Mad About You

Sixteen-Mouth without a face

Sixteen

Mouth without a face

Candy striper duty turned out to not be that bad. Besides occasionally having to empty out bedpans and spoon feed some geriatric patients, for the most part it was actually pretty interesting. I got to see my mom in action as she dealt with patients coming into the ER from various incidents like car accidents, hiking accidents, and even a few of those sex brought me to the ER cases that I didn't think were real until they came in.

Once things settled down, I ended up just roaming down one hall and looking at the different patient's clipboard. One older lady was suffering from coronary heart disease but looked healthy as a horse. Another man also suffered from a heart condition but he too looked like the picture of good health.

Finally, I ran into a really interesting patient. He was in a coma and I couldn't make out his face for it was wrapped up along with the rest of his body. He had been in a really bad car accident where the car exploded.

A nurse suddenly came in to check his vitals. "Sad what happened to this kid. Only 19 years old. Parents said he was such a good kid. Never did anything in his life and the one time he goes out to a college party, he gets struck by a drunk driver."

"Do you think he will live?"

"Hard to say. The doctors are working hard but it's really doubtful that he will come out of his coma and even if on the small chance he does, it will be a long time before he may function normally again if ever. The burns were so bad but not nearly as bad as his concussion. Poor Taylor."

"Taylor?"

"That's his name." She said pointing to the clipboard I was holding. I hadn't even checked the name. I looked down to see his name was Taylor Branch. "Parents said he never even had a girlfriend."

"Maybe he wasn't that good looking." I said with a shrug.

"Oh his mom showed me a picture. He was a sight for sore eyes which makes this even sadder."

"How did he look exactly?" I asked growing more curious though I didn't know why.

"I dunno. Dark brown hair, chestnut-colored eyes, chiseled jaw line, definitely hard to believe he never had a girlfriend but his mom said it wasn't like he didn't have girls fawning over him, just that he felt like there was someone he was meant to wait for."

I suddenly got the strangest feeling in the pit of my stomach.

"When did this happen?"

"New Year's Eve. Why?"

That was the day we got to LA.

"Oh just seems so sad that this would happen right around the holidays."

"Yeah his parents didn't even know he had come back to LA, he told them he would be staying up in Stanford for New Years. His best friend from high school who came to see him recently said that he just felt inclined to come back down and when he got the UCLA New Years bash invite from him, he felt compelled to come back like it was meant to be or something even though he had just come back for Christmas. Talk about tragic fate."

"Yeah totally."

"Well maybe you can wake this sleeping beauty up and nurse him back to health?" She joked.

"Anything's possible," I said with a shrug as she left out of the room. I took one last look at the mummified comatose patient and just for a moment I thought I might of saw his mouth, which was the only thing visible on his face, move. It almost seemed like he was mouthing a word. I moved closer to see if I could maybe hear it.

"Anya!" I thought escaped from his mouth but I looked up to see it was my mom. "What are you doing?"

I looked back down at him and saw no movement at all escaping from his lips. Maybe I had imagined it. I quickly moved away from him and put his chart back on the end of his bed before leaving out of the room.

"Nothing."

"Its tragic what happened to him."

"Yeah Nurse Sharon told me."

"He probably won't even get to see his 21st birthday. I can't even imagine what his parents are going through right now. If that happened to you..." My mom trailed off, hugging me so tight that I felt once again like packed sardines.

"Well it's a good thing I don't have a car."

"Anya seriously, please be careful. Just because you don't have a car doesn't mean you can't get an accident. Your friends drive and after what you did last week, I worry even more that this could easily be you."

"It won't. I promise!"