Hunger

Austin: Four Fingers

Death is just like being asleep without dreaming. I go back and forth between that blank space and life over and over again. Every time I swing back to the life side of things, I catch a new detail: icy trees, a bunch of people hovering over me, the sound of a siren, being inside an ambulance, Rory, Pixie, and the pain that stabs intermittently and makes me want to go back to the blank space.

I see my mom. She's in my head.

"Austin, you need to wake up," she says gently, touching my cheek.

"Mom? Where are you?" I ask.

She smiles. She looks young, a version of herself I remember in vague flashes from my early childhood. Beautiful and strong.

"I'm with you," she says.

"Are you dead?" I ask.

She doesn't answer.

"Am I dead?" I ask desperately.

"You need to wake up," she says gently. "Wake up. Wake up, Austin."

I feel like someone keeps asking me a question, and the question is: do you want to live? And I'm saying yes... it hurts like hell to be alive, but yes. And my body is saying give up and my mind is saying fuck you, and both sides are winning and losing, winning and losing... until there's just one side left. The side that says I want to live.

When that side finally wins and the war is over, I open my eyes. I'm in a little hospital room. I know it can't be the same day because, outside, the snow is melting. The sun is shining bright, and I can hear the ice falling off the trees. It sounds just like rain. When I take my first breath, I realize there's plastic hospital junk in my mouth and over my face. I can't move, and my head is full of smoke. Then I feel someone's hand on my forehead, cool and soft like a flower petal. I look over and see Rory smiling at me.

"Austin? Don't try to talk. It's okay. You're okay, baby," she says.

My first thought is Pixie, and I try to speak but can't with all the stuff in my mouth, but luckily Rory reads my mind like always.

"Pixie is safe. She's with Blanca. Ray's been arrested."

It's this last news that makes me almost rip the stuff off my face. I have to know everything!

"It's okay. I'll tell you everything later... Just sleep now," she says.

I can feel myself fading out again. Whatever I'm on, it won't let me stay awake. My eyelids flutter. Pixie is safe. Rory is safe. Ray is in jail. It's only after knowing these things that I feel good about nodding off again.

The next time I open my eyes, the thing is off my face and it's night outside the window. Rory isn't here. No one is here. I try to move and realize I finally can, but it hurts like hell. Everything aches... a stabbing, deep pain that starts in my chest and fills me up all over. I don't think I can muster the strength it would take to scream, but I'm screaming in my head. My body feels like it's fallen from a ten story building and just hit the concrete, and I'm not dead but should be.

I'm helpless against the tsunami of pain. All I can do is cry like a baby, which I do... the tears leaking down under my neck into an uncomfortable, sticky, wet puddle. My hands clutch the sheets on the bed, and I'm praying that someone or something will knock me out again so I don't have to endure this anymore.

A full agonizing hour goes by before a nurse finally comes in. She sees that I'm awake and smiles.

"Hello there," she says.

I open my mouth to speak for the first time. My voice comes out rough and broken, like charred firewood.

"Hi."

"I want you to lift your fingers on your right hand. On a scale of one to five with one being low, how's the pain?"

Five, lady. Fucking five!

I start to lift all my fingers... but then something comes over me. I can lay here drifting in a drug haze forever, avoiding the pain like my mom did, or I can reach for life again. Life, where Rory and Pixie are. It hurts, but the pain means I'm alive. I tuck my thumb under my hand. Four fingers.

"Okay," the nurse says, adjusting something beside my bed. "A little more morphine then."

"Where is my sister?" I ask hoarsely.

"She was here earlier. The girl, Rory, brought her. But it's almost midnight now, so she's gone home."

Where is home? I want to ask but don't have the strength for more words. I feel the extra morphine kicking in, and I can't keep my eyes open anymore.