Prescription for Miss Walker

When I next opened my eyes, we'd stopped driving. My eyesight was somewhat hazy, but I noticed that the siren had stopped its high-pitched scream and the paramedics were making their way out of the vehicle, rolling me out onto the cracked granite.

"We have a twenty-five-year-old female, with a fractured skull, broken fibula and cuts all over her body." Handing me over to the hospital staff, my paramedic neighbor then leaned forward to whisper something into one of the nurses' ear. I didn't catch what.

Backing off her, he gave me a soft smile that asked me a question I was all too familiar with nowadays.

I nodded.

The emergency doors shut closed behind us all as they wheeled me off. The mess of all the shouting and screaming from other patients stirred in my head, begging for their time. I didn't even bother with registering that the lights were too fluorescent.

Hoisting me off the gurney and onto a bed, three nurses were on top of my care, injecting me with IV drips and asking me of my whole medical history, as the paramedics began to take their leave.

My neighbor, whose name tag I squinted to read but never got to, gave me another grin as he disappeared.

"Miss, can you tell me your name?"

Flicking my eyes to my left, I noticed a nurse with a pair of scissors in her hands. Without so much as a please, she tore them through my beautiful robe, exposing my black and blue breasts.

She fought to contain the gasp, but it got past, deceiving the expressionless mask that she threw up almost right after.

"Miss, what is your name? Then can you tell me–”

"Shira Walker. It's April twenty-third, 2017." I broke in, as the other nurse took it in and got ready to head towards the computers. "My blood is A positive and list my emergency contact as a Miss Madison Grey."

I gave out her number and she was off again.

Testing out the pain volume on my limbs and scanning the back of my head, my leftover nurse rubbed her lips together as her attention came back to my skin.

Once I said it out loud, it would be real. I couldn't live one more day thinking the way I used to. My ignorance could no longer be called that.

I'd be throwing Ben to the wolves; under the bus. As much as he'd hurt me... did he really deserve the life sentence I'd be committing him to?

A life he was wasting away when I'd give anything for more time.

And so, I told the nurse everything, who was listening so intently, so beautifully that I could see the cracks in her professionalism starting to show. As I described what happened to me, her mind began to suffocate in all its aggravation.

Once the regular check-ups were taken and she's sewn up the crack on my skull, a doctor strolled towards my bed, my chart between his large hands.

"As you may know, with every rape allegation made in a hospital, it is mandatory that we test for signs of forced penetration."

Rape. It sounded so crude, so definite. It literally hurt me every time the word was muttered.

But I nodded, repeating the story to him as I did with the nurse. Once I was finished, he didn't say anything, but he did arrange himself by the foot of my bed.

Then, with my permission, he pulled the curtains over us and asked me to get into the correct position as he prepared to take the swab of my rectum walls.

Turning on my side, I saw the nurse standing by me. Everybody seemed so worried, when they didn't even know me. They knew only one version of the story, yet they stood by me.

My life was a fight.

And would continue into full-on war, at least until my body stopped believing in itself.

So, as a tear escaped and I felt the prod of the swab on my flesh, a hand found mine, asking that I continue to be brave, just for now.