able to do again, staring into the nothingness of what I can, or I guess, cannot not see, when suddenly I feel it. Like my mom said, it feels like I have the weight of the world on my shoulders, crushing me, rendering me immobile. But wait, I actually cannot move, I cannott breath, a sharp pain in my chest makes it feel like I have broken a rib. Why does this feel so real? Am I having another attack?
"Mom? What's going on?" I choke.
No answer. Then I pass out. © 2014 Hannah L.Author's Note
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