Oxygen (Catfish And The Bottlemen/1975)

Katie

My eyes stung, my mouth pasty and dry, like I'd swallowed super glue in my sleep.

When I tried to move I couldn't and when my vision finally began to focus I felt my nerves burning, my guts twisting with the fear that came coursing through me like a drag racer into a wall.

For a minute or two I remained frozen, with no grip on reality, my spacial awareness was out, my depth perception none existent. I felt like I was floating, suspended and lonely in a white room, drowning in disinfectant fumes but as the dizziness subsided and my head spun a little slower I felt the mattress beneath me and the body pushed up beside me, a familiar friends breath on my collar bone where she lay sound asleep.

For a minute or two it was enough to calm me, knowing that Fliss was here too, knowing that no one was leaving me to die in a strange white room.

My bones ached that dull background noise sort of ache that you could tune in and out of but you couldn't choose when.

There was a phone on the chair by my bed, that too belonged to Fliss, but the jacket hanging on the back of the seat belonged to neither of us and I could only assume that it belonged to whoever had brought us here.
When I tried to focus on those memories however, a blurred taxi drive, three hospital chairs lined up I could remember nothing. Only the vaguest of details.

Her phone lit up a few times with messages and calls perhaps it was the rest of the girls trying to find out where we were. I wondered how long we'd been gone for, I wondered how long it was since they'd first noticed their absence.

The last thing I could remember was Benji in my bedroom with his thumb brushing my hair until I fell asleep, trying to sooth me, trying to stop my whimpering and shaking. I wondered whether he'd succeeded or whether it was my endless stream of tears which had bought me here.

Fliss didn't stir, out cold beside me, I wondered why they'd let her stay by my side, it was light outside but the light was fading quickly. I wondered if when the sun went down they'd send her away, shake her awake and tell her she couldn't stay by my side.

I shut my eyes and tried not to picture how lonely the room would be without her sound asleep and leaning on me.

I tried not to focus on the clicking of heels and the hum of machinery, I could hear a heart rate monitor beeping steadily, slowly and wondered whether we were in a roon alone, or whether it was someone elses heart I was tuned into, not my own.

"Fuck me," mumbled Fliss as she pushed herself up slowly, her phone was going off again and as she reached for it her eyes caught mine and she froze. "Fuck," she smiled sort of surprised, "thank fuck," her smile grew wider for a moment and then as she answered the phone and held it to her ear she winced and closed her eyes lying back down with her head on my shoulder, taking my hand in hers and saying quietly, "just try not to think too hard,"

With that she was closing her own eyes and listening carefully to the voice on the end of the phone, she chewed her lip and whimpered reading out for the bottle of lucozade someone had left by the bed.

"No," she said softly, her chapped lips were pale and she looked frailer than frail, skin as thin as a paper napkin, the rims of her eyes red and soar. "She's awake," she hummed, "I don't remember," she said a little hesitant to admit, "I still don't remember you bringing me here... no, I've been asleep," she looked from me to the clock on the wall, "how long yous been awake sugar lamb?" She asked me as if she thought I would know. I just smiled and shrugged and shut my eyes.

The closer everything seemed to be the more unnerving I found my surroundings, the less I felt like I was floating the more lying down on my back with wires in my wrists began to hurt.