Wake Up, Anna

NOTE: This is a story I wrote a few years ago, and have spent the time since occasionally sprucing-up but generally just forgetting in my document folder. It's a sad one, about a girl named Anna who has a respiratory condition. Enjoy!

WAKE UP, ANNA

         Pain. Pain. Pain.
         Her chest was on fire, burning, blazing, and scorching her lungs. A thousand knives were stabbing, ripping at her lungs. She curled into a ball, clutching her arms together in an iron embrace, dragging breaths into her body. It hurt to breathe. She was only vaguely conscious of her surroundings; the nurse’s office, probably. She had been taken out of the lunchroom in a wheelchair again, with everyone looking, staring at her like the audience at some kind of circus, and she was the freak with two heads. The fluorescent lights above her, mounted in the dull, off-white ceiling speckled with grey, shone one moment too brightly and the next too dimly. Yes. Definitely the nurse’s office. She’d seen those lights too many times for it to be anywhere else. Her mind throbbed in tune with her heartbeat. Throb-bump, throb-bump, throb-bump... she shut her eyes tight.
         “Anna? Can you hear me, honey?” The nurse was trying to get her to respond, but she thought that there were more important things to worry about at the current moment, like how come she couldn’t feel anything but agony, white hot, blinding pain? Or, perhaps, why did she feel like clawing through her skin and her muscle and tearing out her chest?
         “Anna? If you can hear me, nod your head.” Why? Why did she have to nod her head? Why couldn’t everyone just leave her alone so that she could focus on becoming nothing, on fading away until this pain left her body, or until she left it? She would take whichever as long as it came soon.
         “Anna?”
         Just shut up, she screamed in her mind. To appease the nagging woman she curtly shifted her head in what could have passed for a nod, which apparently was taken as a sign encouraging the lady to talk more. “Anna, now I know that this is probably painful for you-”
         --No, no, not at all. I just love the fetal position, I think it makes the day just that much better when I’m rocking back and forth on a putrid cot, trying to keep my lungs from spilling out all over you. Really, I’m fine--
         “--but I need you to hold on for just a while longer. We’re calling your father, and he should be on his way right now. Just breathe, honey, just take a deep breath--”
         It hurt, it hurt so badly...
         --Breathe? Gee, that’s some great advice, Nurse Frederickson. I can’t imagine what I would do without your brilliant medical mind. Really, breathing never occurred to me before, what a marvel--
         “--You’re doing so very well, Anna, you’re such a big girl, I can’t believe how well you’re doing--”
         Agony, torture, madness, anguish, it hurt...
         --What, am I five years old, now? Why, thank you, Nurse Frederickson. You know, at first, I was a bit worried that I was doing the whole ‘writhing in pain’ thing wrong, but your encouragement just makes me feel all warm inside... oh, no, wait, that’s just MY LUNGS, BEING BURNT TO A BLACKENED CRISP WHILE YOU SIT THERE COOING LIKE I’M YOUR PET FERRET--
         “--Oh, Anna, you’re father’s here! Now, see, he’ll take you home where you’ll be more comfortable, and--”
         It hurt, it hurt, it hurt...
         “Anna? Is it happening again?”
         She loved her father, she did, but sometimes he was just as big of an idiot as her classmates. That’s what they had all shouted at her during lunch when her chest had detonated again, when she fell out of her chair, hitting her head on the floor and spilling strawberry juice all over her white shirt. “Is your pain-thing happening again, Anna? Is that what’s wrong?”Why else would I be seizing on the floor? She had asked silently as the students in the cafeteria had gathered around her-- all except for two frightened sophomores, who ran to get Nurse Frederickson like good little Samaritans. As she had grabbed at her chest like it had been stabbed by some sort of glowing fire poker, as she whimpered and tears leaked from her eyelids, they had stared dumbly. “Are you all right, Anna? Does that hurt?”
         Those were the two questions that she abhorred most in the entire world. Are you all right? Does it hurt? What ridiculously stupid questions! Of course I’m not all right! Of course it hurts! If I were all right I would be sitting on my chair enjoying my juice and not on the ground choking on my own saliva! If it didn’t hurt I would be munching on a carrot stick, and not wishing for my heart to just rupture, already!
         But she couldn’t say any of that, because she was choking on her own saliva, and she was wishing for her heart to just rupture, already, and that kept her pretty busy. Her hands clenched themselves into tight fists, and she didn’t register her fingernails digging into her palms like metal blades. She closed her mouth to keep from completely howling with torture, and she didn’t notice her teeth tearing into her tender lips like sharp saws. She felt only the pain in her chest, only the throbbing of her heart and her mind, together, as one. Throb-bump, throb-bump, throb-bump...
         And then the nurse had come. And then they had loaded her into the wheelchair, again, and carted her off to the nurse’s office which, on a regular day when she had come simply to bandage a paper cut, she had noticed had a faint medicinal, antibacterial smell. Like the hospital, but minimized down to a tiny level.
         The hospital. Another place she frequented too often for her taste.
         “Anna? They’re going to put you into the wheelchair again, and then we’re going to get in the car, and I’ll take you home, okay, kiddo?” Her father seemed so concerned, so alarmed, that if she weren’t in excruciating amounts of pain she would raise her eyes to look at him. Before she could take another deep, shuddering breath-- life changing tips brought to you by Nurse Frederickson-- she was lifted up and seated gently into the wheelchair. Well, she was sure that they thought they were setting her down gently; in her mind, nothing was gentle, nothing was free from the misery she was feeling, including her behind.
         The pains had come out of nowhere a few years ago, so abruptly that no one could figure out exactly what they were. It was like one day there they were, the killing, soul-ripping agony that shredded her skin and muscles and organs apart like thousands of fiery pitchforks, and then left her with an aching remnant hours later. She didn’t know why. No one did. She just knew that she had them, that each and every time they began she wanted to throw herself off of a cliff and be eaten by ravenous sharks, rather than experience the pain that came with them. She had spent endless days in the hospital, endless days in therapy, endless days on endless medications... and still, the pain itself was endless.
         It made her weak and tired, unable to concentrate on school or friends. She lost weight and dark circles ringed her eyes, making her already pale face seem gaunt and pallid. The medications made her retch and feverish, gave her rashes or made her face swell. And none of them got rid of the pain.
         She did not even try to open her eyes this time. Even if she had the strength to loosen her eye muscles, she would never want to see the faces of her classmates gaping at her again from the halls, from the doorways, from anywhere they could get their grubby little faces to stick out from. It had happened too much, so many faces, so many people... and she was the freak.
         “Here we go, kiddo,” said her father.
         And suddenly they were outside, and the cold autumn wind assaulted her face and bare arms-- she didn’t notice. A bump in the sidewalk jarred her chair-- that she felt, because it shot up through the metal into her chest, and she cried out. Instantly the voices of Nurse Frederickson, her father, and, it appeared, Principal Willis overlapped each other in asking how she was. “Maybe we should take her to the hospital,” Principal Willis said, and she could almost sense his large, protruding chin wiggling in the breeze as he spoke. The thought almost made her think about trying to smirk. Kind of.
         “I’m not sure,” her father replied, worry and indecision scoring his voice, “they’ve never been able to pinpoint it before, and she hates hospitals so much. We were there so often...” His sentence began to fade away, dulling into a low whine, sort of like the buzzing of a bee on a spring day, or the fuzzy sound that you hear when a radio station doesn’t come in clearly. I’m passing out, she thought with relief. Finally.
         She only ever fainted when the pains were very, very bad- and they had been very, very bad a lot, lately. Her body simply couldn’t take the stress, and so it closed up and stopped everything except the vital stuff like breathing until her muscles could recuperate. Not that they ever recuperated enough to completely stifle the pain.
         The spots that shot from behind her eyelids, the bright neon colors intermixing with white and gold and silver and every so often splashes of red as the blood vessels in her eyes popped, started to disappear, replaced with the odd and yet oh so comforting blackness that came before the nothingness of oblivion. The voices of the adults were steadily vanishing, and she was thanking her lucky stars.
         But the pain remained. The pain always remained. Everything else could fade, but the pain remained until the very last moment of consciousness.
         “Anna, are you-- Anna? Are you still with us? Anna? ANNA!” She barely heard her father, but her mind, still throb-bumping along with the anguish pressing and inflaming her lungs, hardly took the time to perceive his panicked tone. She was slipping, falling into the blissful dreamlessness. She hated dreaming. Because in her dreams, the pain was still there, still haunting her, in different forms-- a ghost, an attacker, a demon... always a different threat, and yet always a symbol for the real one. The pain was always there.
         “We have to take Anna to the hospital,” Principal Willis cheeped at the edge of her mind.
         And then she was gone. Poof! Like a magic spell, transporting her to another world.
         But the pain went with her. It crept in the shadows, waiting
          #
         When she awoke, the dull, off-white ceilings of the nurse’s office had changed to the dull, off-white ceilings of a hospital room. Looking over to the plaque that stated which room she was in, she felt like sighing. Somehow, the hospital staff always seemed to have room 217 available for her. She’d never been in any other room, in all of the twenty-something times she’d been rushed here. Always room 217.
         The killing agony was gone, replaced with a simple ache, the ache that never went away, a reminder of another inevitable spasm of pain that would come without warning, anywhere, at anytime. A plastic cup of white, chalky-looking pills sat on a table beside the bed, next to the bright red aid button. They were the nasty pills, the ones that they forced down her throat when she was stuffed with sedatives, because she wouldn’t take them if she were fully aware of her situation. They didn’t really help, anyway. Thinking for a minute, she shrugged and pushed the red button, its plastic making a soft clacking noise against her fingernail, which was dark with crimson stains etched into the skin’s crevices.
         She timed how long it took for her aide to arrive. “Nice hustle, Tina,” she congratulated hoarsely as a slim, dark haired nurse ran into the room- the woman stopped at the defibrillator, one finger on the handgrip of a paddle. “You almost clocked a record, there.”
         Turning, Tina scowled. “Very funny, Anna,” she scoffed, but there was a trace of a relieved smile behind her narrowed eyes. She watched Tina come over to lounge in one of the comfortable armchairs- at least, she assumed that they were comfortable, seeing as she had never been in one of them, only the bed. “How are you feeling now?” her aide asked.
         “What would you say if I told you that I felt perfectly healthy, and that I think the pain is gone for good, and that I believe I never have to come back to this hospital or take those disgusting pills again?”
         “I would say that you’re feeding me a bunch of crap.”
         “Oh. Well, then, I’m achy.” This is what she liked about Tina. She never asked stupid questions like ‘are you okay?’ or told her to ‘take deep breaths’. Tina was smart, and funny, and nice to be around when the smell of chemicals and the machinery of the hospital ward frightened her, as they sometimes did.
         Tina glanced at her, studying her face. “How bad was it, this time, Anna?” Tina had been with her through several of her ‘episodes’, as they liked to call them.
         She opened her hands, which for the most part had been closed tightly even in her sleep, and showed Tina the four shallow cuts on each palm. Then she touched her lip, which was swollen and puffy, and no doubt purplish with bruise. Taking the mirror Tina handed to her, she wet a tissue with her tongue and rubbed at a track of dried blood coming from her split lip. “In all honesty, it wasn’t as bad as some I’ve had,” she lied, sighing-- she quickly halted the action when her chest warned her of its tenderness with a sharp jolt.
         For a while they simply sat and talked, but didn’t mention her episode again. Tina showed her the small diamond ring on her left hand, and gave her the details about her upcoming wedding. The woman seemed so jubilant that she didn’t want to ruin the moment by mentioning that her chest was still feeling uncomfortable. There was no point to it.
         Tina made her take the nasty white pills, made her choke them down with her favorite grapefruit juice that they had in stock almost exclusively for her, because apparently no other patients liked it. This meant more for her, of course.
         As they were discussing Tina’s wedding gown, passed down from her grandmother, her father entered the room, carrying a tray of food. She almost sighed again. Hospital food. Yuck. At least there was grapefruit juice.
         “Eat up, Anna,” he sang optimistically as he hooked the tray onto the bed above her legs. She stuck her tongue out at him, and he repeated the gesture, his face scrunching up like a five-year-old's.
         As she took tentative bites of her supposedly ‘scrambled eggs’ (at least they were labeled ‘eggs’), she asked, “So, when am I blowing this popsicle stand, anyway?”
         Her father shifted uncomfortably. “Anna,” he said, kneeling by her bed. His rough, cracked hand took her small, soft one. “I’ve been speaking with Doctor Ricota, and he thinks that you should stay here for a few days this time.”
         Her brow furrowed. “Why?” she demanded. “He knows the pain comes sporadically. Why do I have to stay here for days?” She hated Dr. Ricota, who she secretly called Dr. Cheese-Brain because his name was pronounced like ricotta, and in her opinion the actual dairy product had more mental capacity than the man with the PhD.
         “We just think it would be better for you, not having to move around the house all of the time. The less exertion, the better.” Her father bent his head down to stare her in the eyes. “You really scared us this time, kiddo,” he told her, stroking her knuckles with his thumb. He turned to Tina. “It’s never been this bad, no matter what she tells you. This was the worst Dr. Ricota and I have seen so far.”
         Another, larger, figure entered the room. Speak of the Cheese, she thought bitterly as Dr. Ricota stepped up behind her father. “Hello, Anna. You seem thinner- have you been losing weight?” he asked, with a tight smile that reminded her of mold. He was portly, and his eyes were tiny, and beady, like a bug. Why is it that a doctor who weighs more than a Buick can lecture me about my weight deficiencies? “Are you all right now, Anna?”
         She shook with irritation at his questions, but brushed it off. Instead she rolled her eyes and looked at her father, who mussed her hair playfully. “You’ll be fine,” he told her with a faint smile. “We’ve done this sort of thing before. You’ll be out again in no time.” Standing, he brought the bright yellow bag from the other side of the room, the ‘hospital bag’ that her father always packed for short notices. He pulled out her favorite pajamas, three books, a soft green blanket, and her stuffed armadillo, El Tigre, who had accompanied her long stays at the hospital since her first episode nearly two years ago. “These are to make you more comfortable.” Her father’s grin grew as she took El Tigre into her arms. There is nothing more comforting, even to a fifteen year old, than a favorite object in the midst of such unfavorable and unwelcoming conditions.
         Later, after she had used the bathroom and changed into her pajamas, her father tucked the soft green blanket around her and settled El Tigre into the crook of her arm. Smoothing the hairs away from her forehead he smiled and kissed her brow before handing her a book. It was The Three Musketeers, her favorite. Of course her father would know to bring it. He always knew.
         “Get some rest, kiddo,” he requested with a last smile before leaving the room, shutting the door behind him. All was quiet in the hallways, the only sounds the occasional orderly as they wheeled by carts of medication or a quick-footed nurse clicking her shoes as she walked. She settled into her book and for a while she almost forgot where she was, who she was, and what was happening to her.
         But all too soon she was reminded, as the twinge in her chest began to grow, intensifying much more quickly than was normal for her. In no less than a few minutes the spots of color were back in front of her eyes, her breaths forceful and hard. It wasn’t that she couldn’t breathe, it was just that it hurt to inhale and exhale when her lungs and heart and all the muscles in between were waging a war against her, dropping bombs and grenades and nuclear missiles into her chest cavity. She flipped herself onto her side and curled into the familiar fetal position, her makeshift bomb shelter, and turned toward the window to stare out into the parking lot far below, watching the matchbox cars and the little plastic people as they traveled.
         Soon after-- she didn’t know how much longer exactly but it felt like an eternity with the gnawing of her lungs by some rabid creature-- she felt someone turn her over onto her back. She faintly heard herself let out a sort of growl, like an injured animal, but then saw through the hazy throb-bump of her mind that Tina was staring at her with worried anxiety, and she was speaking. Tina was saying something, but for the life of her she couldn’t understand it. Maybe it was something intelligent, or maybe Tina had been corrupted by Nurse Frederickson and it was just “breathe, Anna, breathe”... there was no way to tell, and she really wasn’t paying that much attention, anyway, because she was burning.
         She burned, and burned, and burned, and the knives in her chest stabbed and pulled and tore and ripped until she couldn’t take it, wanted to shove all of the sedatives in the IVs inside of her, wanted to down all of the chalky white pills, wanted to do anything just to make it go away. Go away, go away go away, she cried. Go away, pain! Go away!
         And then again, she felt and heard the signs of unconsciousness creeping up on her, and she nearly laughed with thankfulness. The last thing she saw before her eyes rolled up inside of her head was Dr. Cheese-Brain striding into the room like he was... well, like he was the Head Cheese.
         Pain, pain, pain, never fading, never fading, never going away, even though every other sensation was. Fading, fading, but the pain was there, the pain never left. Never, never, never.
          #
         Waking up from unconsciousness was becoming a regular habit, it seemed. Forcing her groggy eyes open the first thing she noticed was El Tigre, thrown against the far wall when she was enduring her episode, appearing sad. He looked as if he were saying, Poor Anna. Poor, poor little Anna. Her father was sitting in a chair that he had pulled up next to the bed, reading her copy of The Three Musketeers. His head whipped up to face her when she stirred and he shot to his feet, babying her at once.
         “Anna, you’re awake! I was so worried, why didn’t you push the aid button? You look so pale; maybe I should get Tina to bring you a tray of food--”
         “Dad,” she interrupted. “I’m okay. How long was I out?”
         Her father suddenly averted her eyes, covering his watch face with his hand. “How long, dad?” she pushed. He didn’t respond. Tisking with annoyance she tilted her head over to the wall clock on the other side of the room. It said four-thirty, and judging by the absence of light outside save for the parking lights, she knew it had to be very early in the morning. “What, I was asleep for six hours? That’s not so bad.”
         “It wasn’t six hours, Anna,” her father murmured, almost silently. Something in his tone made her sit up, made her stare at her father.
         “What do you mean, dad? If it wasn’t six hours, then how long was it?”
         He didn’t answer at first. Finally he whispered it, but she couldn’t hear. “What, dad?”
         “I said, two days.”
         “I passed out for two days?” she asked, confused and shocked. She had never been unconscious for that long before.
         He nodded grievously. “Two days, six hours, and twenty-three minutes.”
         “Oh.”
         At that moment, Tina and Dr. Cheese-Brain came into the room. Dr. Cheese-Brain looked grave, and Tina walked without her usual energetic bounce. She assumed that it was because of the early hour. After all, not everyone loved being at work at four in the morning.
         “How are you doing now, Anna?” Dr. Cheese-Brain fiddled around her, checking her pulse and her temperature.
         “I’m okay. Sore, I guess.”
         Dr. Ricota nodded absently, the corners of his mouth turned down. “That’s good, I suppose,” he replied. Gesturing to Tina, the two left quickly, leaving confusion in their wake.
         “What was that about, dad?” she wanted to know. Something was strange, something didn’t add up. They were avoiding her, avoiding her questions. She sat pondering for a long time before she finally drifted off into a normal sleep, where she dreamt of darkening skies and misty shadows that grabbed at her with sharp claws.
          #
         A few days passed, and she grew weaker with each one. Another episode did not strike, but she felt the pull of them, and her appetite dwindled to almost nothing. A few sips of broth, a cup of pudding, some grapefruit juice and crackers... chewing and swallowing were major feats, and exhausted her into long fits of restless sleep. Her father basically slept in her room, sometimes even lying on the empty hospital bed across from her, unwilling to leave her alone for more than an hour. Dr. Ricota and Tina frequented the room much more often than they usually did, and dreaded intravenous medicines were stuck into her arms so that she could get the nutrients her body refused to take orally. Tests, and tests, and still more tests, always with negative results. She did not have this. She did not have that. She did not have anything, the tests said. Nothing identifiable. But it was all too real.
         About a week after her last episode her father was reading to her from a book of Maya Angelou’s poetry when Dr. Ricota entered the room, followed quickly by Tina. He stood behind her father and waited for him to finish his poem, and then tapped him hesitantly on the shoulder.
         “Is everything all right?” her father asked him with a sharp glance.
         “Actually, Mr. Hammond, I was actually wondering if I could speak with you in private, please,” Dr. Cheese-Brain said.
         “I don’t know...” Her father looked at her, uncertain.
         “It’s okay, dad,” she assured him. “I’m a big girl; I can take a few minutes without you.”
         Nodding his head, her father left with Dr. Cheese-Brain, stopping to converse outside of the door, which had accidentally been left open a crack. “Tina,” she said, “I think I’m going to use the bathroom, quick.” Standing shakily she waddled to the door of the bathroom, conveniently located next to the main door. She heard the end of their conversation.
         “...so sorry, Mr. Hammond,” Dr. Cheese-Brain was saying, “but Anna must stay here for as long as we may have her.”
         “I just don’t understand why,” her father argued, his voice hushed but angry. “You’ve already said that you can’t figure out what she’s got, why make her suffer here even longer?”
         “I don’t think you realize, Mr. Hammond.” Dr. Cheese-Brain’s voice lowered so far that Anna had to crane her neck around the bathroom door to hear. “Your daughter’s condition is deteriorating very rapidly.”
         Her father said nothing for a moment, and her own breathing slowed, curious and afraid. “I don’t think I understand quite what you mean,” he finally replied.
         Dr. Cheese-Brain sighed sympathetically. “Can’t you see that she is weakening? Her weight has dropped significantly, her memory is unstable... if what I believe is correct, Mr. Hammond... with these spasms, Anna’s body may cause her serious, permanent damage. She may not be able to function, live a normal life... that is, if...”
         “‘If’ what?” Her father’s voice sounded constricted.
         “If... she lives at all.”
         There was silence for a long, long time. She almost stopped breathing entirely; it seemed as if the world had stopped spinning, and she was spiraling into the unknown faster than she could grasp.
         Her father made a choking noise. “How long?” he asked. He didn’t need to explain his question.
         “We wouldn’t be able to say,” replied the doctor. “Perhaps a week. Perhaps five months. Perhaps ten years, Mr. Hammond. We really can’t be certain.”
         Silence echoed down the hallway for another forever before her father cleared his throat and began to open the door to reenter the room. She quickly ducked into the bathroom, shutting the door softly.
         Gazing at herself in the mirror, she inspected her face, horrified. Was her skin a little paler than usual? Did her eyes seem red? Why were her cheeks so gaunt? Suddenly, she couldn’t breathe correctly. The air came in short, quick gasps, bringing a small shock of pain to her chest with every hiccup. Gripping the edges of the sink she mentally slapped herself, told herself to get a grip. She splashed cool water on her face, which helped a little, but could not quite calm her unsettled heart.
         Was she going to die?
         The growing ache in her chest abruptly sprang forward again into a pressing anguish, and she hardly had time to fall to her knees before all of her limbs failed her and she crumpled the rest of the way to the cold, tile floor of the bathroom. Mutedly, from behind the door, she heard Tina ask, “Anna, are you fine in there? Do you need any help?”
         The throbbing in her mind returned, only it was slightly faster than last time. Throb-throb-bump, throb-throb-bump, throb-throb-bump... Her arms flailed wildly around her and her eyes flashed to the inside of her head as her chest exploded, shook her with tremors of pain that had her screaming in terror and suffering. I’m going to die! She shrieked silently. I’m going to die! I’m going to die! Help me! I’m going to die! It HURTS!
         The door crashed open and hands grabbed her, hauling her up and throwing her down on her hospital bed, which sent a harsh, vicious lightning bolt of torment that ricocheted through her ribcage. She screeched again, half sobbing. Her mind/heartbeat was now loud and rapid in her ears, throbthrobbump-throbthrobbump-throbthrobbump--
         “Her heart’s failing!” She heart Tina shout, and the erratic beeping of an electrocardiograph suddenly resounded in her ears, a shrill, ugly sound that scared her more than anything else in the hospital. She was now hooked up to a machine that would let her listen to her own death, let her hear her heart die...
         I’m going to die! I don’t want to die! I don’t want to die!
         --Throbbumpthrobbumpthrobbumpthrobbumpthrobbumpthrobbump--
         “Get the defibrillator ready!” Dr. Cheese-Brain ordered.
         --Throbbumpbumpbumpthrobthrobbumpbumpthrobbumpthrobthrobbump--
         “Anna!” she heard her father yell. “Anna! ANNA!”
         I’m going to die! I’m going to die! I’m going to die! I don’t want to die!
         And then a pain the likes of which she had never experienced coursed through her, and with one last, tortured scream, she fell into blackness.
          #
         Am I dead? She thought. She was floating somewhere far, far away from her body; far, far away from her pain. Did I die?
         Suddenly she was seeing through her own eyes, looking out at the hospital room, room 217. Her room. Her body was no longer wearing her favorite pajamas, but was instead clad in one of the scratchy, uncomfortable hospital gowns, the ones with nothing but a tie in the back that made her want to die of embarrassment. She couldn’t move her limbs, couldn’t shift her head. She wasn’t even aware of her lungs inhaling and exhaling. And then she saw it out of the corner of her vision-- a large container with a sort of accordion inside of it, constricting and loosening with the rhythm of a steady breath, and realized that that was her breath. She wasn’t pushing air in and out of her body on her own. There was a machine doing it for her, because she didn’t have the ability to breathe.
         She was a vegetable, lying unmoving in a hospital bed, arms at her sides, head lolling on her right shoulder. A dribble of spit rolled down her cheek to gather on her chin. She was pathetic.
         And she couldn’t even cry.
         The door opened and her father entered the room. His face was pink, and had raw tracks where tears had spilled down his cheeks. His eyes were full of unshed saline. He sat down inelegantly in the chair beside her bed, and she wondered how many times he had sat there since she had been conscious last. The seat had a dent in it, as if someone’s weight had been pushed onto it for too long, creating a permanent dip.
         “I brought you something,” he said shakily, and with a hopeful raise of his eyebrows he pulled El Tigre out from the inside of his jacket. Handing it to his daughter, he tucked it into the soft green blanket against her left arm. He smiled, but it was a precarious smile. “Anna,” he tried to sing her name like he had so many times before, but his voice cracked halfway through. “Please, wake up, kiddo. I miss you. El Tigre misses you, too.” He tried another laugh; failed. His face crumpled suddenly and he grabbed the railing of her bed, shoving himself up so that he was inches from her face. “Wake up, Anna!” he whispered pleadingly. When that didn’t work he took her shoulders and gave her a swift shake. “WAKE UP, ANNA! Wake up, wake up, wake up! Why won’t you WAKE UP?” Her head swiveled as he shook her, tossing it from her right shoulder to her left. Collapsing back onto his chair her father sobbed, twisting his fingers into his light hair. Hair so much like hers. Tears poured from his scrunched blue eyes. Eyes so much like hers, but eyes that bore an abundance of wrinkles that she had never noticed before. She was so much like him.
         And she couldn’t even let him know.
         When at last his tears subsided, her father sat back up and wiped his eyes with a tissue, quickly blowing his nose before taking a deep, calming breath. Taking her limp hand in his he brushed her fingers with his thumb, as always. “I don’t know what to do, Anna,” he confessed unevenly. “I can’t bear to see you like this. I know you’re in there, I know it.” He sighed, a sputtering, shuddering sound. “I wish you could just let me know what you want me to do. Just let me know, Anna. Please.”
         He sat in silence for an indeterminate amount of time. Minutes? Hours? It could have been days, for all she knew. But when at last he stood to exit the room, he mouthed ‘I love you’ to her and tucked her blanket in more snugly, kissing her forehead. As soon as he left, Tina entered. Her features seemed tired, stricken, and she fidgeted anxiously with her engagement ring. “You were always my favorite patient,” Tina admitted with a grimace that was supposed to be a smile. “You were going to be one of my bridesmaids, did you know that? I liked-- like-- your courage. Your strength. You would always take the shots, the check-ups, even all of the different medications. You would take it all, without much complaint, even though no one ever gave you a way to get better.” Here, Tina’s face folded into tears, as well. “You just wanted to get better, Anna.”
         She watched at Tina moved closer to her, squeezed her unmoving hand with affection, stroked her unfeeling cheek. Then she left, too.
         Others came and went, most of whom she didn’t remember well enough to care about. Throughout the day, she gazed on as people, too many people to count, came to ‘give their respects’. Or to see the death of the circus freak, she thought wryly. Surprisingly, she felt no bitterness anymore. Come to think, she did not feel anything bad. She was not angry. She was not sad. She was not afraid.
         But, why? She asked herself. Why don’t I feel angry, or sad, or afraid? I am never going to move again. I am never going to speak again. I am never even going to breathe on my own again. Why don’t I feel afraid?
         And then it hit her- there was no pain. No pain. Her chest felt normal, a sensation that she hadn’t experienced in almost three years. She did not hurt. She was not even achy. Her pain was gone.
         That is when she realized that she was free.
         I am free.
         And so with a final goodbye, she let go.
          #
         The day her father decided to unplug her from her life support, it was raining. Thick, dark clouds were gathered in the sky and big, fat raindrops were flying heavily down to the earth, as if the weather itself were lamenting. He had signed all of the papers, spoken with all of the doctors. He had tried, and tried, and tried again to get through to his daughter. He had waited for months, hoping against all hope that she would just wake up and everything would suddenly be all right again. She was gone. They had told him that it was no longer Anna, that her mind had completely departed. Brain death, they called it. She was like an empty shell, merely a body without a mind to function properly.
         And that was supposed to make him feel better? Was telling him that his daughter’s mind was dead and that her body would never work again supposed to make the decision any easier? His daughter’s mind was dead-- but her body was still lying on the hospital cot, youthful... beautiful. So beautiful. And he had signed the papers that would signify the beginning of that beautiful body’s decay into the soft ground, its radiance never to be beheld again.
         He had resigned himself to life without her. It was hard, but he would learn.
         He laughed bitterly into his calloused hand, the nails bitten down to the quick. Who was he kidding? He would never learn to live without his Anna. But he could try. He could try to fill the hole that she had left. He could try, but he knew he wouldn’t succeed.
         And so, as the rains fell across the hills, and the rivers, and the trees, and the soils in between, his daughter’s life was ended with the simple flip of a switch. He didn’t want to stay and he did not want to watch. No, he did not want to watch the oxygen machine falter and stop... but he made himself stay. He made himself stand by his Anna until the last beep of her mechanical heart sounded, made himself hold her hand and stroke her fingers with his thumb until every bit of the equipment stopped, until her body finally settled into the lifelessness of an empty body.
         Then she was truly gone.
         “Wake up, kiddo,” he whispered futilely, one last time, as he gently let her soft, limp hand fall back onto the bed, a bed which now looked big enough to swallow his daughter’s body altogether.
         “Wake up, Anna.”

         END.

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