Fading Away

Four

When Lola woke up, she couldn't breathe. Or that's what it felt like. She clawed at her neck and the nurse in the room saw her pain and ran up to her. The nurse started pushing buttons on a ventilator. She tried speaking, but nothing would happen. "Hi Lola. I'm Nurse Grace. Lola, you were shot. In your trachea. I know you are smart, so you probably know what happened and why you can't speak. The bullet fragmented and some of it lodged near your vocal cords and some punctured your lungs. In the surgery room, when we tried to dislodge the fragments from your neck, we found that it had hit your vocal cords and that it was swollen, so the vibration won't go through. You'll survive, but you won't be able to breathe regularly for about two weeks or speak for two months. You were lucky. Your parents, however, were not. Your father Alexandre died before we could take him. Your dad Louis was brought and surgery was done and it was somewhat successful. It kept him alive for three days. You've been out for a month. They gave you a note before they passed. I could read it to you." By then, Lola was crying. Hard. Before that, she pretended she was texting and pointed to herself as if to say, "Do you have my phone?" Nurse Grace nodded and walked over to a closet and opened it up with her keys. She walked back over and gave Lola the phone.

She turned it on and looked at the time. 11 AM. October 10th. It was a while. Lola was surprised by the lack of texts. Did no one know what had happened? No one at all? Not even Amélie texted that many times. Well, for a month, at least. She went to her phone calls and saw seven missed calls. All of them were from either Amélie or from Gabriel. They're probably worried sick. She made a group chat as quickly as she could when she noticed that Nurse Grace was still here. Lola waved at the door to her and Nurse Grace understood and said, "If it feels like you can't breathe and if anything goes wrong, push the button next to your bed." she said as she left. Lola started texting, slowly but surely:

 (Lola): Hey, Amélie. Gabriel. Sorry for not responding in a while.  

No one read it for a while, but that was probably because it was school time. She started sobbing even harder. Everyone was oblivious to what she had gone through back in Canada. It made Lola feel sick. She took this time to look at herself. There was an IV catheter in her right arm and a ventilator pipe that was, well, going down her neck into her lungs. It felt weird. She also had a nutrient catheter going into her stomach. There was tape all over. All of a sudden, her phone started vibrating.

(Amélie): LOLA WHY DID YOU NOT TEXT BACK????? WE CALLED YOU A MILLION TIMES, TOO!! WHERE TF WERE YOU??  

(Gabriel): YEAH, YOU DIDNT ANSWER ANYWHERE! WHY DIDN'T YOU RESPOND?

(Lola): It's a long story. Call me, I'll tell you, start to finish. Sorry, you two.  

Lola pressed the button to call the nurse over and waited. Her arms were sore from the little texting she had done, but she had to tell them what had happened. When Nurse Grace got there, she was a little out of breath. Lola typed into the text box, "Can you tell these two what happened, start to finish?" Nurse Grace's face softened and she nodded. Lola called the two of them and listened. "Lola, what happened?!? Talk!" Lola heard Gabriel whisper-shout.

"Hi, this is Nurse Grace, Lola's guardian, at the moment. She has told me that you wanted to hear what happened." Amélie gasped and Lola silently cried. Again. She started speaking from where Lola got shot. There was gasping, sobbing from both, and, at the end of the story, Gabriel stopped talking. "Why? What did they do...?"Amélie started sobbing again. Nurse Grace looked devastated herself, even though she wasn't involved. Lola motioned for the phone and once she got it, she FaceTimed them. They both answered and gasped again. Gabriel was silently crying before, it seemed. Amélie looked like a mess. "Lola! Oh, God." Lola noticed even more that she looked like a mess. Her hair was a total bird's nest. Her neck was tightly knotted with a bandage and had blood seeping through a little. Lola wanly smiled and waved goodbye and ended the call. Suddenly, there was a sharp pain in her throat and spread to her lung and she fell unconscious.