Paper Cranes

“Where am I?” I asked in a hoarse voice. The white ceiling above had blinding fluorescent lights which caused me to blink furiously. I tried to sit up but as I moved my arms and body, a shot of pain came searing through. I groaned and allowed my body to relax on the uncomfortable bed.

“Ro? Ro? Are you alright?” I heard Winona’s voice coming closer to me and I opened my eyes, squinting at the figure above me. It was Winona. Her hair was messy and her face stained with tears. She smiled as she exclaimed, “Oh thank god you’re alright!”

She held my hand which was then when I realized there was a needle poking out of my arm which was linked to a packet of IV. “Where am I?” I asked in the same hoarse voice. My throat was dry and it hurts to talk.

“The hospital, Ro,” Winona said. “You were in an accident a couple of hours ago,” she explained. I stared at her, slightly confused and as the word accident reverberated in my mind, the whole scene played before my eyes. The oncoming lights, the crash, the spinning in the car and Jared’s look of horror as I took his arm before I blacked out.

“OHMYGOD! Where’s Jared?! How is he?! Is he okay? Is he still alive? Where is he?!” I asked, panicking as the questions spilled out of my mouth, one after another. My head felt heavy and slightly dizzy as the anxiety grew.

“Cool down, Ro. Calm down.” Winona gestured. “Just breathe,” she inhaled and exhaled a few times as I tried to do as told, breathing in deeply. But with every deep breath I took, my lungs felt as if it was about to burst. I looked at Winona expectantly for my answers.

She had an unpleasant expression on her face and ran her hand through her hair which was a sign of nervousness from her. “Erm… Jared’s… he’s…”

“Just spill it!” I said impatiently.

“Okay… okay…” She took a deep breath. “Jared’s in ICU. His condition stabilized an hour ago but the doctor said he’s in some sort of a coma,” Winona announced grimly.

“Ohmygod,” I whispered under my breath and closed my eyes, hoping that this was all just a horrible dream. I opened my eyes and there was the hospital again. I was still on the uncomfortable bed and Winona was looking at me concerned.

“I got to go and see Jared,” I said, as I forced my own arm to push my seemingly heavy body which felt like a tonne right now. Winona pushed me back down. “No, Ro. You got to rest now,” she said in a stern voice.

“NO WIN! I have to go and see Jared!” I insisted, raising my voice as the anger in me sparked into a small flame. I began to push myself to sit up again. Winona sighed and she helped me to sit up. I paused and felt myself swayed back and forth.

“Are you okay?” Winona asked, holding my arm to steady me. I nodded and moved my legs to the side of the bed.

“Wait a sec,” Winona said suddenly, stopping me as I watched her left the room. Minutes later, she came back in with a wheel chair and put it by the side of the bed. “Good idea,” I mumbled as she helped me to lower myself onto the chair. It wasn’t very difficult and it was also at that time when I realized my right leg was in a cast from the knee downwards.

I held onto the metal bar where my IV drip was hung onto and Winona pushed me out of the small room. The white corridor outside was like a ghost town, there was not a single soul which walked past us. The smell of medicine wafted in the air. I hated the smell and tried to ignore it as Winona pushed me towards the elevator, making sure that the nurses at the station were too distracted by something which was busy with talking with one another.

As we entered the metal elevator, there were adverts of heart attack and lung cancer displayed on the walls. ‘Why the hell do they put these in here?!’ I thought and decided to stare at the digits which displayed what floor we were on. The ICU was on the tenth floor of the local hospital and my room was on the fifth. I groaned impatiently as the elevator ascended slowly.

As we reached the tenth floor, the metallic doors slid open and the atmosphere on this floor was slightly different from mine. Doctors and nurses rushed up and down the corridor, there were crying relatives by the red plastic chairs. Winona pushed me past the chairs and down to a corridor labeled for rooms 10-20. Winona stopped in front of a door with the golden number 13 hung on it.

“Ready?” she asked. I took in a deep breath and nodded. Winona squeezed my shoulder and turned the doorknob.

The atmosphere of the room was worse than the rest of the hospital I’d been to. It was lighted with the same white fluorescent lights. There were plastic chairs around the bed. The light blue curtains were drawn across the windows and the glass pane which allowed outsiders to look from outside of the room. I tried to avoid the body which was laid on the bed but I couldn’t avoid it forever, could I?

There he was, tubes coming out of every single angle of his body. The blanket covered half of his body. His left arm was in cast and his neck needed a collar to support it. There were cuts all over his face and arms. His head was wrapped. I was speechless at the sight of his condition and was somewhat scared at the sound of his heartbeat coming from the machine. Even his breathing needed the help of an oxygen pump.

Winona pushed me closer to the bed where the unconscious Jared was. I stared at the lifeless body, waiting for the owner to suddenly jump up. I knew my wishes for tonight were too much to ask for but a part of me thought anything was possible as I prayed silently. With my trembling hand, I held his, slowly squeezing it tighter, waiting for a response of some kind but it was to no avail.

Suddenly, the door of the room opened and some stranger entered. However, Winona waved at him. “Hi, Shannon. Sorry to sneak into the room like this. It’s just Ro wants to see how Jared is,” she explained.

The stranger nodded. “How are you?” he asked me with a bad attempt to smile which came out wrong. “I’m… okay… I guess…” I mumbled, still confused as to who he was.

“I’m Shannon,” he said as if he just read my mind and thrust his hand out. I took it and shook it. “Jared’s older brother,” he added.

“I’m Rowena,” I said and let go of his hand. “How is he?” I asked, turning my attention back to Jared.

“Not good,” Shannon sighed. “The doctor said his brain had suffered a sudden strong impact and because of that he’s gonna be unconscious for some time,” he said. In other words he meant coma but it was a hard fact to accept. I took Jared’s hand again, this time with both of mine. His pale face made him looked as if his spirit was sucked out of him. The once Jared which was so full of life and passion suddenly became this was just hard to accept by anyone. I bent down to kiss his hand. “Where are you, Jared?” I whispered. The tears which were welled up on the edge of my eyes finally broke loose as I buried my face onto the sheets of the bed.

“Oh… Ro… don’t cry,” Winona said, crouching next to me, as she stroked my back. I couldn’t hold it in any longer as the streams of tears became an incontrollable sob. “It’s all my fault, Win. It’s all my fault,” I said between the sobs. “If I told him I want to go home then none of this would have happened. Why?” I continued on with my ranting as Winona tried to shush me, still stroking my back. I felt Shannon by my side as well, afraid to make any contact since we weren’t really close to one another.

“Why am I always the one? Why am I so unlucky? How could I have done this to Jared?” I mumbled, gasping for air.

“Ro. It’s not your fault! Don’t blame yourself for this. All this happened because of some stupid drunk driver. Please stop blaming yourself,” Winona said.

I lifted up my head to look at her. “You don’t understand Win. Jared asked me whether I want to go back home or somewhere else and I said whatever he likes. If I would have said home then he wouldn’t have taken that route and the accident wouldn’t have happened. Why didn’t say home?” I sobbed.

Winona shook her head, wiping the tears away from my eyes with her thumbs. “Listen Ro. It’s not your fault. You can’t blame yourself.” She looked me straight in the eye. “Don’t cry, Ro.”

“She’s right, Rowena. Don’t blame yourself. It’s not your fault,” Shannon added. I turned to him, the tears slowly stopped but I was still struggling with my breathing. “I’m so sorry, Shannon,” I said.

He shook his head. His brown eyes shone with tears. “Don’t be. It’s not your fault, okay?” he said reassuringly and smiled. This time it came out correct but it was a weak smile. He gave me a hug; his strong arms reminded me of Jared’s. For that full minute, the connection between me and Shannon felt like it was joined as one. Even though he was still a stranger to me, but because of this ordeal it made me felt as if we had known each other for quite some time.