HER

I walked down the hallway. I don’t know where she is. We were in an accident. They took her here. I don’t know where she is. I’m confused. I need to look through every room. I need to find her. She has to be here. I feel like my head is full of water. I feel my body dropping, I hit the ground.

I hurt. I hurt everywhere, I hear people around me talking, whispering. I think they are talking about me.

“We cannot save him,” I hear one of them say.

I am not dead, I know. I need them to know that.

I try to tell them but they clearly hear nothing. I don’t know what to do. I need to know what to do. I first need to find her, before I’m dead.

 

“Alright, everyone up! We have a real patient. He is in a coma, no name, we found him three weeks ago at a scene of a car crash. He was then taken to the closest hospital, where he got up from his bed, walked down the hall, and collapsed. He was given to us and now he is in a coma.”

 

I hear them talking about me. I see them too but they don’t know I can see them nor do they know I can hear them. I need to know where she is, I need to wake up. I don’t want to sleep, I have been asleep for too long now. I need to find her, I don’t remember her name but I know that we were close. I watch them leave the room. Then a pretty female doctor comes in. She sits down next to me. It smells funny in here, like a doctor’s office. I don’t like it here. I look around past the woman in scrubs. I look at the machines, different from any I have ever seen at a normal hospital or doctor’s office. She looks around, then starts to talk.

 

“I know you don’t know who we are, and we don’t know who you are. But we need to find out what happened to you. I’m going to talk to you as if you are awake — did you know that some patients in comas can hear people around them, and if their eyelids are open they can see? So would it be alright if i opened your eyelids?” She starts to put something into the IV.

 

I had been able to see this whole time, it was like I was frozen, unable to talk and unable to wake up.

 

“Alright, now you can see, how are you today? I’m going to take some blood. I will be right back.”

 

She seemed nice, but I need to find her, I try to get up out of bed, but I can’t. I get light headed. I hear a long flat “eeeeee,” like in the movies when someone dies in a hospital. Then, all I see is blackness and all I can hear is the “eeeeee.” I can’t smell anything. I know I’m not dead yet, but I need to find her, she has to know where I am. I feel a sharp stabbing pain in my chest, then everything goes black, more dark than before, I stop thinking and feel like I’m stuck in a dark black room with no one. Then I see her, she is standing in the dark looking around. I yell at her but she doesn’t hear me. I smell her perfume — she smells like candy, sugar sweet. Just then, I feel something pulling me back, away from her. I feel people touching me, poking me with needles. Then I see them, I am out of the darkness. I see the woman from before. They are bringing me back to life, I hope. I forget about them and I see her, I see the girl. She is in front of my bed, watching them work on me.

 

She smiles and says, “You have to live, I am here waiting for you.”

 

Then she disappears. I try to imagine who she is. They stop poking and touching me, they all leave but the woman from before, the woman in scrubs. She stays and starts stitching, she works the needle through my skin and back out, in and out, in and out, and again.

 

“Well, we helped your heart out a little bit, you have to keep trying to come back to us. We need you here. You are so brave, come back to us.”

 

She doesn’t know me, but she stays with me for hours. She has knitting needles, unlike the one she was using on my chest earlier. She talks about her family, her pets, and her life, she talks about her whole life. She says that she is making me a sweater. I don’t know why she is doing this, she doesn’t know me. I remember everything about my life before, but the one thing I cannot remember is my name or her name. The female doctor tells me her name is Hannah. She tells me that I have been here for a whole month and that they are trying to find my family. She says she wants to give me a name, just something so that she doesn’t have to call me “ John Doe.” She says that that’s too plain and boring. She tells me that she doesn’t mind sitting with me all night. I stop listening to her and I think about the girl from before. “Her.” I need to find her, before I get too attached with the woman who was stitching my chest up, I need to find “the one.”