An Open Sky

Chapter Forty-Five ~Aidan~

I had to get out. I knew that. I had to get out. The pulsating beep of the machine next to me imitated my heart. I took a deep breath. My pulse was increasing. I couldn’t take it anymore. I scanned the complex wiring of the machines around me, the casts weighing me down. I quickly eliminated running as an option.

                My eyes were locked on the door. If I just walked out, could they stop me? Probably… I pondered that for a moment, and decided to make a Plan C. My brain searched for a safer option, but my body kept turning me back to the window across from the bed. I knew what I had to do. I just needed to do it before the nurses were alerted, and there was one small problem. I didn’t know what floor I was on. But there was only one way of finding out…

                My fingers toyed with the IV cord on my arm. Within seconds, there was a small trail of blood traveling down my arm like rain on a window. I cringed. The red…the blood…there was so much of it at the accident… I closed my eyes; by the time I opened them, the needle was sticking out of the inside of my fist, and the blood continued to stain my bandages red. I couldn’t help but pull back the fabric from my wrists. The dampness that the pooling blood caused made me uncomfortable.

                I glanced down.

                My hand immediately shot to my stomach. I jerked off of the bed, the cords pulling at me, resisting my movement. I heard some of them snap off of me, not smoothly enough to release my skin with them. I vomited onto the floor as new blood spots formed under my gown. The image of the black scabs covering my wrists still inhabited my mind; the roughness of them, how they looked like a foreign planet.

                I crawled to the sink, blasting the water, trying to wash the vial taste from my mouth, trying to wash the image from my mind. I continued to gag. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d eaten. My stomach turned. I glanced around the room, stumbling to the window. It was a simple latch. It surprised me how easy it was to open. Obviously this was not the room designated for mentally unstable patients.

                I stuck my head out the window, attempting to decide if I could survive the twenty-foot drop in front of me in my condition. A breeze caught my gown and chilled my skin like ice. I needed clothes, but I knew I wouldn’t find them here. I popped the screen out of the window and hoisted my leg up on the window sill. I breathed slowly, analyzing the impact of the fall and what position of landing I should take to minimize it.

                I didn’t give myself time to think. I knew if I did that I’d never get out of the hospital room. I gripped my hands along the sides of the window and threw myself out.

                I fell fast. I hit hard.

                My shoulder crashed underneath me. It crunched like paper under my weight. The grass below me may have been needles. I heard the screams. My eyes shot around, searching for witnesses, just to find myself alone in an alley. I pulled myself up with my right arm, dragging my left behind me. I groaned against the pain. My jaw clenched so violently my teeth cracked against one another. The cool breeze didn’t make the situation any less uncomfortable.

                I braced myself against the rough brick of the hospital wall and slid myself into a suggestive standing position. I needed to get home. Correction, I needed to figure out how to get home. I slid my head around the corner of the building. To my surprise, right there next to my face was an old, black payphone. It reminded me of the creepy old films my grandfather used to watch when I was a kid, before they locked him up.

                He used to babysit me. We would be playing a game and he would always bring “guests” over. He would stop the game, and invite them in. I remembered how they smelled. I would always try to secretly scrunch my nose to block the smell; I didn’t want to make a big deal of it and be rude to them. The whole group would laugh and toss bags and coins back and forth as my grandfather assured the men that I was harmless and I didn’t understand what was going on. I just sat on the couch and pretended to be watching the news, because that’s what was always on when my grandfather was around. The men were right though, I really had no idea what was going on.

                I remember always being mad at them. Whenever they came they brought my grandfather a gift in a bag. I always used to admire the poor wrapping job of the men. The small packages were just wrapped in plastic wrap, nothing respectable like wrapping paper. After the men came, I knew we would never finish the game we were playing because whenever the men left I would get sent to my room and the house would become filled with the bitter-sweet smell of smoke. 

                A half an hour later all the doors and windows would be open; all the fans would be on, and my grandfather would have me waving a blanket back and forth to get rid of the fumes before my father came home. Before my father fixed everything. Before my father got sick.

                Before he stopped caring…

                The payphone must have been the last one in existence in the whole country. I made my way over to it. The once-slick black paint was consumed by the brownish-blood color of rust, which was currently occupied by eating the whole thing away. I scanned the area for any sign of people. It was a pretty god-forsaken place. There was no one. It felt awkward how the scene was so peaceful and serene around the building, yet inside, there was bound to be someone dying. I refocused on the payphone.

                Money. I needed money. I bent down, despite the pounding in my shoulder, and crawled on the ground. My fingers went over smooth stones and rough grass; my knee scraped along the ground, forming fresh new cuts. The intense burning pain in my shoulder tricked me into thinking I’d been there for hours before I finally found it.

                At first, my eyes mistook the coin for just a mound of dirt or another stone, but when my fingers shifted it, I caught the slight coin-like reflection of the quarter. Time also had not been polite to the grimy quarter that I held between my fingers. The date had been scratched off; the normal silver color of the coin had become a light dirt color; the mold that had inhabited the coin made the once-smooth surface lumpy and rough.

                It would have to work.

                I stepped into the musty, damp confines of the payphone. I kept the door open a crack so I could still breathe. I slid the coin into the slot, grateful that it had left contact with my skin. I dialed one of the only numbers that I’d taken the effort to commit to memory.

                I listened to the ringing. Please just pick up. Minutes seemed to pass between each ring. My neck started to dampen from the humidity of the payphone. I leaned against the glass and used my foot to kick the door open a little more.

                “Hello?”

                I jumped. I’d been too busy convincing myself that there was going to be no answer to plan what I was even going to say. The impatient voice startled me once again.

                “Who is this?”

                I sighed, collecting myself. “Um, hey Dani? I really need your help right now…”