The Tales of a Daydreamer

It all started with the right side of my pillow.

'Beep… Beep… Beep…'

What the…? Since when do I keep a heart monitor next to my bed? Where am I? What's going on?

I tried to open my eyes, but they felt like they were glued shut. I tried to lift my hands, to pry my eyelids open, but they felt heavy as lead. I couldn't move them. I stopped struggling as I realized that what I was doing was a lost cause, and I could hear mumbled voices. But I couldn't make out words, or sentences. Nothing but the faint rumble of people too quiet and far to hear. Stupid, beeping machine.

The beeps seemed to get slower the harder I tried to listen.

'Beep.........Beep..............Beep......................Beep.........'

Shut up, you stinking machine! The words echoed through my head, instead of through the room, as I learned with frustration that my lips, too, refused to cooperate.

I strained my ears between the beeps, and could just barely make out a foreign male voice. I had no idea who it was. There was a stranger and a slowing heart machine in my room, out of no where. I really wished I knew what was going on, or at least how they got into my bedroom.Maybe I wasn't in my room after all…

Finally, I managed to catch what the deep voice of the intruder was saying as it floated closer on heavy footsteps. As if the voice could read my mind, it answered my unspoken question, in a way.

"I'm sorry, Mister and Misses Samuels, but the hospital is running low on rooms, and the outcome of the night really doesn't seem good for your daughter. We don’t think she’s going to make it through the night, and keeping her here is just putting her through misery. She’s in a lot of pain.”

Pain...? I can’t feel anything. Now, if he meant emotional pain, that was a different story. But I was only in pain BECAUSE. I COULDN’T. MOVE.

“We're going to have to do something for her, for the sake of making room for patients we can still help." The footsteps halted at the head of my bed, on the opposite side of the heart machine. But I wasn't thinking about that anymore. His words were still circling through my head.

Hospital!?

The word tripled my heart rate. Or, it felt like it did, but the machine's rhythmic beeping just slowed even more. What. Was. Going. On.

I heard my mother's hysterical sob, from somewhere at the foot of my bed. I could picture her, pale hands covering her piercing blue eyes as her long, blonde hair flowed over her face, and her frail body racked with sobs.

I tried to move, to tell her that I was awake, for real. To tell her that there wasn't actually anything wrong with me, that I wasn't really going to die. That I was okay, that I could go home.

But I couldn't move.

I tried to open my eyes again, to look around, to show them all that there was still life flowing through the brown irises. I tried as hard as I could, but they still remained glued together. I tried to blow the strand of my brown hair away from my nose, away from my face, because it was beginning to itch. I tried to show some sign that I was alive, that I wasn't in a comatose, that I was perfectly fine.

But I still couldn't move.

Ugh, what was wrong with me!?

I heard the heavy footsteps of the foreign man, who I now guessed to be the doctor of this strange reality, moving away from my pillow. They traveled around the foot of my bed, ignoring my still sobbing mother with ease, and stopped at the beeping machine. "I'm sorry," the deep voice said.

Oh no. Ohno ohno ohno. He can't be…

"I'm sorry…" the doctor said, yet again. "But I'm going to have to pull the plug."

He was.

_________________________________________________

"NO! I'm alive, I'M ALIVE!" I shrieked, sitting up in my desk. I looked around, taking in the classroom and its many, silent, blinking faces.

Wait a minute. Desk? Classroom? What the – Where'd the hospital go? The mean doctor, my sobbing mother, my silent, comforting father? The stupid, beeping machine?

What just happened?

One of the blinking faces at the front of the room split into a grin. The teacher, Mr. Mathis. "Yes, Lohgan, we all realize you're alive. But we're glad you're awake, now, anyhow."

"Oops…" I said, my cheeks flushing bright red. I looked at him apologetically, muttering, "Sorry." He shrugged like he couldn't care less – which was probably true – and returned his attention to the chalkboard.

Ryland, my best friend in the whole world, grinned at me, his grey eyes dancing. "Daydreaming again, eh Loh?" He shook his blonde hair from his face.

I nodded sheepishly. "Yeah."