Jamiemaude15

The passenger side of the car was obliterated. The truck pushed the car a hundred metres down the road before it finally came to a halt. My head had smashed through the driver side window, shredding my cheeks on the shards of razor sharp glass. I had become trapped by the passenger side, lodged in a mass of twisted metal and flying debris. It took three hours just to cut me out of the wreckage. After that I was rushed to hospital. My injuries were serious.

This is what I was told before I fell into the coma. Now I sit confused. Before me I can see my very own body. Or at least I think it is. It is identical to me in every way, apart from the horrendous cuts and bruises visible on all showing flesh. My left leg appeared to be missing, probably amputated after being trapped for so long. Wires protrude out of me like menacing cobras. All around the bed are machines, beeping, buzzing, and whining. The never ending drone of noise pounds in my ears.

The last thing I remember is blurrily looking up into the eyes of a concerned doctor. He explained to me what had happened, well, he tried. I was focusing more on trying to remain conscious.

Then everything began to fade. The doctor’s voice echoed round my head as I fell into the coma. For a few moments I lay there. Unaware of what had happened. Was I dead? No I couldn’t be, there was no pain, no last gasp of breath, no last anything. I couldn’t be dead.

Then reality dawned on me. I was at a stage where I wasn’t allowed to die. A stage between life and death. You leave your body and watch, wait. See if you will be allowed back to life or if your fate will be decided for you.

I sit now and watch. I watch my body, but also my fiancée. She has sat there now for the past five days. She sits and watches, moving only when she has to. At first I tried to speak with her, tell her that I was ok and there with her, but she couldn’t hear me. I began to hope that she would just go away. I wanted her to stop torturing herself. Sometimes she would sit and speak to me as if it was a usual conversation. She would sit and tell me what she had read in the day’s paper.

For about two weeks she sat there. Then one day she stood and left. As the weeks passed she began to visit less and less. It was as if she was forgetting all about me. But each time she did visit, she seemed to have changed. I just couldn’t figure out what it was.

One month she didn’t appear at all. It was approaching Christmas. All the decorations were being put up along the ward. Sparkling tinsel hung across the top of the doorway, a Christmas tree just beyond the ward doors, baubles hanging from each of the branches, sparkling every-time they were caught by the light. The patients that were less sick were starting to get excited. They knew that their relatives would be visiting, bringing them cards and gifts from people wishing them the best. But not for me. It was ten months since the accident, and my condition hadn’t got any better. My body was still hooked up too countless machines. I knew that they were the only thing keeping me alive. I heard the doctors talking when they stood around my body. Heard clips of conversation. Each day they seemed to add a new piece of equipment to keep another part of me alive.

Then one day, shortly after Christmas, my fiancée came to see me. She brought me a gift. When I saw what she was holding, I didn’t know whether to stand and cry. Cry because I couldn’t be there in my actual body, or whether to scream with laughter and happiness.

In her arms she held the smallest and most wonderful thing I had ever set sight on. In her arms she carried a baby, my baby. That was what had been changing about her every time I saw her. Each time I saw her, the baby inside had grown bigger. In front of me stood my fiancée, and my daughter held in her arms. I wanted just to be able to reach out and touch her. To be able to celebrate the fact that I had a child.

As the weeks passed on, it became harder and harder for me to even look at my fiancée and daughter. I would never be able to talk to them again, never be able to tell them how I felt. I began to despise it when they would visit. Watching my daughter grow up and knowing I could never speak to her destroyed me.

One day while visiting, doctors walked up to them. One bent over the shoulder of my fiancée and whispered something into her ear. She instantly rocked forward. She held her head in her hands and sobbed. Somehow I knew what she had been told. Finally I would be allowed to pass on, to leave this world and end the suffering; their suffering and my suffering.

The doctor walked to one of the machines near my body. Slowly he pulled out a cable. The machines turned off. I began to fade; the hospital around me began to dim. At last, I could leave; go on to a place where neither I nor the people around me would suffer.

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Shinn

Hi Jamie.

I've just been reading it, and I have to say it is very descriptive, and it kind of gives a mental image of what is happening to him throughout the story. I think this is a very well written story, and it was a pleasure reading it.

Good work.

~ Shinn

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Mike C

Nicely written, but (without wishing to piss on your fireworks):

a) I've read too many variations on this before (some even including the baby);

b) It's all description, with little actually happening, which encourages me to skim.

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Jamiemaude15

This was a recent school asingment where we had to create a short story. I thought myself i had rushed the story at the end, but it passed well enough so thought i'd post it here to get a more critical view on it.

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