Road to Jannah

Chapter Twenty-four • Something Just Like This

Where'd you wanna go? How much you wanna risk? I'm not looking for somebody with some superhuman gifts, some superhero, some fairytale bliss, just something I can turn to, somebody I can miss, I want something just like this.

-----

~ J A N N A H ~

-----

I don't know for how long this chain of darkness has bbounded my senses. I don't know whether to make the most of it and revere in it before it wanes and I wake up to the daunting reality of light or fight and break my way out from this indefinite sentence of solitude. I just know that I feel like I'm in some kind of dream that I can't wake up from even if I want to. It feels like those kind of nightmares when you're in fatal danger but you find yourself paralysed and can't run to save your life.

But once in a while, I'd hear indistinct chatters of encouragement, I'd hear the sensation of the heat of light being shone on my face but it still wasn't enough motivation to give me the strength to open my eyes.

I hear distant sounds that though I couldn't recognise, I know to mean a presence near me. I couldn't tell who it was or why they were near me but I just know it wasn't my family, it wasn't anyone I know. I feel barricaded and trapped but no matter the feeling of suffocation I was experiencing now, it was still better than the one I'd felt all those nights when my life had come crashing down after I was seperated from Ahmad. That miserable predicament was gawking at me even in this state of unconsciousness and it is enough to make me want to stay locked up away from this, from everything forever.

The indistinct voices thinned into one and it managed to amplify till it sounded clear and sharp to my ears. I couldn't move and wake myself up nor could I take myself back to that blissful abyss of not possessing any senses at all so I had no choice but to lay still and continue hanging in this line between consciousness and unconsciousness.

"So Sambo's Juliet, Dr Ebele was right, you are looking pretty good today. Looks like we won't be needing these tubes on you any longer. Your inhalation injury has healed so you don't need to be on this breathing machine anymore." though the voice was slurred and it sounded like it was a thousand miles away from me, I could still make out the words he said and somehow, I could comprehend them.

"Now all we want is for you to open your eyes. Come on, Jannah, your family and not to mention your lover boy out there have been waiting for you to get out of this dreadful room for the past week. Come on, you've always been extra feisty with me, you never liked me and you never hesitated to let Zara know it so come on, be that brave girl now and fight your way out of this." the words ceased and were replaced by something my mind remembered to be named laughter and then I realise something else, this voice was familiar, it was someone I know. it was Khalid.

I wanted to ask him where I was, ask him why I couldnt move, but the best I could do even after exhorting all the strength I had in me, was to move my eyeballs under my eyelids.

"Come on, get up! Your legs are doing much better too but it's too soon to say they've healed. Though they're definetly on the right track but the ICU is a nasty place to spend another week in don't you think? So come on now, open those eyes so your parents can stop bugging us doctors like we're some kind of magicians. Not to mention that persistent son of a gun Sambo, I mean not even Yasin could scare him off. This hospital has turned into a film house all thanks to these people of yours. Yesterday, it was a melodrama with Ahmad's mom doing everything possible to drag him out of the hospital after Yasin threatened to finish him off, today it was an action thriller with Yasin beating the crap out of him for not leaving, so who knows what tomorrow will be? A comedy? A romance? A happy ending? I really hope so because I'm tired of this shit. I can't stand seeing Sambo every single day, I cant stand this guilt being rubbed in my face."