Already Gone

Surrender

"So the good news is that your blood tests all came back normal," Dr. Torres said and then looked back down at the chart, "And your MRI was normal as well. It looks like the infection is only at the skin."

"That's good," I smiled tiredly.

It had been quite the night.

Dr. Torres nodded, "That's right, it is good."

   There was a moment of silence that followed since I had nothing else to say. Dr. Torres looked like she wanted to say something else, to keep going, maybe bring up my mother again.

Instead, though, she told me to rest up and left the room.

   Fine by me, I didn't want to talk about it. Plus, it bought me more time to come up with a reason why my mother couldn't come and discharge me this time because clearly I wasn't done with lying just yet.

I laid back against the hospital bed, looking up at the ceiling.

   Would the doctors believe me if I told them that my mom had been eaten by a bunch of rabid alligators?

Probably not.

   It seemed like every excuse I could think of though seemed just as far-fetched as the alligator one, which made me frustrated.

Then the fact that I was frustrated because of something like this made me mad at myself.

Mad that I lived and the other people on the bus didn't.

   If I had died, it would have caused less harm than any one of them, because I was sure that they had families who were now grieving, and mine wouldn't have cared less if I were in their shoes.

It should have been me.

~~~

"Can we get a dog?"

I looked over at Stella, confused.

   We were sitting on the couch in the living room. I was trying to study for the algebra test that I had tomorrow and Stella had been playing with her dolls so this question came rather out of the blue.

"What made you think of that?" I asked, setting my pencil down for a moment.

Stella shrugged, "Elyse just got a puppy. His name is Toby and he's super cute."

"Oh, was he the puppy you were playing with after school today?" I remembered Stella with the poodle puppy from earlier.

Stella nodded, "Yeah, that's Toby."

"You know, if I could Stella, I would totally get a dog," I told her, being completely truthful, "But I don't think I can take care of a dog."

Stella pouted slightly, "But I can help. I can walk it, and feed it, and give it water..."

"I know you can Stell-Bell," I said, "But what I mean is I don't think I'll have enough money to buy the food for you to feed it and what if the dog gets sick? You have to pay for the dog doctor to fix him."

"Okay..." Stella looked bummed but she genuinely sounded like she understood why we couldn't get a dog.

"Maybe when we get more money," I knew I shouldn't make promises I couldn't keep.

Stella nodded, "Yeah...okay."

~~~

   When I initially woke up, I had forgotten where I was. However, I was quickly reminded when I saw all the equipment around me.