If I Were A Boy (camren)

Chapter Twenty-Seven

I felt like I was eighteen again.

The familiar hospital room, the incoming doctors and nurses; it was all the same.

One doctor that came in quite often was sitting at the end of my bed in an office chair, spinning himself left and right like a child would do. I wanted to say something to him when he had asked me questions, but I couldn't.

Literally.

My lips wouldn't budge and my tongue flopped around uselessly. 

He took a big spin and then suddenly stopped to make direct eye contact with me.

"Do you know why you're here, Lauren?" He questioned curiously.

I shrugged in response and looked down at my conjoined hands to begin playing mindlessly with my fingers. 

"Your heart is starting fail on you. When you were trying to save Mrs. Cabello in that fire, you were lacking a lot of oxygen. Your heart needs oxygen to survive, Ms. Jauregui. A certain blood flow that is suppose to bring the much needed air to your main organ was severally reduced, and that lead to a myocardial infarction."

I raised my eyebrow at his last few words in complete confusion.

"A heart attack, Lauren," he lightly grinned. "You risked your life for this woman, and honestly the whole hospital is buzzing on one question: why?"

Before I could alert him that I couldn't exactly answer, he held up his hand, "You'll start therapy tomorrow. They'll get you back on track and you'll be talking again in no time. Anything else for today?"

I lifted my right hand up slightly and managed to make a 'C' out of my pointer finger and thumb. 

The doctor's facial expression immediately went blank. He stood up slowly and cleared his throat, "They're still running tests on her. They aren't sure what exactly happened, but depending on the amount of damage done to her back, she could be in a wheelchair for the rest of her life. She was terribly burned and bruised too."

My entire body went cold and my lips trembled in sorrow. My breathing started to stagger around just as my torso squeezed hard against me. Through my tear filled eyes that were also blurry from the lack of air in the room, I spotted that the doctor had sprinted out of the doorway and was shouting for help from his colleagues. Before I knew it, a woman was beside me and maneuvering my hospital bed out from its parked position.

"You're going to be okay, honey," she whispered to me when I suddenly let out a hiccup that was suppose to be a scream of pain. "Take deep breaths, and if you can't just look at me."

I tried to obey the nurse's command, but failed miserably. She nudged my chin upwards to look at her once she noticed my red face. Even though I couldn't see a thing, the nurse's shape seemed oddly familiar to me. I studied her during my whole entire journey to an unknown place- all the way up until my lungs finally gave up and I passed out.

*

"Jesus, Laur," someone close mumbled into my ear as my eyelids fluttered open. My brain took a few moments to reboot itself and then I swiveled my head in the direction of the voice. I couldn't hold back my dropping jaw at the sight of the person.

"Still keeping up those old school panic attacks?" Dinah smiled gently and removed her hand from the top of mine. 

I watched in utter shock as the found girl backed away from my bedside and to a stool that was placed at the near by wall. What even surprised me more was that Dinah was wearing the hospital's nurse uniform.  Since I couldn't speak, I just pointed at her in disbelief.