Going Home

It took Mum, Jay and I less than ten minutes to drive from the school grounds uptown to the hospital; five more to reach the floor where Angel’s room was.

These few minutes was all it took for me to get over my own narrow escape from death with Chris, for the time being – I guess I was in shock, unable to fully comprehend what had happened, and still so worried about Angel, who must have been through similar ordeals almost daily before the last attack.

The hallway was buzzing with doctors and nurses when we finally reached Angel’s room, people in scrubs and lab coats running in and out of the room without doing anything much at all.

Mum was the first in there, pushing the other nurses aside with one hand while she checked all the stats and records on the various clipboards being passed around.

Jay and I just stood back, watching helplessly as alarms flashed and pagers beeped, and Angel lay, motionless excepting an occasional twitch, in the middle of the chaos.

“Everyone back!” A man suddenly called from the midst of the swarming nurses; obviously a high-ranking official from the way that everyone obeyed the order and slowly filtered out the door to leave Jay and I, and Mum and this new doctor standing around the bed as Angel’s eyes started moving around fitfully, her eyelids still shut tightly.

“Angela, Angel, can you hear me?” The doctor asked quietly, firmly, shining a light in her eyes to check for a reaction. “If you can hear me, I want you to try and squeeze my hand, okay?”

As many times as I had heard that line on corny TV shows, I was amazed at the spark of hope that flared inside me when Angel’s pale hand, masked by the needle of the IV drip, held weakly onto the doctor’s larger one.

“Very good,” he continued in soothing tones, ignoring the movements behind him as we shuffled around in nervous excitement and worry. “Now, I need you try really hard, and open your eyes for me, can you do that?”

A silent minute passed, waiting breathlessly for any sign of movement from Angel – then finally, her eyelashes fluttered, and she frowned, obviously using all of her remaining strength to try and wake up.

“…Jay?” was the first word she uttered, her eyes still unfocussed and only half-open as she fought her way back to consciousness.

For a second I thought it was odd that she asked for him, but then I remembered that he was the last person she spoke to, and returned to the sheer relief that she finally seemed okay.

The doctor spoke again then, having finished checking Angel’s stats.

“Your friends are all here, Angel, but before you can talk to them, I need to make sure you’re alright. Can you tell me how many fingers I’m holding up?”

And so he went through the whole melodramatic spiel of checking her mental wellbeing, and requesting more scans – but, amazingly, everything seemed instantaneously back to normal; she was beaten and tired from the week of unconsciousness, but normal.

Thankfully that meant that the doctor let us in to talk to her just hours later, not the days that I had been dreading.

The room was dark, and still smelled of bleach and disinfectant, by the time Jay and I were allowed in; but it wasn’t enough to keep the grin from my face when I saw Angel sitting up in bed, weary but as glad to see us as we were to see her.

“Hey guys,” she said when she saw us, managing a weak smile.

“Hey,” I replied, sitting on the edge of the bed and looking her over. “Y’know, you look like you just slept for a week.” I stated, obvious as it was – just glad to be able to talk to her at all.

“I don’t feel like it,” she shook her head, the newly regrown dark curls swinging with the movement. “I feel like I’ve been awake for that long, and I had these really vivid dreams…” she trailed off, giving Jay and odd look, then back at me.

“So, what actually happened while I was out?” she asked after a moment, shifting to get more comfortable on the bed. “Mrs. James started rambling as soon as that doctor left, and told me something vague about Chris was dead and the police won’t let me live at mum’s anymore, but I was still really out of it…”

“Well, it’s kind of a long story,” Jay began, “and I don’t think you need to go over all the details of it since you’re so tired from dreaming and all that…”

Angel nodded slowly, then turned to me.

“Well, when I was… asleep, I dreamt all kinds of weird things, about you and Jay and Chris, so you’d better tell me the short version, at least.”

“Fine.” I rolled my eyes, realising I was still grinning to finally have my best friend back.

“The really short version of it, is that Chris finally beat you up so bad that you ended up in here for the last week,” I continued, picking the main points from the drama that time had become, “and then while we were waiting for you to get better, Jay told us everything you’d told him, and mum told the police all of that.”

“So then Chris kidnapped Jessie and threatened to hurt her if Mrs. James didn’t call everything off… which she couldn’t.” Jay went on with the story, as I noticed Angel’s eyes getting wider with each new twist. “But the police managed to shoot him, and that was just before you started waking up.”

Angel still looked stunned at everything we had just told her, but still she had no questions, and instead seemed to be remembering things – probably the painful days with Chris, that were now gone forever.

“And since you woke up,” I went on after a moment, “the police just called and told us that you don’t have to stay with your mum, if you don’t want to, since she’s…”
I trailed off, not wanting to say anything to upset Angel, but she just smiled at me.

“She’s an addict, you mean.” she said quietly, honestly, “But, anyway, that really is great – except… where else would I stay? I don’t have any other family who’d take me in.”

My incredulity must have shown on my face as I sat, lost for words for a second, for Jay took one look at me and burst out laughing.

“Honestly,” I managed to sputter after a second, “you really didn’t get where I was going with that, did you?”

Angel just looked blankly between Jay, who was still laughing, and myself.

“She did just wake up from a coma,” Jay pointed out the obvious after a second, “so she does have an excuse for not getting it right away.”

“…you do have a point there, genius,” I acknowledged, silently berating myself a little for not thinking of that beforehand. “My point is, that mum’s been talking to the cops and the family court people, and she says that everything’s been cleared for you to stay with us – if you want to, that is.”

Angel didn’t say anything for a minute or so, just sat there with her mouth open and stared at us.

“Are you serious?” she asked after a second, her voice a little shaky, and tears appearing in her eyes despite the grin that was slowly growing on her face.

“Well, duh, of course I’m serious, Angel,” I rolled my eyes and gave her a hug, “You know there’s no way we’d leave you with nowhere to go, and it’ll be cool – you and me and Jay, and you can just have a normal life.”

“Normal, hanging out with you guys? I can really see that happening.” Angel gave a weak smirk for the sarcasm, and finally I could see a glimpse of her old self coming back.

“Well, maybe not normal, but it’ll definitely be fun,” Jay amended quickly, with a lopsided grin.

There was a pause for a moment, everyone just sitting there being glad that things were going back to normal – well, as normal as things got, anyway.

“You know what?” Angel mused after a while, breaking the contented silence with a contemplative voice, “I can’t believe it’s actually happening, that it’s all going to be finally over – once they let me out of here, anyway…”

She paused, and looked out the window – the first time that I’d seen her look hopeful about something in all the time I’d known her – before continuing with a sigh.

“But when this is all completely finished with, you know what I’m looking forward to?”

She didn’t wait for an answer, just turned to us with the innocent grin of a kid who isn’t in trouble anymore and went on.

“I can’t wait to finally be going home.”