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 complete blank.
“I don’t remember anything about an accident.”
“That’s okay,” the nurse said with a warm smile. “What’s important is that you’re conscious and alert, you’re moving around beautifully too. I can see it hurts, but movement is good. Can you feel all your fingers and toes?”
“Yes,” I answered. “But everywhere . . . hurts. My leg and my head the most.”
“I know, love,” she said, as she moved to my right and attached the painkiller bag to the IV that was already in my arm. “This will help a little. You’ll start to feel some relief in a few minutes.”
I hoped she was right.
“Which hospital is this?”
“King’s College,” she answered.
I nodded; it was my local hospital. It made sense for me to be treated here. I glanced at her name badge and caught the words “Intensive Care Unit” above her name, and my heart just about stopped. My eyes darted up to hers in an instant.
“ICU?” I said, baffled. “Your name badge says ICU. That’s for critically ill patients though. Am I okay?”
Talking so fast made my words sound jumbled together even to my own ears. Fear slammed into me like a train, and the beeping from the machine was faster now and more bothersome than before.
“Now, honey, you need to calm down. This is the ICU, but you’re okay, you have to listen to me—”
Our attention turned to the door when it suddenly opened. I watched as a middle-aged male doctor walked in and I felt relieved to see him. He had dark brown skin like the nurse, his eyes were soft and his smile was bright. The nurse seemingly didn’t have answers to my questions, but maybe he would.
“What happened to me?” I asked as he took a step towards me. “How did I get here? Why am I—”
“Whoa.” The doctor raised his hands in front of his chest and chuckled. “Give me a second to look at you, Noah. I’m Doctor Abara, it’s wonderful to see you alert.”