Marsha
I could hear a voice. At first I thought that God had taken me home. I felt a sense of relief that the pain was finally over and I would no longer have to suffer on this Earth. Then my body lifted from where it laid and came down viciously and I immediately realized that I was in a car. The muffled sounds of a whimper filled my ears as I groaned and attempted to move. I was crippled with pain as the world disappeared around me.
“Mom! We’re…”
“How long has she…”
“… need some blood…”
“…upstairs now!”
Nevaeh
I felt a drum pounding heavily on my chest as we pulled into the emergency room parking lot. Ambulances crowded the front entrance as I came to a violent stop, kissing the back of the last ambulance with my bumper. I jumped out of the driver’s seat as the EMT snarled at me with disgust. “I need help!”
“I know you need help! When a little girl jumps out of the driver’s seat of a vehicle after slamming into the ass of an ambulance, you know she needs help. Cause she’s about to go to jail for joy riding and damaging a government vehicle,” the man replied with an attitude.
“No, my mom, she’s in the car. She’s been stabbed!”
Like a light switch had been flicked he transformed into a concerned caregiver and ran to the car. I opened the back seat and pointed to my bleeding mother. Junior was frozen in his seat only shaking his head. He didn’t break from his trance until someone came with a stretcher. “How long has she been passed out?”
“Since we left the house about twenty minutes ago,” I answered urgently.
“No she woke up while we were driving,” Sasha chimed. I shot her a look, I told her not to say a word.
“Hurry up, let’s get her moving, I saw her open her eyes as I was speaking,” the EMT ordered his partner.
I ran beside her as they rolled her into the hospital. The doctors and nurses asked questions like they were the police. I thought that I practiced enough in my head. As I opened my mouth to respond to each question I couldn’t think straight. The words left my mouth and I did not recognize them. What was I saying? I thought that it was all in my head, I thought that I had it down. I was the glue that held this family together and I wasn’t about to start allowing things to fall apart. Junior was just as much my child as he was her’s and my baby is not going to jail tonight.
I was staring at my mother, my hand on the gurney, when a nursed grabbed my arm and asked if I was alright.
“What’s wrong with you? My mom is bleeding out on a stretcher and you’re asking me if I’m ok?” I was in shock, I couldn’t even hear the words as they came out of my mouth. Everything around me fell silent and I could only see red… or was it black?
Junior
I heard my mom make a sound from the back seat. At least she was awake now. The harder Sasha cried the more and more afraid I was to look back there. I didn’t want to face what I had done to her. I couldn’t stop shaking my head. This wasn’t happening. I knew that it wasn’t. If I just stared straight forward and shook my head hard enough I would wake up. I’d be back in my bed and everything would be fine. Jamal would be gone and my mom would be lying her bed for the first night in a long time without bleeding on her pillow.
“1, 2, 3 lift.”
I turned around as guys from the ambulance put my mom on a stretcher. It wasn’t a nightmare, this was happening. I left a blood stain on the handle as I got out of the car and followed everyone inside of the hospital. It seemed like everyone was running, it must be really bad. The nurses blurted out questions and Nevaeh answered each one. I couldn’t really understand her but I was kind of behind her and she was speaking away from me.
“We’re going to need some blood! Call the blood bank and tell them to get us O positive in the operating room now!” a doctor screamed to the woman behind the desk as she came over to check out my mom. I barely caught a glimpse of my mom’s eyes right before a nurse grabbed Nevaeh’s arm and asked if she was ok. I didn’t understand why she would ask if Nevaeh was fine, she wasn’t the one bleeding on the gurney. What was wrong with these people?
What was wrong with these people? I was asking the wrong question. What was wrong with me? I stopped as I looked at my hands. They were covered in my own mother’s blood. I had done this, I brought us here. How could I?
As I stared at my hands I saw Nevaeh hit the ground. My heart stopped, the air left my lungs. “Why are you doing this to us God?” I screamed in my head. But it wasn’t God that had done this, it was me.
Sasha
“Mom! We’re at the hospital, it’s gonna be ok,” I told her when she gazed up at me. “Nevaeh is getting help now.”
I didn’t move from the car when they took her inside. Nevaeh had already given me that look so I knew that I was in trouble. Besides, I didn’t want to know, I didn’t want to see what happened from here. I was just going to sit in the car until someone came out and told me that she was going to be fine. Junior and Nevaeh followed everyone inside. I watched as they entered the hospital and all of the nurses and doctors came running towards her.
What if she wasn’t going to be fine? What if they were all afraid and that’s why they ran to her. What if I didn’t tell her that I loved her one more time before she died? I jumped out of the car, I had to tell her.
When I got to the door of the ER it opened to me, inviting me in. I couldn’t see where she was now. I didn’t know where they had taken her. I fell to the ground as I slipped on the wet floor. My face hit the ground and I pulled myself up from the blood that painted the tile. It was her blood, I knew that it was. I followed it, I had to find her. She had to know, in case this was the last time that I could tell her. As I got to the end of the hall I asked the nurse to let me into the locked door. “Please, I’m her daughter. I just want to tell her that I love her.”
The door buzzed and gave to my weight. A woman stood behind it and tried to catch me before I went any further. I went around her. I saw my mom, I ran to her stretcher as they wheeled her further from me. “We need to get her upstairs now! She needs to go to surgery,” the woman in the white coat commanded.
I reached the elevator as the doors closed, “I love you mom!” Two hands grabbed my shoulders as I placed my bloodied hand on the closed elevator door and slid to the ground.