Any Pain?

So picture this:

A woman is leaving a store. It’s a corporate demon of a store, the devil of all corporations. She leaves empty-handed, having made a return of a bunch of toys. She won’t be needing them anymore, after the death of her nieces. Or maybe her nieces were being naughty little bastards and lost their toy privileges. Or maybe she just returned a broken vacuum. I don’t know.

As she’s walking along the sidewalk, she sees a little girl. Little girl’s around seven years old. She slips from her mom’s hand and runs out into the busy parking lot. The woman, quick-witted, runs after the girl. She pushes the girl out of the way of a Buick sedan.

The woman’s scream rattles the bones of everyone nearby. Her ankle shatters under the weight of the car.

“My baby!” the disturbed mother screeches from the other side of the road. She can’t see that her daughter isn’t the one stuck up under a car.

“Get it off! Back it up!” the woman screams. The car still rests heavy on her ankle. It’s the hardest thing in the world for her to think of anything other than the white-hot pain shooting through her body.

Without fully realizing what’s going on, the man jumps out of his car. All blood and color escapes his face as he observes the scene before him.

“Get it off!” the woman screeches.

Without a word, the man stumbles back into his car to back up off the woman’s mangled ankle.

Someone behind the first man honks impatiently. With a fraction of the pain released from the woman’s body, she notices the second man’s impatience. She knows how people are in this state.

She turns over on her elbow despite the pain, motioning for the girl to come over to her. The little girl has gone too far in shock to hear the forced, sweet words of the woman.

She hears the man curse, loud, and his car revs. In this moment, there is no pain and no fear. She launches herself at the girl, not thinking about the consequences.

The only sound left is that of screaming. Everyone’s screaming, so much it sounds like white noise.

If the girl wasn’t traumatized before, she certainly is now. The woman who tried to save her just a moment ago is now unconscious and bleeding on top of her.

When the woman wakes up next, she is blinded by white lights and cold latex gloves.

She becomes conscious, but doesn’t yet open her eyes. She knows it’s bright from the light penetrating her eyelids. She makes a mental note of her body: although difficult, she slowly wiggles her fingers and toes.

As she cracks her eyes open, she sees the room is full of her family. Two cousins, an aunt, and her mom and sister. There’s some other people behind them, too, but she can’t make out their faces. Doctors? Nurses? She plasters a smile on her face in an attempt to quell the tears that threaten to drown them all.

“Do you know where you are?” A tall, slender woman steps over from the other side of the bed and gently leans over her.

The woman’s throat crunches and cracks like dried leaves going through a blender. “Hospital,” she croaks.

“Do you know who you are? And the year?” The nurse’s voice is sweet honey milk on a warm day.

“I know who I am.” The woman gives her name and age to the nurse, and tells her all about the shitty job she’s forced to labor at. “And it’s 2009.”

The nurse smiles at this, and places her warm hand over the woman’s forehead. “Any pain?”

The woman fills her lungs, holds the air there. She slowly and steadily releases it, inspecting her body again. “Yes, but that’s good. It means I’m alive. I can see, breathe on my own, and I can feel all my body parts. I’m fine, thank you.”

The nurse shares a chuckle with the woman’s family. “That’s good to hear. I’ll go grab the doctor; sit tight.”

As the nurse glides out of the room, the woman’s family absolutely devours her with love, sharing their concerns and gratitude that she’s alive. It hurts to laugh, but the woman wants to share this moment without making anyone worry.

From the back of the room, a man steps forward, clearing his throat like a great big bear. His sweaty paws grip the stalks of a meager fistful of yellow flowers. His nerves get the better of him as he tries to speak, and he chokes on the words.

“Oh,” says the woman. “Your sedan crushed my ankle,” she jokes, though it’s not really a joke at all.

“Well, uh,” the man drawls, stroking his ginger beard. “I thought it only right bringin’ ya these. Seein as I, uh, tore up yer leg there.” His eye twitches, in what appears to be an attempt at a wink.

The woman flashes an inadequate smile, offering a quick glance at her family. Surely the bearded man knows now’s not the time for that kind of tomfoolery.

“Well, anyway. I thought I’d leave these with you and uh, let you to it.” He gives his beard one last good caress, then unceremoniously plops the bent flowers down on the bed and leaves.

Just as soon as the man leaves, a tight-faced woman pushes through the door, confidence dripping off her. Someone will need to mop that up later.

“Hello, dear. So sorry to see what’s happened here, and seeing that you had just sent in your two weeks’ notice. Ah, just how unfortunate that whole business is, truly just awful. Anyway, we always knew you were a team player, so we all put this together for you.”

She stuffs into the woman’s hands a Hallmark card, no envelope, with a couple names scrawled in it. All in the same handwriting and ink.

“Well, dear. I’ll have to be off now. Rest up, feel better. You’ll redact your two weeks, right? Ah! Just kidding, haha… or am I? Ah!” She wipes away an imaginary tear from her eye and heads out. With all this coming and going, the woman thinks, they might as well install a revolving door.

An unfamiliar sniffle in the background catches the woman’s attention. She peers around her family to find a small child standing by the door, with a woman who might be a bit more than middle-aged.

“I hope we aren’t bothering you,” the older woman says, barely above a whisper. “You — “ she sniffs. “You saved my baby’s life. I — she insisted on making sure you were okay.”

The little girl looks everywhere but the woman’s eyes.

The woman, forcing a huge grin, pushes herself up on the bed. Her family helps to raise the top half of the bed.

“Hey, kid.” The woman cocks her head to the side, trying to catch the girl’s eyes. She doesn’t look. “I’m totally fine, so you can look at me.”

The girl whispers a whimper, fidgeting with the hem of her jacket. She looks up, then looks away. “Are you sure?”

The woman silently braces herself. She takes a breath. “Look at THIS!”

The woman’s family laughs nervously as she starts flexing her muscles every which way.

“Looka there! Huh? Yeah.”

The girl holds back a smile. It’s buried under concern.

The woman smiles enough for both of them. Grins for days. “See? Nothin’ to worry about. I’m totally fine. Now do you believe me?”

The woman hopes she doesn’t have to test her might for much longer. She doesn’t know how much more pain she can hold inside.

“I’ll believe you when you stand up!”

Fuck them kids, the woman thinks. Her aunt flinches and reaches out to her, while the rest of her family whispers sharp protests.

Her body is on fire, but slowly she scoots to the end of the bed, dragging her IV with her. She takes a quick breath, then steps down from the bed. On her way to her feet, her mother and sister gently help keep her steady. The woman places her hand on her mother’s and smiles reassuringly into her and her sister’s eyes. They back away, but stay close enough just in case.

Gravity doesn’t seem to be the woman’s friend at the moment. It threatens to squash her like a little bug right there on the floor. She could bend her IV pole in the shape of her tight fist.

But the woman prevails. She holds fast against the increased gravity, against the fiery pain shooting through her body and the black spots she’s seeing and the metallic taste on the back of her tongue.

She steadies herself on wobbly knees. “You believe me now?”

The woman stops short, realizing through fading vision: The little girl. Her arm’s propped up in a cast, and she’s got SpongeBob band-aids decorating her face.

“Now don’t you go worryin’ nothin’ about that,” the mother chimes in. “You saved her life. A broken arm? Scrapes, bumps and bruises are nothing compared to a whole life. I still have my baby thanks to you.” She lays a heavy hand on her daughter’s head, then steps forward and pulls the woman close for a hug.

She squeezes the woman’s shoulders and gives her one last watery look, allowing the rest of her emotions to travel through. Then the mother turns away, leaving with her little girl.

Almost as though a switch clicked off, or a broken dam gave way, the woman finally allows herself to be exhausted. Lets herself feel every ache. With a heavy and long exhale, she lets the blackness take her over as she collapses to the floor. And then, to top it all off, she passes out from the pain.

Wouldn’t that be fucked up?