Nevaeh
“Oh no, the babies not dead. It’s just fine. I was just saying that you should be more…” The nurse stopped talking as she processed the look on my face.
“Baby?”
Junior
I paced the hallway outside of Nevaeh’s room while she spoke to the nurse. She claimed that she kicked me out because I tried to strangle the nurse for telling us about our mom like that, but I know the real reason. She didn’t want to look at me. I was now a monster in my sister’s eyes. We live in the slums so we see people get killed what seems like once a week, but a strangers death doesn’t touch us. Not even the shed blood of a friend would bleed us dry like this. My mom wasn’t the only one that died in that operating room tonight, she took our family with her.
I stared numbingly down at my hands that were still covered in my mother’s blood. Ambulance after ambulance pulled up and EMT’s rolled in wounded hood warrior after warrior, victims of the society that they were born into. Gunshot wound, stabbing, hit and run, was I one of them now? Was I one of societies lost children?
I walked to the emergency room exit and looked back one last time. No one was calling for me to come back, I didn’t hear the echoes of my name being called from my sister’s room, I heard silence. Silence of the unspoken good bye shared between Nevaeh and I, the silence of my mother’s lungs that would breath no more, and the silence of the organ in my chest that was ripped out the moment the nurse spoke those dreadful words. A single tear rolled down my cheek as I left the hospital and speed walked by the police vehicle that was sitting beside our car. Soldiers don’t cry I remembered as I wiped the liquid from my face.
Sasha
A group a men and women in white coats walked out of the door. They seemed so happy, like they were on top of the world and nothing could touch them. The white coats walked down the hospital hallway away from me, away from her, as if we never existed. My head dropped as I remembered that the bodies of those that don’t make it through surgery are always left in the operating room until someone from the morgue is free. My cries grew louder as I recalled all of the movies that proved this.
Suddenly there was a hand on my shoulder. I looked up and saw a woman from the group of doctors that had walked away from me. Some of her dark curly hair escaped from the ponytail that had bound it as she leaned over and asked, “Are you alright?”
I gazed in wonder at her for a moment. Her light brown eyes blended so beautifully with her mocha colored skin and her smile was so welcoming. I saw a whole new life in her eyes. A life where I was her daughter and I woke up every morning to that loving smile. I could smell the fresh pancakes that were sitting on the counter waiting for me to come downstairs and devour them. I looked around my bedroom and the baby dolls and stuff animals that she and I had picked out together covering my dresser. I heard her singing in the hallway as she walked towards my room, “There’s a land that I heard of, once in a lullaby.” I watched her walk into my room kiss my forehead to say good morning. As our eyes meant again she opened her mouth and said, “Are you waiting for someone?”
I snapped out of it. That wasn’t my life, I wasn’t put in this world to be happy. I was here to be invisible. “They told me that my mom was in there,” I whispered as I pointed to the door that she had exited. “Is the surgery over? Is she ok?”
“I’m sorry, we weren’t told that she came in with anyone. You’re mother is fine, but she’s in a lot of pain so we gave her some medicine to make her feel better. She might not act like the person that you’re used to but she is right through here.”
I was led to a different set of doors and into an area for patient recovery. She might act differently, what did that mean? I tried to think of the way that she normally acted, but nothing came to mind. All I could remember is her leaving. To work, to the store, to take a boyfriend somewhere, to a date, she was always going somewhere. We entered her room and just like that the woman was gone and I was left alone in a poorly lit room with the stranger that I called mom.
I sat down beside her bed and stared at her face. She looked so calm, so happy. The stresses of her everyday life weren’t weighing her down. I could still see the marks on her face from the last lesson that Jerome had taught her, maybe the tears had washed all of her makeup away and she wasn’t able to hide anymore.