The Wanderer

Chapter Three

Chapter Three

         She died, Kori’s dead, the person I was the closes to, someone I could trust, was gone. It’s really impossible to describe that kind of shock. I’ve never experienced death before. Here’s what happened when we got home, we called Koris’s house and no one was there. So then we called Kori’s mom’s cell phone, and when she picked up she didn’t even try to stop the sobs that wracked her body, and that was it. We knew that Kori had died. Kori’s mom never really did say anything, her husband grabbed phone and just told us to come over as soon as we could, so we did. When we got there we were directed to the ICU on the first floor, so there we went. When we got there, there was still a bunch of doctors all talking in their med-school language and all crowding around the bed which we now knew to held the body of my best and only friend. Then, suddenly, all the doctors were gone, and of course she was covered up, but I knew that just behind that clean white sheet was my dead friend. I couldn’t cry, the grief was beyond that, I was simply stunned.
         When some one finally broke the silence which was not really silence at all because of the racking sobs of a heart broken mother and the sniffs of a father trying so hard to be brave, it was my mother.
         “Well, what happened?” she croaked. This would have been the cue for the mother to look up stop sobbing a minute then start crying all over again and then my mother would go over to her saying comforting stuff over and over like “There, there” and stuff like that, but that wasn’t the case. Instead it was a lingering doctor who answered.
         “It was a suicide, she drunk a whole bottle of cough syrup and by the time her body recognized the poison and made her vomit it was too late, the poison was already deep in her blood stream.” The doctor answered with a touch of stiffness that shouldn’t have been there.
         I was still incapable of speech, I didn’t think I’d ever be able to talk again; the pain was overwhelming. It felt like a piece of me had died along with Kori, and why had she killed herself? I would have known if she was unhappy, even if she hadn’t told me I still would have known, wouldn’t I? Unless… What if this was my fault, I should have noticed something, but I didn’t. Maybe she never really was my friend at all, what if she had hated me? She was 11 years older then me, what if I had taken all of her time so she couldn’t have any friends her age? Then this must have been my fault, I should have declined one of the sleepover she’d asked me to, and let her have some 16-year-old company for once. Why, why, why? The pain reached an unbearable peak; my head and the half of me that was still left screamed in agony. I opened my mouth and emitted a scream so high no one but a few dogs could hear it, then I collapsed.


         When I opened my eyes again, for the 2nd time in two days I had woken up at a hospital, but this time I didn’t think of alien sucking machines, I though of Kori.
         As I looked around the room I had déjà vu, it was exactly as I remembered from what happened before, except I had no IV, and in the window there was a different angle of the same building outside. I also realized that Mommy was in the room, I was not alone as I was last time, although Mommy was sleeping on the couch, and I didn’t dare wake her. But she woke up herself just then, probably hearing me move around in my cribbed bed.
         “How are you feeling Kristi?” my mommy asked with great concern
         I thought about this for a minute, how was I doing? I didn’t really know, I had never felt this way before, in fact I wasn’t feeling anything at all. I just … was … to give my mom an answer I shrugged.
         “Well we can go home now, you just fainted, and they decided that your STAT’s were fine so they let you sleep it off instead of using salts. You can get your clothes again.”
         I got out of the hospital bed while my mom stood up and stretched. I walked over to the table, opened the door, this time ignoring the bible that I might not ever be able to ask about again. I silently changed into my clothes. My Mommy didn’t even realize my silence, as she was so preoccupied herself.
         As we made the walk this time, another attempt to leave the hospital, we encountered another cart flying down the hall. I unconsciously stopped to watch. The doctors circled around, déjà vu all over again except this wasn’t someone I knew, and there had been a trail of blood down the hall now quickly being cleaned up by a few janitors. I moved my eyes back to the body except there we any doctor around it anymore. The body, some ones, now dead friend, had been a DOA, dead on arrival. Now the body looked just as Kori’s had covered up by a clean white sheet; I saw only difference as a hand whiter then I had ever seen before, whiter even then a vampire’s or an XP patient’s, fit only for an albino, had forced itself out from under the sheet and was pulsing at irregular intervals, with bright red artery blood. I was jerked from this sight by my mom who had just realized I wasn’t with her.
         “You coming sweetie?” she asked not realizing what I had been watching nanoseconds before
         I took one last look at the body and tried not to look at the quickly spreading puddle of bright red blood under the body’s right writs, but seeing it anyways, realizing that this person had been left handed, just as I was.
         “Kristi?” my mom called.
         I turned from the body and walked into one of the janitors who was disinfecting the hall. I could only nod quickly when he cried ‘Watch yourself mate!” not unkindly, and walk away quickly to meet my mom at the revolving hospital doors.
         It wasn’t until we got into the car did I realize that I had two hospital bracelets on, and it wasn’t until we had buckled our seat belts did we realize that it was only 12 o’ clock. It had felt like an age, or at least a fortnight. But we had only known Kori’s fate for 3 hours.
         “How are you feeling?” my mom asked again taking her eyes off the road.
         I sill didn’t know how to answer this question. I still hadn’t said anything, I wasn’t even sure if I could say something. What if my voice box was one of the parts of me that didn’t make it, that had died with Kori? I also didn’t want my mom to have to look over here again though, one second away from watching the road could make Kori’s fate ours. So I decided to try to tell my mom that I didn’t know she’d probably have had a similar experience, maybe. I knew that her mom had died when she was 14, her dad 26, so she must have had something like this.
         “—“ It didn’t work, I couldn’t speak. I felt so helpless sitting there in the backseat, not even being able to say how I was; I hated being dumb.
         “Kristi?” said my mom turning around again, “Are you okay?”
         But again I couldn’t speak, I had the words but they never came out. It was like what people who have be delimbed must feel like, trying to scratch an itch, but not having the limb to do it with.
         “Christine, if you do not answer me in the next ten seconds I am going to assume that something is terrible wrong!” my mother almost screamed swerving on the road.
         What could I do? I couldn’t say anything; I couldn’t let her know that … that … anything. What could I do?
         “When you get home Christine you will be in more trouble then you have ever been in before!” But then her voice cracked, tears flowing freely, thick and fast. The tears obscured her vision, and she had to quickly pull off the road. “Oh baby, I’m so sorry, please forgive me, none of this is your fault. I know that this has been harder on you then anyone, except maybe her parents. I know how much I was in shock when my mother died and I was 14. I’m so, so, sorry baby.”
         The only thing I could do was pat her on the back a bit. I didn’t know that anyone could ever be as useless as I was then. My mom wiped her tears on her shirt, sniveled twice, gave a sigh so big I didn’t know it was humanly possible, and then when back on the road.
         For the rest of the ride we rode in silence. Me, bound by my pact of silence of my dead friend. My mom, bound by my pain.