Chapter 25

RAVEN

The first day when I woke up in a hospital bed, I was numb. Physically and the best part, emotionally. It felt like everything switched off and nothing hurt. I could not care enough to wonder why, but I loved the numbness.

My mother had me moved right after surgery, I found out when I woke up that I had been moved after 3 days of complications. They had operated on me.

At first, It all failed to register in my head. Then came the anger a few days of being stuck in a hospital bed with nothing but my head full of memories I would rather forget. Until that time came, my favorite time of the day. Where a nurse would come with my medication. The only time she brought that one thing that made it all numb.

The only time I could survive staying alive.

I never talked, I never moved. I did not know if I could. I was awake. My family had visited and my mother continued to come at every visiting hour. I could not bring myself to move. It felt like the heaviest thing to do. To lift a finger, to open my mouth. To speak. If I did, my mother would want answers. The doctors too. Maybe even the police. All of it weighed nothing compared to the weight of pain sitting on my chest like a heavy dark cloud. One move and it would all come down on me leaving me under.

Then I was placed in a different private ward. I got a different nurse. One who talked to me like I was her imaginary vegetable friend. Yet, even her jokes could not take away my pain.

All of it hurt less, not when SHE existed. Not when HER kind of pain existed in me.

Not when I knew HER. Not when she only existed in my head, the memory of her white hair, the gentleness in her eyes. Not when I remembered the steadiness of her voice when we spoke. Not when I remembered how she looked at me after WE…

No. Not Eliz…

“I am just gonna take a little break and eat this for you.”

That was the first time I heard nurse Cordelia speak. Then the corner of my hospital bed lowered. The unknown woman sighed.

“I’m just tired and really hungry. Have not eaten since yesterday morning. I somehow had to pull a double shift. There was an accident at the this school nearby, a school bus and an oil truck. It was nasty with burns. One of the firefighters got injured helping. It was so bad and I just can’t say I’m used to losing patients when four kids died on my watch today” She let out a shaky breath.

“Everytime I just wish I had the power to save all children. Kids got their whole lives ahead of them you know?”

Then she sighed again.

“I’m Cordelia, Cora for short. Your mom is a great cook by the way. She continues to bring you food in this state. Wasting food is like murder. I can’t tell her that though, she is a very scary woman”

And so it happened again and again. Cora came to hide in my room to eat my mother’s cooking whenever she came  for check-up. I loved hearing her come in, not because of her talking, god no.

The reason was far better. Cordelia was my way to numbness. Her checkups brought the right medicine for my heart. The pills that left me numb to it all. Cordelia brought medication that made Elizabeth lose the right to my pain. It helped me need her less yet everything in me screamed for her religious relief.

If she could convince me God loved me, I would believe her. Elizabeth’s love was equivalent to God’s love. In me, lived worship for a woman who threw me in chains to punish my unworthiness. Now came the question,

Would she love me now?.

“Raven…”

I heard her voice, soft with me still… I moved, my eyes springing open wide as though I had been possessed. Like a fraud caught, I held my breath searching…in the dark. Why was it dark?.

“Raven…Raven…you are…you are…call the doctor” My mother’s voice was faraway somehow the same way Cora’s voice always was.

Faraway, as if they were speaking really low. My mother was touching me, I had my lids open. Why was everything dark?.

“M..m” My throat hurt, nothing was coming out.

“It’s okay calm down baby. The doctor is here” My mother’s touch held my left arm.

“M…mom” I tried but I could only feel my mouth move, nothing was coming out.

“Doctor why can’t I hear her?. She is saying something, she is saying something look”

I kept trying to talk, to blink, to hear her clearer. The more I tried to talk, the less I could hear my mother’s voice. She sounded far and far until they were whispers. I moved my lips, called for my mom. Squeezed my eyes shut.

Darkness and silence.

Why was everything dark?. Why could I not see?. What happened to my voice?. Why was everyone speaking so low I could not hear them?. What was happening to me?.

Did I hear Elizabeth’s voice?.

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