Disenchanted

How long have I been in this storm?
So overwhelmed by the ocean's shapeless form
Water's getting harder to tread
With these waves crashing over my head

“I’m going to ask you a few questions, alright?” An older, barely greying doctor asked me as he shined a flashlight into my eyes, checking my pupils for proper dilation response. He’d been paged the instant my mother had informed the staff in the hall that I was awake. Within minutes, a team of medical professionals entered my room, rushing my bed with neutral, level-headed expressions so they could properly examine me.

I nodded, my neck aching slightly as I did. They’d only just removed the horrid plastic feeding tube that’d been in my throat for God knows how long, and my vocal chords felt tangled and weak. I was far from ready to actually speak, but thankfully the doctor expected that, having given me a pen and paper to respond with instead.

“First things first, can you tell me your full name?” His forrest green eyes looked up at me as he patiently waited for me to write down my answer.

I scribbled my full name on the yellow legal pad and flipped the paper over to reveal what I wrote.

Christina Marie Lawson

He bobbed his head, making a quick mark on the list on his clipboard before looking back at me once more. “Great. And what’s your date of birth, Christina?”

Again, I quickly wrote out the answer.

February 8th, 1991

This is how things went for a while, reminding me vividly of the last time I was in the hospital after my head injury. He asked where I grew up, where I went to school, what my parent’s names were. All simple, easy questions that I could answer in my sleep. For a second, I thought that maybe things weren’t so bad, that they were just asking me these questions to follow protocol. But then suddenly, the mood switched.

“Okay, and what’s the last thing you remember?”

I frowned back at the bearded man, thinking hard of the last time I had been awake. My heart flickered in a nervous beat as I realized I shouldn’t have to think that hard.

Frantically, I wrote out the fragments I could.

I remember a car. I was with my sister and there were lights. Bright lights.

My eyes grew wide as a flash of Madison’s panicked face plagued my mind. My head shot up as I tapped the word ‘sister’ desperately. Luckily I didn’t have to write anything else as my fearful, worried eyes said it all.

“Madison’s fine.” My mom cut in, her voice small as she’d taken a step back to allow the doctor and nurses to examine me properly.

I tore the scribbled on page away in discard, desperate to get my answers as I placed the black ink on a fresh page.

Is she okay? What about the--

My pen froze mid-sentence. The baby. How could I have forgotten about the baby?

I lifted the pad of paper and my jaw immediately dropped as the growing baby bump I had been used to seeing the past few month was gone, like it never existed. My stomach was just as flat and non-pregnant as ever.

I swallowed hard, starting to genuinely feel scared. I mouthed a ‘what the hell?’ before I quickly scrawled out as legibly as possible, considering my now-shaking hands:

Where’s my baby?

And, just like that, it was like time was frozen. Even the heart monitor seemed to grow mute. Hell, you could practically hear a pin drop, it was that silent. I noticed my mom look suddenly uneasy in her spot in the corner, exchanging an odd look with a nurse not much older than myself.

Finally, the doctor responded, daring to go as far as give me a comfortable smile as he said, “The baby’s fine, Miss Lawson.”

I frowned as I looked away from him, instead turning my attention towards the rest of the room. There was no crib, no changing table, not even a ‘Congratulations!’ balloon that normally went hand-in-hand with a birth. I hoped to find something, anything that’d be evidence of my child’s existence.

Feeling beyond frustrated at this point, I angrily shoved my finger at the notepad again, tapping under the previously written question with a firm glare at the doctor.

A sigh escaped his lips and his shoulders dropped. I gulped bracing myself for whatever was going on. Whatever could cause my doctor to react this way, it couldn’t be good. “The fact of the matter is, Miss Lawson...” He began, carefully and slowly. “On the night of April 14th, 2011, you were involved in a car collision that very nearly took you and your child’s life. We were able to save the baby, and now she’s very healthy despite being so premature--”

I could feel the tears beginning to form at the word ‘she’. Jack had been right after all.

The doctor, noticing my far from dry eyes, tentatively continued. “We did the best we could, but with all the trauma your brain suffered, you were consequently in an extended coma.”

A coma? Me?

I stared at the doctor, half expecting him--hell, praying for him to go “GOTCHA” at any second, but he didn’t. He just stared at me, in that pitiful, sympathetic way you did when you had to be the barer of bad news. I could feel a welt rise in the center of my still scarred throat as I dropped my gaze back to the yellow pad, almost too afraid to continue as I scratched out my next thought. I flipped the pad back over.

How long?

The doctor let out another unsure sigh. I kept my eyes glued to him as I desperately needed to know. Had it been a week? A month? Just how much time was he talking about? He cleared his throat, looking almost as sad as I was as he finally admitted, “I’m afraid that you’ve been in a coma for five years.”