Schizophrenic

Hospitals

Faint beeps and the dripping of a liquid were the only sounds I heard, yet they seemed so far away. As if they were Morse code beeps being sent over from hill to hill in the distance.

And then I heard the sounds of deep breathing, heavy, hoarse. It sounded as if someone was crying silently. I tried to open my eyes to see who it was but it felt as if they were trucks sitting on my eyelids. I tried to say something but my lips wouldn't move. It was as though my mind had no connection to the rest of my body, unable to control its movements. I sighed inwardly, letting out my frustration.

Whatever I was lying on wasn't as comfortable as I wished it would be. Something was covering my body, keeping me warm. I was starting to get the feeling back into my body, able to sense the pinprick just below the inside of my elbow on my right arm. It seemed as though a needle had been pushed through my skin but there was something tied around the rest of my arm, like bandages. My left arm felt as though as it was encased in something hard yet flexible. There was something tight wrapped around my thigh, halfway down. There was something wet on my forehead. Its texture made me believe it to be a face towel to cool me down.

I began to listen to my surroundings, glad that at least my ears were working. There seemed to be only one other person in the room, still heaving, crying. I was absolutely sure that there was no one else in the room unless they were able to be deathly silent and not breathing.

There were heavy footfalls getting closer to the place I was in. A little click told me that the door had just opened. I was in a room. The horrible sound of a chair scraping across the floor filled the room. It seemed as if it was right next to me. The side of the bed raised a little and I had the impression that someone had been resting against my bed.

"Is something wrong, doctor?" It sounded like Jeremy.

I was in a hospital. I freaking hate hospitals.

Another more feminine voice spoke up somewhere near my feet. "No, everything is perfectly fine. In fact, that's the reason I came here. Ariella is free to go tomorrow night. After testing, the results came back fine. No problems. She just needs rest now." She paused. "She should in fact be waking up soon, if not already. She won't be able to move her body or speak since she still has no control over her body, but she can definitely hear us."

I heard the sounds of paper being ruffled. I pictured her flipping papers on her clipboard. The footsteps came near the head of the bed and stopped. The beeps became louder.

"It seems she is awake now, so she heard everything we said."

"I thought she'd never wake up," Jeremy sighed. How long was I out? It can't have been that long. It felt like only a few hours.

A few hours. What had happened before? The last thing I recalled was seeing the little girl in my room as I ran up the stairs to hide from Jake and Jeremy and suddenly I blacked out. What had happened in that time? How did I end up in the hospital?

The high-pitched beeps were getting faster at the same time as my heart began racing.

"What's happening?" Jeremy asked.

"Her heart is speeding up. But it doesn't seem like a physical cause. I believe she is having some emotional reaction to something."

"Emotional?"

"She's probably trying to figure out what happened to her. I would if I were in her place," the doctor added as an afterthought. "Well, I'll leave you with her. You can talk to her if you like, she may not be able to respond but she can hear you."

"Yeah," Jeremy replied offhandedly.

The doctor left the room, her footsteps fading as she headed away from the room. There was a soft thump and a scuffling, the chair being pulled closer to the bed.