Grace - Part 1 (B@GoE)
Grace (from Hospice) - Draft 2.
She walks the halls of the hospital. Peaceful now. The nurses and doctors move around her. The beeps and bells no longer a disturbance. The tubes and needle pricks don’t touch her. She’s trying to tell them She’s ok. Things are better. The team has put her here, for her own good. A medically induced coma. Her internal organs are shutting down. Her body is everything, everywhere in this liminal space.
Her mother consults the doctor. They talk in whispers as though she shouldn’t hear. Shaking their heads. Looking at her.
“Didn’t see the car coming. 80kms per hour. Middle of the day. Drunk. Through the intersection. Red-light. Slammed into oncoming traffic. Lucky to be alive. Not sure she’ll come out of it. Other driver dead. Couldn’t save her.”
“Hey, hey – no, I’m okay now. I feel better than I have in years. I feel like myself again. I’m okay. The pain is gone. Don’t worry… Oh, they’re busy. Thank you! I want to say thank you. You don’t need to go to all this fuss over me. I’m ok now… Why don’t you stop? Why don’t you respect my wishes? I didn’t mean for this to happen. I don’t want this. Clearly, I’m not going to be ok. Clearly, I’m not going to come out of this! Why bother? Why bother?! This is pointless. Let me go. Let me go! I’m stuck here. I want to go! Please, please let me go!”
She smells the earth. She feels the light changing. “I want to go now. I see the oak in my grandparents’ yard.”
She’s sees the swing, her foot playing with the rut under it where the grass had worn away. The soothing back and forth motion. That quiet comfort, the sunshine, the breeze, and the oak rocking her in its loving arms through her childhood.
“We’re losing her.”
“Let her go.”
She recognized the voice.
“But…”
“She was trying to kill herself. That drunk in the middle of the day? Let her go. She’s not fighting to come back, she’s fighting to go. Let her go.”
Her mother walked out of the room. The void opened. She walked through on her own. No hand to hold, no light to guide her.
A desert before her.
Note: Figuring out how this fits together. Is it before the Hospice, after…? Draft 2
More please!!