Arduous

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Sixteen

[Anne, 00:30, Unknown Location]

"Let me see her, please!" A voice similar to Catherines pleaded.

"I'm terribly sorry, but, like I've been saying for the last few hours, she is not ready for visitors!" A different voice, female, articulated, as if she had recited that many times.

"If she wakes up," Catherine implored, "and nobody she knows is there beside her, she may start to freak out and think she is dead, and that you are all angels in your white coats and fancy hair and it won't be good for her, and may even cause her heart to fail, and you'll have to do heart surgery, or whatever you do, and she has a strong chance of actually dying, and-"

"Stop!" The other woman commanded. Silence stretched out across the room like a snug blanket. Finally, a sigh broke the silence. The nurse relented, "fine. You can see her, but only for five minutes!"

I heard the sound of footsteps. They stopped right beside where I was laying and I knew Catherine was there.

Slowly, I unglued my eyelids. Catherine was kneeling beside the white bed I was laying in. Her hands were clasped together and her forehead placed on the bed.

"You can stop praying Catherine. Im not dead yet!" I exclaimed.

Catherine whipped her head up, staring wide-eyed at me.

"Me? Praying? But I was watching the potato bug crawl across the floor."

I laughed at the silliness that was Catherine.

Catherine grinned like the Cheshire cat up at me. She threw her arms around me in a hug, but she must have felt me flinch because she let go almost immediately. Instead of a hug, she gave me a kiss on the cheek.

"It's so nice to hear you laugh, Anne!" Catherine exclaimed. "Everyone was - is - so worried!"

I groaned at the memory of the gunshot and everything that came before and after it. I hated hospitals, with a burning passion. I had since I was little.

I fell down the stairs when I was five, spraining my ankle. My parents ignored my complaining, and when my complaining got too much for them, they would lock me in the closet. The closet was a foot by foot square, at five feet in height. I was stuffed in there after a good beating. With my ankle sprained, I could barely walk, let alone stand, and when I was placed in the closet, I would have to stand there until my parents remembered they had a child. About a week after the fall, my ankled swelled up to a point that my parents couldn't ignore anymore. They took me to the hospital, only telling the nurses and doctors that I had an infection and sprained ankle, never mentioning the child abuse that happened.

The door burst open and in came a nurse, dressed in pure white.

"She looks like an angel!" I whispered in awe.

"Did you hear that?" Catherine jumped up and spun around to face the nurse. "DID YOU HEAR THAT?!? She thought you looked like an angel!"

The nurse just rolled her eye before facing me. "How are you feeling?"

I subconsciously rubbed my neck. "Sore, I guess. Im just wondering, but what hospital am I in?"

"The nurse forum in the Base of Edmonton."

"Really?" I widened my eyes. "Thank goodness Im in a place I know!"

She forced a smile, before turning to Catherine. "Go now, and let the others know she's awake. Shoo, go!"

Catherine shot me a look of annoyance before leaving, most likely to get Adam, Mr. Zonde and Lucina.

"Now, lets check your heartbeat." The nurse sighed in relief as she took out her stethoscope.