Lost (Parrlyn)

Chapter 4

My body felt light, and clean, and normal, and I wriggled the feeling back into my fingers and toes. The aching pain that was in my stomach had gone, and a light, cool, airy feeling had replaced it.

What was happening to me?

I could feel my heart pumping vigorously in my chest, giving me the impression that there was like a mini machine in my chest, forcing my heart to beat and work.

Am I dead?

And then I felt a cool breeze blow gently against my heated cheeks, feeling my core temperature drop slightly.

I couldn't be dead, surely? With a working heart and emotions and senses and all?

And voice. Voices! I could hear people chatting away, around me.

Maybe I wasn't dead? But if so... how?

I slid hopelessly into the world of dreams...

*****

'Lizzie, shhhhhh. You'll wake her up!'

'I thought that was what we were trying to do!'

'I don't know, what happens if she just randomly woke up now?'

'Then we call Mum.'

'You make it sound as if it was nothing.'

The sound of children chatting away filled my ear drums, jerking me out of my slumber. My eyes reopened, and to my greatest shock, I was hit with a face full of light and bright colour. I had to gently flutter my eyes to grow accustomed to this bright environment and once my eyes had adjusted, I slowly sat up. The children's voices I had heard was a young boy and a girl, who were still muttering away angrily to one another. They hadn't noticed I had stirred.

'Hey,' I said, uncertainly to the children and the first thing both of them did was let out a small scream of astonishment. I held out my hands gently and I put the kindest expression I could muster on my face, trying to look like I was mother, instead of somebody who had potentially been living on the streets for five months.

'Shhh it's okay.' I hushed, trying to soothe the panicked children. I felt quite bad for scaring them, I mean, they're just harmless, innocent children.

'I'm calling Anne,' The boy said after a long moment of silence had passed. I watched him snatch the phone out the girl's grasp, and hurriedly dial a number. He then shot the phone to his ear and he started gabbling in very fast English. It was so fast that my brain could barely make out what he was saying, and my brain was functioning very slowly since I had just woken up.

'She's coming.' The boy said, cautiously sitting down into one of the seats beside my bed. The other girl followed suit, gracefully positioning herself in the other chair across the room.

'So, what are your names?' I asked, breaking the uncomfortable silence that had passed between us all. The boy shot the other girl a look of uncertainty before he answered with,

'Edward. Edward Tudor.'

I saw the girl hesitate momentarily before she mumbled,

'Elizabeth Tudor, but everybody calls me Lizzie.'

'Right Lizzie and Edward, enlighten me of how I got here.'

And so they began their tale, haltingly at first. After they had started chatting, they became more confident, revealing their funny sides and confident sides. I smiled to myself as I saw them start crawling out of their shells as they started telling me of how I got here from each of their different points of views, blossoming with each word. Children are nice like that, once you get them talking about something good and interesting, you've created a loyal bond between you. They're easy to get to know, and fun and entertaining too.

The story was more important than making bonds with Lizzie and Edward. And so they told me.

Somebody called Anne Boleyn, whom was Lizzie's mum but not Edward's, told me how she found me lying unconscious on the road and took me to hospital. There, the doctors took me in for examination and gave me a pace maker to get my heart pumping at a more regular pace. I was an inch away from dying, they said, but thank goodness the doctors manage to feed me through a feeding tune and bring back the nutrition I was so desperately lacking.

After hearing it all, I was at a loss for words. The kids could sense that and they immediately started chatting about random topics such as, why pineapple doesn't fit on pizza or why it's pronounced sCOOOnes instead of sgones. I was grateful that they did that, as it gave me time to process all of the information.

That explained why the room was so bright, because I was in a hospital. My slow brain hadn't quite processed that since I had woken up.

Just when we were all getting into a new debate over how to pronounce hyperbole, (I swear I'm the only person who says it as HyperBOWL, instead of HyPERbolEEEE) two doctors had hurried into the room, followed by a large group of five women and a child.

The doctors scolded Edward and Lizzie for having not contacted a Doctor the second I had gained consciousness, and they both hung their heads, wearing downcast expressions. I took pity on both of them and I said,

'Oh don't blame them, they were getting me accustomed to the new world.'

The doctors laughed at this and bustled around me, checking my blood pressure and heart rate and so on before they looked at me and finally said,

'We can discharge you now, you'll just have to sign some papers and then you can head back home.'

'I don't have a home to go to.' I blurred out unintentionally before I quickly covered my hand with my mouth, 'Oops.' I didn't want other people offering their sympathy and pitying me.

'She's just confused.' One of the woman with a bouncy green skirt hastily said to the surprised doctors, 'Yes she's a bit of a joker but she belongs with us.'

I warmed at those words. I gave the lady with the bouncy green skirt a grateful smile and she gave me one back, but instead of it being beaming, it was full of character. It was humorous and contagious along with joyful and radiant. We watched the doctor's slip out of the room, eyeing us with suspicion and mistrust. I was so used to that look after living on the streets from snobby little rich people who always thought I had something to do with drugs. I turned my attention back onto the woman who had supposedly helped me, and then my brain suddenly clicked.

'Oh my goodness, your that Anne Boleyn girl! And you are Catherine of Aragon, Jane Seymour, Anna of Cleves and Katherine Howard! I remember you all!'

They all waved and smiled politely, taken aback by my sudden outburst.

Henry had once showed me a photo album of him and his other wives. In each of those photos resembled pictures of women wearing their fake smiles, and fed up eyes, waiting for somebody to rescue them all from a stupid jerk like Henry. I supposed they had all been through what I had gone through.

'Are you all really going to take me in?' I asked anxiously, chewing on the ends of my finger nails.

'Of course! I also had to say that to the nurses or they wouldn't let us all see you.' Anne Boleyn said, letting her green skirt flop around. It almost reminded me of some kind of spring. She held out her hand. 'If you'd accept and tell us your name?'

I slipped my hand into hers and smiled happily back. 'I'm Catherine Parr.'