As I Wait...

Tick-Tock-Tick-Tock. As the clock on the wall keeps moving it’s hand second by second I feel the dread set in. The idea of not having her in my life. The idea of never being able to hold her or kiss her. Legs shaking, people rushing in and out of my vision, as I continue to fall further away from the reality I’m living and back into the past. I can remember each of her features as if she was standing in front of me. She had these beautiful eyes, as green as an emerald, that would entrance you once you looked at her. I also remember the feeling of her in my arms when I would pick her up to hug her, but I can also feel her in my arms as I’m rushing to pick her limp body off the ground to race to hospital. Everything that led up to the moment of me sitting in this loud and hectic waiting room was not pretty. One minute I feel like I’m the king of the world. I've got the prettiest girl, the perfect body, an amazing family, and a bright future. The next minute I’m covered in blood and as my pretty girl is slowly being depleted of blood and of life itself and as my perfect body is failing me as I carry her into the hospital; I realize nothing matters anymore and I begin to spiral out of control and think of all the possibilities that can happen in the next hour, minute, second. The feeling of not knowing is unlike any feeling I’ve ever read in a story or felt at the most. The feeling that she is not going to walk out of this hospital and be able to live the life we both planned for. I stand up from my chair and peer at the window leading into the hallway. This hallway behind this door in one of those rooms is where she lays, asleep while  doctors slice and dice to retrieve the lone bullet that caused the issue. I never thought someone was capable of being able to shoot another person. I perceived everyone in this world to be good. You aren’t born bad you are only turned bad. We are pure from birth but the outside forces create a bad person. But the evil, the pure deviltry I saw in that man’s eyes as he shot her; the idea of people being good left my mind. I only saw a bad person, there was no good left in that man. As I fell to my knees to help her, seeing the blood pool out from her stomach I heard a second gunshot and I felt the ground shake a little as the devil himself fell with a bullet in his head. I remember everything that led me to be sitting here. In this cold damp chair waiting for a sign, a sign of life or death. But there’s nothing to do but wait and wait and wait. Distractions don’t help, I try to find one but they don’t work. Look at the clock, walk around, peer through the window, ask how she’s doing at the front desk, and finally I end up back in my cold damp chair thinking about everything again. Something that I vividly remember as the hospital atmosphere disperses from my mind was the day I met her. She was like a beam of light, someone I’ve never seen in my life. As a kid I never was the best. I was the little boy who would shove the other kids on the playground. As I got into highschool I became the jock that everyone feared. But then somehow one way or another she came into my life and knocked some sense into me. She was hard to get at first. For once in my life a girl wasn’t trying hard to get my attention or get in my pants for that matter. She ignored me and didn’t notice me. But I sure as hell noticed her. Finally with my pompous self I mustered you the courage to waltz over to her and talk to her. She denied all my advances and compliments. As she walked away from me I grabbed her arm, pulled her close and I got a nice smack in the face for the maneuver. But in that exact moment I knew this was the girl I wanted, no, the girl I needed in my life. Then within me disassociating from my reality I see the door to the hallway swing open. I stand as the surgeon approaches me, his face was the first thing I noticed. Not her blood all over his scrubs, not the words coming out of his mouth but his face. He had a poker face, I couldn’t tell how he was feeling. Then I finally focused on the words he was saying. He told me the bullet completely destroyed her stomach and diaphragm. She had to undergo a second surgery the following hour to reconstruct what was remaining in her stomach. As he puts an arm on my shoulder I sit back into the cold damp chair. I felt joy and fear set in instantaneously. Will she ever be the same after this? Will she ever forgive me? If I just didn’t go through that damn road we would have never seen that man. If we didn’t see that man then the love of my life would never have to go through surgery to reconstruct her stomach. If I could trade places with her and take her pain I would. Sweat starts to drip down my face and I start to lose feeling in my hands and feet. Then I hear screaming as I feel the cold damp chair fall away from me. I am then met with a new cold feeling. I wake up to find myself on the freezing cold floor of the brightly lit waiting room with 5 people standing around me. I sit up, realizing it was a bad idea since all the nurses told me to lay back down. They rush different things into my mouth and onto my forehead. I taste bubbly lemon lime soda and some sweet graham crackers and I feel a cold rag being placed on my forehead. I came into the hospital with my girlfriend limp in my hands and somehow I have become the one limp. She then comes flooding back into my memory and the worry engulfs me once again. I beg one of the nurses to please get more information on her status. I feel her rush to the phone to call the room where she lay with a tube down her throat and a doctor repairing her insides. She hangs up and walks towards me. She helps me sit up and I feel her breath in my ear as she whispers her message my body immediately relaxes. I feel all amounts of worry, anguish, and fear evaporate from my body and I finally feel relaxed and for once have a good sense for the future.