Solace

chapter two

monday, october 13th

The first thing I noticed was the beeping. An annoying, ceaseless beep on some sort of machine to the side. My eyelids opened, but only barely, shying away from the unnatural fluorescent lighting overhead. It was cold in there. Really cold, with the stark cleanness and thick aroma of hand sanitizer that could only be associated with hospitals. Rows of goosebumps sprang up beneath my skin as I shifted to a position where I could be warmer. As I moved my right arm, something bobbed at the edge of my vision.

I squinted at the thing. Its edges were fuzzy, but so was everything else in the room. My eyes probably weren't working right. Using my few active brain cells, I managed to piece together that there was a bag, with some liquid in it; clear but bearing no resemblance to water. A bag with not-water, hanging... on a pole thing... with a tube traveling down to my arm. Ew. I was suddenly aware that the itchy, lumpy bandage on my arm must be covering a needle digging into my skin, something I'd seen only in movies and TV shows. I could feel its uncomfortable prick.

More tubes were attached to my chest and a bunch of other places on my body, a tangle of strings leading to a small device that was shaped kind of like a cell phone, attached to the beeping machine. This was uncomfortable.

I shifted again in what must be, inevitably, a hospital cot. My fingers brushed against another tube. Not the scary gross needle tube or the beeping machine tubes, though. I let my fingers travel along the path of the tube until it reached my nose.

My nose.

My fingers curled around the tube. A memory flashed in my brain, seeing a character on TV with one of those. I'd asked my mom what that was, and she'd told me it was a nasal cannula. I hadn't heard her right; I thought she said cannoli. I freaked out for a good five minutes after that because I thought a cannoli was some kind of dessert and wondered why people would shove desserts up their noses to breathe.

That was when I started laughing. Jesus, what was wrong with me? You weren't supposed to laugh in hospitals—especially not if you were the patient—unless you were crazy. But here I was, sitting in a hospital cot with a needle stuck into my arm and a tube up my nose, cackling at something that wasn't even that funny. Nevertheless, I continued bellowing with laughter, my side splitting and my chest burning, the beeping machine on the side gradually speeding up alongside my heartbeat.

The door swung open abruptly, and in walked a pudgy, stern-looking nurse wearing blue scrubs and clutching a clipboard in her manicured hands. She looked startled to see me...probably wondering if I had some sort of mental illness. Wondering if she should call the psych ward. I managed to stop laughing, the ache in my chest subsiding, and shifted in my cot, trying to look like an object of pity or at least halfway sane. The relentless rhythm of beeps marched on, the only sound breaking the thick silence.

"You're up," she declared as if this wasn't obvious.

I blinked, trying to make myself shrink into the itchy blankets under the nurse's challenging gaze. "Yes."

"I'm just here to take your vitals," she announced. She sounded bored. Like checking up on sick, most likely insane teenagers was just another day in the life. It probably was, though. Glancing up and down at the beeping monitor and the bag of not-water, she scribbled something down on her clipboard. I squinted. I'd always wanted to know what nurses wrote in their clipboards. When I was younger it was one of life's greatest mysteries.

"What's this?" I grunted, holding up my right arm, the one with the bandage.

"Your IV," she muttered without looking up, scribbling some more. "You get your meds from there."