The Only Hope For Me Is You

Chapter 1

     Damn door, I thought as I caressed my finger. Opening the door into this crypt I shall be forced to call home, I had accidentally slammed my finger against the doorknob. Stupid shiny doorknob. Why couldn't you be a whore and stay open? I muttered to myself. Belleville, New Jersey, you are really getting to me. So much that I've come to the point of insane conversations with myself.  I looked towards the end of the street and could just see the cab that dropped me off silently driving away into the light side of twilight. "Take me with you," I pleaded miserably. I sighed and picked up my luggage. Passing the threshold, I wrestled with my bags across the living room, up the stairs, and into my "new-not-really-this-used-to-be-a-mini-gym" room. Throwing them aside, I catapulted onto my twin-sized bed facedown and cried. I pulled the blankets over my head and held my knees up to my shaking chest. I had no fear of being caught spilling my heart out because there was no point. There was nobody else in this house.

     Feeling tears streaming down my face, I tried to remember what had happened these past weeks. It all seemed like such a blur. I recalled one exceptionally beautiful day in my lovely city of New York. My family and I were driving through it's crowded streets I grew up in. The Yankees were in town and it was about time my three year old little brother went to his first baseball game. My dad had the unrealistic dream of catching the winning ball and my mom planned on taking us to dinner afterwards. It was a completely normal day. Yet on the way to the stadium we had no idea how quick our lives would change. The last thing I saw was my little brother Frankie's face smiling up at me, playing with my hair with his small chubby hands, before I blacked out.

      I woke up in a white-washed room with a bunch of cables sticking out of me and with a throbbing pain in my head.

     I looked around me, white everywhere. I had to blink twice and rub my eyes to try to register my surroundings. I shivered and looked at the thermostat. 18 degrees. I was trapped within four white walls of complete confusion. Suddenly, out of nowhere, I'm greeted with a relieved sob and a loving embrace. "Oh God! Oh God! Thank God!" cried a familiar voice. As soon as I heard that voice I had heard a million times before, I pushed my twenty-two year old sister off of me out of pure instinct. She didn't fight me but still kept her hands on mine. You know how when you see a relative that you hadn't seen in a long time you're filled with momentous joy and come up with the urge to small talk to know what they've been doing in such a long time that they hadn't contacted you in any way? Well, you're probably guessing that's what I did. So yes, the first words I blurted out like the delicate lady I am, "What the fuck happened to your face?"

     Feely had saliva and make-up stains all over her face and down her neck. Not to be rude but it was a disgusting sight to see on my beauty queen of a sister. "Oh Frannie! You're okay!" she said as she hugged me again. (I could tell she hadn't showered in a long time either.) This time I didn't stop her.

"What do you mean? Why woludn't I be okay?" I said. "What's going on?"

Unsettling my nerves, she stared at me with sympathy, with such sadness it almost brought tears to my eyes and said,"Fran, do you want me to bring you something to eat? You must be starving..."

"Stop that! you're scaring me Feely. Just tell me what's going on. I have a right to know that you don't. Last time I checked I was the one strapped to into this hospital bed....wait, hospital bed...hospital bed...ugly, crying sister with red marks all over...I am freezing cold...either I am turning into a vampire or I'm dying."

"I missed that..your stupidity...Fran...," she sighed,"....you've been in a coma for four days." 

My jaw dropped. "In a coma?" I said with a squeak, "really? wait, why? What happened? I don't remember anything." With a jolt I said,"What about mom and dad and Frankie? Are they okay?"

At this point, Feely's melancholic smile, frank eyes, and silence  broke my heart into shards. I didn't need Feely's answer to know the truth. I started bawling my eyes out and started breathing in gasps. 

A man ate a red light in rush to deliver his pregnant wife to the hospital and didn't see our mini cooper cruising in the road. Both cars collided in full force. They were smashed together and ours ended up under a light post. The man had lost his child, his wife, and his will to live. Feely cried saying that he ended up shooting himself as soon as he found out. We wouldn't have held a grudge against him. I'm actually terribly sorry I didn't get the chance to talk to another survivor. As for me, I survived. I was miraculously on the far side of the accident, away from the car and pole. But my happiness died right alongside my mother, my father, and darling little three year old Frankie.