I was thoroughly exhausted, and before I could attempt to move, my eyes drifted shut and forcibly pulled me into a dreamless slumber.
A throbbing ache in my leg brought me back into awareness. My eyes darted open and once again I found myself staring at the off-white ceiling. It took me a minute to think straight and realise that I wasn’t dreaming. I was in a hospital, I reminded myself. I needed to speak to someone. A nurse, a doctor, anyone.
The Call button.
I needed to press that bloody Call button, wherever it was. I moved my arms, jerky movements at first, and felt a pulse reader on the index finger of my right hand. My left hand skimmed over a wire next to my hip. I tugged on it and a remote of some kind came into contact with my hand. Moving hurt more than it should; in fact, my whole body was sore. I bit my lip to focus on feeling the buttons. I couldn’t tell what any of them were for so, as best as I could, I tugged it on to my chest. I peered down for a moment and saw a large red button. I wasn’t sure what it did, but I pressed it anyway.
I exhaled a deep breath, the simple movements having completely drained me.
For a few seconds, nothing happened, and I worried that I’d pressed the wrong button, but then noises and a voice came from my left. I heard a door opening followed by soft footsteps. A face suddenly appeared over me and it startled me. It was a woman who appeared to be in her mid- to late fifties; she had dark brown skin, and eyes to match.
“Hi there,” the lady said. “Can you hear me, sweetheart?”
I winced, the volume of her voice causing the already painful ache in my head to worsen.
“Too loud. My head,” I rasped, finding that talking was a little difficult. “It hurts so bad.”
The woman frowned and lowered her voice. “I’m going to page your doctor so he can come see you right away. I’ll get you pain relief while I’m out there. I’ll be back in a minute, okay?”
I didn’t want her to leave me, but I urgently needed the painkillers that she could provide, so I tentatively said, “Okay.”
When she disappeared from view, I began to panic. I was terrified that she wouldn’t come back and that I’d be stuck in the position I was in with no one to help me. I could barely lift my head or move my body. I didn’t know what was wrong with me, or what had happened to put me in the situation I was in, but whatever it was, I knew it wasn’t good.
Breathe, I told myself. Just breathe, Noah. It’ll be okay.
I focused on inhaling and exhaling deep breaths. It helped calm me down, but only just. True to her word, the lady came back to my side within a minute. She had a glass of water in one hand and an IV bag in the other. She saw me eye the bag and said, “It’s only paracetamol, but it’ll help kill the pain quicker through your IV. The doctor can prescribe something stronger once he gets here.”
I started to nod but stopped as soon as I started. The movement was too much – everything at that moment seemed to be all too much. Not only was my head killing me, my body was aching beyond measure. The nurse used a remote to raise the top half of my bed, but not by much, just enough so I could see the plain white room without having to strain to lift my head. She helped me drink some water then, and once I’d had a good few mouthfuls, it made me feel a little more human.
“What happened to me?”
I felt so tired that it was a fight to keep my eyes open.
“You were in an accident,” the nurse said, careful to keep her voice low. “You hit your head pretty hard.”
An accident? I thought. I was in an accident?
Slowly, and with difficulty, I lifted my hand to my forehead, and it was only then that I felt a compressed bandage of some kind wrapped around my skull. I looked at the rest of my body and, though my torso and legs were hidden by a blanket, I could feel padding on different parts of my skin. I lifted the blanket and peered down.
The medical gown I was wearing had ridden up and it gave me a decent view of my battered body. A battered body that was larger than I remembered: my thighs were wider, and I had a flabby gut. I remembered the nurse telling me I’d been in an accident, so I put it down to being swollen from injuries I’d clearly sustained.
I had a bandage on my lower abdomen. My left leg from my knee down was in a black boot cast. It jolted me back to when I’d fractured that same leg in two places when I was twenty-one at a dance studio, and had to wear a similar cast during my recovery.
My arms were destroyed, covered with bruises and minor scrapes; some were scabbed, and others were red lines where scabs had fallen off. My body looked as if it had been to war and back again. I tried to remember what had happened to me, I closed my eyes and forced myself to think about the accident that the nurse had spoken about, but I drew a
