Hopscotch…A Jump in Life 1

Chapter 1

Beep…
Beep…
Beep…

My throat hurts…

There’s a flicker in the darkness… a jingle of keys? Seeing them falling slowly into a hand and a feeling of excitement.

I see a blue car, a muscle car and we’re all running towards it.

We…I’m with a bunch of guys getting in the back seat.

I can feel a forward pushing me back feeling going fast.

I don’t think there was any like drinking or stuff but there was yelling.

The screech of tires and a girl screaming.

Me?

I see, sort of see everything spin and go free floating. We hit something and we’re flying, rolling.

I see asphalt and hopscotch squares but I’m looking up when I see them.

There’s a crash and red…so much red.

I wake up and everything hurts! I want to scream but something is down my throat and there’s wires and things and…and I don’t know what’s going on! I don’t know where I am!?

I start choking!

Bells are going off and there’s some people running in dressed like nurses and they have hands on me and they’re trying to calm me down.

They’re calling me Shawn.

“Shawn, Shawn calm down we have you on a breathing tube!”

Shawn?

Who the hell is Shawn?

I don’t get an answer not that I could ask with the tube down my throat.

And inside my head there are no answers either.

I do stop flailing just whatever energy I had run right out of me. I hurt, I’m so tired and my back is killing me.

It still doesn’t keep me from shaking as they are holding me still and taking the tube out of my throat and that triggers my gag reflex and there’s nothing there but the fact there’s nothing there doesn’t keep me from dry heaving.

Every spasm feels like something ripping away at my back, like they’re trying to pull my spine slowly from the muscles like all these tiny little tears inside.

I finally stop gagging and they set me back down on the bed and I’m panting as they fit a mask over my face and turn the oxygen on and then I can breathe.

One of the nurses reaches out and she touches my face. “You’ll be okay honey and we’ll call your parents, they’ll be right here.”

“Wha…wha…happened…” Oh that hurt, like I tried swallowing a walnut after that.

“Oh honey, you were in a car accident.”

I try to say, to ask more but nothing gets out but a few strangled choking sounds.

“Shssh…take it easy you’ve been out for months.” She looks at another nurse who says. “I’ll call his parents.”

I sort of whine and nod and I look at her I guess as questioningly as I could.

She looks at me with this look of sympathy on her face. “Car accident Shawn you were in a car accident.”

I swallow and try to talk. “Is..was…?”

“No, you were the only one that made it.”

I have no idea how to feel.

I mean who they were…it’s not there.

It’s just really, really not there.

Which is making me feeling even more sick…sicker?

I blink at her.

“Shawn?”

“I..sorry…I can’t remem…” I start choking and she holds her hand up and runs to a sink and gets me a paper cup full of water. I take it still shaky and sip it with both hands as she moves the plastic mask for the air.

“You can’t remember?”

I nod.

“What part?”

“From when… (sip)…you said Shawn.”

“What? You mean, but you responded to me saying it to you.”

I look at her…really?

“Wha…what was I supposed to do, you where saying that name right at me.”

She bites her lip thinking then asks. “Nothing?”

I shake my head no.

She takes a breath. “Okay…I’ll let the doctors know….we thought there might be brain damage too.”

“T..Too?”

“You were really, really lucky Shawn.” She winces after catching herself. “Sorry.”

I wave it off. “It’s my nn.. Name right?”

It really, really doesn’t feel there, like my name is happening to me.

She tries to give me a reassuring smile and I try to give it back and not to disappoint her but she leaves and I kind of exhale and close my eyes.

I’m so wiped out that I fell asleep and wake up to the smell of flowers…no perfume, aftershave and dirt? No I don’t think my sense of smell got stronger but it’s more like it doesn’t smell like the hospital. I think you smell things you’re not used to and you notice it more.

I open my eyes and I see two people a man and woman and they both look concerned and she’s been crying and he looks close to it. She’s in capris with a cute VS perf coverage pink bra showing under her cute long sleeved raspberry ice colored t-shirt and he’s in jeans and a t-shirt with a cammo hunting jacket on.

Okay…there’s something…

It’s kind of…scary and I cough a few times and I gasp as my back spasms. The man takes my hand and gives it a squeeze. “The pain?”

I nod.

She reaches for the call button.

They’re both looking at me.

“The nurses told you?”

The man nods. “They said you don’t remember the accident.”

I look at them both. “Or anything else.”

She has tears in her eyes and rolling down her face. “Nothing?” He’s biting his lip and sort of he gets like tense and stuff.

I shake my head. “No.”

He coughs some. “Not us, not even your name?”

“No sir.” He blinks at that, I don’t think I call him that.

“Did…did they tell you what happened?”

“A nurse said a car accident.”

He nods and pulls his chair closer and looks at me with his hands on the bed railing and she’s sitting close too, close enough to run her fingers through my hair.

“You were with your friends Jackson and Scott and Alex and Alex just had gotten his license and he had that…that…it was the camero he and his dad had rebuilt and you guys went out driving and whatever….we think that you guys were racing with some other kids and the car just had too much power for Alex and the car swerved for some reason and did a three sixty and the car slammed into the curb and flipped and rolled.”

Oh…

I lick my lips and reach for the water and she gets it for me.

He’s looking at me searchingly but I don’t know what he’s looking for…something…anything…I give him a very hopefully I’m sorry look.

He sighs and just sort of nods.

“You were nearly dead Shawn, they had to cut all of you kids out of the car and the firefighters said that you only lived because you were in the back passenger seat and had your seatbelt on…. There was some damage to your back and you…you had swelling on the brain…so they had to cut you open and relieve the swelling or you’d have died but you slipped into a coma.”

I swallow. “Am I okay?”

“We don’t know, we’ll see what the doctors say Shawn.”

I nod.

That still just doesn’t sit right with me but what can I do?