Endymion

Endymion

Chapter 2

“I contracted pardon?!!!!” Alex looked at Doctor Owen with disbelieve.
Great.
Reality had come back in full force to Alex Simpson.
The news of Alex the Endymion coming out of coma quickly spread the entire building. Everyone now knew there was this long asleep patient waked up after over two months’ coma. Now in his room, there were doctors, nurses, Alex’s families, med students, and other nosy people (God knows who they were) now all jam-packed like sardines. This was ridiculous really; we all had two arms, two legs, and a head. His was a bit malfunction, that was all. But I guessed part of the human nature was watching other people suffered for your own entertainment. What? You wouldn’t? You’ve got to be kidding, are you? How many times you watched the crown tripped themselves and nearly laughed your socks off? Don’t tell me you had never, ever watch ‘Jackass’ at least once? Why the movie “Titanic” was one of the most profitable movies of all time? The fact was it didn’t matter you are Prime Minister or toilet cleaning lady, at the end of the day, we all found some footballer’s affair was much more interesting than the red roses growing at our very own backyard.
Someone helped Alex sat up, since he was unable to move from neck down.
Doctor Owens was giving him the status update.
Poor fella.
Me, Joanne and Zoë stood at the corner of the room, watching the colour on Alex’s face slowly drained away. His parents, standing next to his bed, weeping. Explaining to the patients what happened to them, I always hated this. It never got any easier.
The truths are always hard to swallow.
“What did you said to him?” Zoë whispered.
“Who?”
“The sleeping yum-yum.” Zoë’s nickname for Alex the Endymion.
“Nothing.”
“Seriously? Well, you obviously drew his attention from dreamland. Now he’s awake.” Joanna joked.
“I just happened to be there right then.” I weakly defended. Christ knew why on Earth he would awake after my confession.
Doctor Owen finished the status update, looking at Alex the Endymion, full of symphacy and understanding, waiting to see if he got any question.
His face still looked puzzle, in some kind of trace. This was a psychologist would called “In Denial” period. The reality hasn’t been properly processed and digested inside his brain. We all had this in our life from time to time. Being dump by boyfriends, people we love suddenly passed away, etc. Our brain just refused to accept the reality that presented right in front of us.
You know what I mean.
“You must be joking, are you?” Alex looked at Doctor Owen.
“Well, we hope we are. But we aren’t.”
Alex’s face looks even whiter and paler.
A long minute silence.
“Arrh,” Doctor Own cleared his throat: “If there are no other questions, I think I will leave you guys here. Mr. and Mrs. Simpson, will you please come to the counter later when you got some time to arrange a suitable time for physio therapy?”
Mr. and Mrs Simpson nodded, still weeping.
Without uttering any more word, Alex sat in bed like a marble statue.
All right then, shows finished.
People started to leave the room.
The reality hit Alex a few days later. I happened to be on my shift on that day.
That was actually quicker than I thought.
Everyone at the nurse station heard a very loud bang. When we all rushed there, found Alex lying on the floor, roaring, shouting, tears streaming down his face.
“I AM USELESS!! I AM FUCKING USELESS!!! I CAN’T EVEN MOVE MYSELF TO THE WHEELCHAIR!! WHY ON EARTH I AM WAKING UP FOR?? WHY AM I JUST FUCKING DIE!!? ” He shouted with frustration.
Followed by another long, hopeless, ground shattering roar that would make everybody’s heart aching.
Apparently the nurse was going to give him a bath. Alex insisted he could do this himself. To prove it, he tried to move himself into the wheelchair. Well…. We all could imagine what happened next.
That was not a glorious sight (although he still incredibly good looking under this circumstance). There was nothing worst to a man (probably to a woman) than unable to control his (or her) own body. Like a clawless lion unable to hunt, hairless Samson unable to preform his power, your mind was free but it was trapped in a useless body.
You could try this at home. Tied yourself with a rope from neck down. Tried to move around with it. Oh yeah, that’s right.
Now multiplied it by 3, plus 2 embarrassments and 5 humiliations.
Got it?
The male nurse who came to pick him up stood there, looked absolutely clueless, frighten and awkward about what to do next.
After a while, someone finally stepped forward to help the nurse putting Alex in the wheelchair.
He looked as if all the energy had left his body when they pushed him away.
I felt really awful for him.
The philosophy of Life is a Bitch once again been proven correct.
I went home next morning totally depressed, disappointed and frustrated. Talking to people (all right, I’ve only talked to two people throughout the day. One I didn’t think she understand the whole situation entirely and the other one, I didn’t think he know me that well to give me any suggestion, plus I honestly thought he just couldn’t have any spare time to give me any bloody advice because I reckoned he had bigger things to worry about at the moment) was not helpful at all. At the end, I still stock in this stupid relationship chaos.
I knew I had to make a choice here. I had to confronted Carl. I knew it would do both of us no good if I kept dragging this for too long. But how many of your guys actually did what your logic senses guided you, like, every time? How many of you knew you shouldn’t spend too much money on that stupid looking Gucci dress which possibly only last one season, but you went ahead and spending your whole month’s salary on it, eating just toast bread and mineral water for the rest of the month (and that dress forever hanging in the closet)? How many of you knew the consequences of sleep late was ended up stuck in the traffic among with other lazy buggers, all cursing at the same time, but you did it anyway?
How many of you knew you shouldn’t slept with that guy off the lift because his girlfriend happened to be your best friend, but you went ahead anyway because he was so cute? (All right, maybe that wasn’t a good example) How many of you knew you should left a note on the dashboard of that poor unfortunate thinkofmebumb neighbour’s car you just hit next to the road, but you drove away anyway and curse with him when he mentioned about it to you, pretend some other bastard did it? How many of you knew so well that smoking was terribly bad both for you and others, but you still had to take up to 2 packets of Peter Stuyvesant each day?
You got the picture.
I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. The fear of possibility not able to see him ever again after officially breaking up with him was so great overruled whatever idea and logic sense I had in mind.
Coward, thy name is Isabella.
Sometimes I wished I was still a kid so my mum or dad could do this for me like go over to Carl and said “My daughter can’t be with you anymore because you no longer want to play with her.” or “ You two should play together. Here! Come sit together!”
Or something.
Being adult could be really sucks sometimes.
Why on earth every kid’s biggest dream was to be a grown up?
I decided to leave it as it is, let the matter ran its course.
Very typical coward behaviour.
As for Alex.
He turned from a sleeping god to Adolf Hitler overnight.
All right, he was still very nice looking. His eyes were still as blue as the morning sky and as if he could see through your body, to your very soul when he looked at you. However, his behaviour started to change dramatically. He became the most horrible patient everyone had ever imagined.
Anything would set him off. From the order of the plates in his meal tray to whether the curtains were drawn or not, everyday there was at least one doctor or nurse or someone coming out of his room, face bright red, often accompanied by anger or terror. You could hear his roaring/shouting from as far as my nurse station at the other side of the building. Soon everybody started avoid walking past his room. This was tricky, because thanks to his terrorising behaviour, we had to change his room every couple of weeks. He verbally abused his roommate almost every day; we had to put him in the single room at the end. Checking him became a huge mission, since no one wanted to go into his room, even with bounties. We had no choice to draw the sticks to decide who was going every time.
He initially refused to do any therapy programme, said there was no point doing it since he wouldn’t be able to walk again anyway. His parents begged him again and again; almost bend down to their knees. All he did was asking them to fuck off with the maximum of cruelty in his tone. You should see the tear in their eyes when they retreat from his room.
“But this is for your own goo………………” His father tried to reason with him.
“For my own good? You guys should have let me just DIED as soon as my disease was diagnosed, that’s FOR MY FUCKING OWN GOOD!”
Without saying a word, his parents sighed and left the room.
“Why don’t you do it?” I happened to be the unfortunate lamb who got the short stick to do the room checking duty that day. Trying to be nosy without being barked by the tyrant, I did my best to act casual.
“It’s none of your fucking business!! Now Fuck off!” He shouted.
“ Just making some healthy suggestions.” I shrugged.
“ Do I look healthy to you?! Mind your own business!”
“This is my own business.”
“……..I will make you it’s no longer yours.”
“Go ahead, I will make sure someone else take over my job nicely.”
He looked at me as if he could kill me with his fizzog.
“What can you do about me now? You just have a head, and all you can do is bark.” This was one of those make-him-angry-so-he-will-do-it tactics, Sun Zhu Military Strategy Guild. Ancient Wisdom, if you were with me.
After all, they weren’t having nearly 5000 years’ civilisation for nothing.
He stared at me for good three minutes.
Then he started his stupid therapy (that was how he called it). Turned up on time (well, if any of the nurse or personal carer dared not to do so, the consequences were very severe), practice very hard, you know, all the good thing an A plus student would have done, he did it with extra effort. It wasn’t as easy as it sounded, because he literally had to start from scratch. First he had to be able to left his arm, which involved lots of acupuncture. (I was actually scared of needle, thought of sticking thousands of them onto me was just too horrible to even imagine. Funny huh? A future nurse scaring of needles) Then he would have to start practice his crab by tried to pick up some wooden sticks from the table. Now this was really painful, I often seen other patients nearly cry their eyes out when they were doing this.
The next stage would be picking up those sticks and put them into holes on a wooden board; the next would be some light weightlifting…the sessions went on and on. Other people practice 3 hours per session, he did it 6 hours. And he still had all these energy to shout at people each day.
Elaine started worrying what he would do once his arm was back in function and coursed me with all the bad language she could think of.
“If he kill me, I swear I will come back as a ghost to haunt you!” She got hysteric.
“Don’t think he’s going to kill you, Elaine. If he wants I think he might want to kill us all. Besides, your boyfriend is equally scary, isn’t he? Last time he almost beat a drunken fella to death outside of the pub. He got 12 months jail sentence plus 230 hours community service for that, did he? He can kill him with just one finger if our beloved guy in question dear to touch your one single strand of hair.” Joanna teased her. Actually we all knew her boyfriend did that under the effect of P, he nearly wet his pants when he went to the court hearing. He was just recently coming out of another rehab and was as obedient as a sheep. Kill a man? He couldn’t even squash an ant!!
“It’s the fury stage, remember?” Another male nurse, Gareth, pointed out. He too was also study at nurse school: “She will be all right, mate.”
“…….Wait until he make a bomb and kill us all!” Christ! Did this woman actually go to the same class as I do? I threw my eyes heavenwards.
“He will be lucky if he can pick up a cricket ball and throw at you right on target.” I pick up pile of files: “No worry! He’s not capable of making a bomb. You might get a few bruises or stitches, that’s about it. And I wouldn’t worry about that either if I were you. There are plenty of nurses and doctors here.”
She looked at me like Sumara in The Ring.
Her fear came true (no, no one made any bomb). About three weeks later, miraculously Alex was able to move his arm. Although he was incapable of moving heavy objects, it was enough for him to throw small one such as glass on the bedside table.
Nearly the entire hospital started to hate me. Now they had to stand at least one metre radius around Alex’s bed and only went near him when absolutely necessary. Even the cleaning lady started to complain she had to spend twice the amount of time and effort to tidy up that room. Actually, I heard she threatened to resign to Doctor McCarthy, our boss, just the other day.
There was once I was in there, busy changing drip, medicine and such. All of the sudden I felt something dropped on my back. I turned around; found Alex smiled at me evilly
That cheek of him! He threw me with napkin!
I threw it back.
He caught it single handed, which was not easy consider initially he was diagnosed unable to move from neck downward.
To be honest, I was really impressed.
Of course I was not going to say that to him.
“I can sue you for sexually harassing me, you know.” I gave him an evil.
“Go ahead, see if I care.” He smiled.
“You don’t looks like a unhealthy person.” I pointed out.
“I still unable to walk.”
“Like it’s going to stop you.” I snorted
“You’re right,” His voice sounded surprise: “It’s not.”
Another week passed, surprisingly and miracly, Alex started to quiet down. The roaring campaign occurred less frequent. He was able move himself with a wheelchair at this stage. Although very rarely, he started smiling, (which caused a major tsunami throughout the entire hospital when it first happened; they thought he was going mad) chatting with us when he was not in the depression mode, and last but not least, Zoë actually saw him sitting in the sunny conservatory yesterday, playing with some visitors’ girl, all smiling and relaxing.
Zoë said she nearly fainted when she saw that smile.
“The sleeping yum-yum is back.”
“Well, he’s not sleeping now.”
“Shish! You know what I mean.”
Unfortunately around this time, my life didn’t seem as promising.
My relationship with Carl had finally come to an official end.
No, I still didn’t have the guts to do the deed. It was Carl who pulled the plug.
Well, actually, it was the brunette woman, whom now I knew her name was Daphne’s idea.
Their relationship had just gone serious after the Easter break. Daphne was asking who I was. Carl had some difficulties to explain my identities to her.
“She’s just my girlfriend, but I don’t love her anymore. We were just friends.” That was weird.
“She’s my ex.” Now that was lying.
“She is just a friend.” Now that was really lying.
You saw what I mean?
Carl chose a worst time to break this off with me.
Well, I supposed anytime was a worst time for that matter. I was just finished one of my busiest shift. (No, this was not one of Elaine the cow’s shifts, which really annoyed me because I had nobody else to blame) A patient decided to die when there was only me, a medic and Zoë in the early morning shift, while I had about 10 new patients database needed to be urgently set up, and if you thought this was nothing, Doctor Owen had his car broken down and came to work 1 hour late, this resulted in we had no doctor at all for about 30 minutes. (A huge issue if you had people screaming at you for the doctors every 5 seconds. Let me assured you, it would definitely drove you mad) When I managed to drag myself home (without crashed into any poor power pole on my way), I found out Carl was waiting for me. His face didn’t look particularly joyful as usual. It looked all serious and quiet.
“What’s the matter, Carl?” I kicked off my shoes across the hallway: “How come you still up? It’s eleven o’clock at night.”
“……….Isabella, we need to talk,” he seemed struggle in words: “…….it’s about us.”
Oh no you don’t, I thought in horror.
“……..What about us?” I put my purse down gingerly.
“I think it’s time to call it quit.”
“Oh.” My mind just went blank. All of the sudden I didn’t know what else to say.
“I am sorry Isabella, we both kind of know our relationship had changed long time ago. I……I thought we could be like this for longer. But I just meet this girl..arh…remember I told you about her a few weeks back? Well, Daphne…that was the girl’s name, and I just got….serious. She was questioning about us. I don’t really want her to have a wrong picture that I am doing this double crossing thingy behind her back.”
“Oh.” Then what have you been doing for the last couple of weeks?
“ Isabella, I think we really have to finish this time. I am really sorry. I still like you a lot. If there is anyway I can make this much easier for you, please let me know.” To be honest, he sounded like he was firing someone at work instead of breaking off with me. If I was in other circumstances I might crack with some deals of laughter.
I looked at Carl for a very, very long time, without saying a word.
What should I said? That I think I might still loved him, as much as before and I didn’t want to break up with him? Don’t be ridiculous! That wouldn’t change a bloody thing. Yes, I might still love him; Yes, I still didn’t want to leave him; and yes, my heart would still shatter into pieces after breaking up with him. (and I knew we were just heading towards this direction right now) But since there was no point to attempt saving anything if his full attention was no longer with me, I might as well let him off.
Although it hurt like hell.
“Alrighty,” I said to him, trying very hard not to cry or acted hysteric: “I think I could sense this coming.” I took another breath: “Okay then.”
“I am really, really sorry!” He sounded very genuine, I believe he probably really was.
“ No, you don’t have to, Carl.” I took another breath. Now this became a bit hard: “You really don’t. We’ve been so good together for all this time. There is nothing to be sorry about.”
“I know.” Carl’s face started to look sad.
That was it!
Before I noticed, tears started to well and streaming down on my face. I couldn’t help crying in front of Carl.
Carl seem to hold it for a couple of minutes, to my astonishment, he started to cry, too.