As my vision blurred and eventually faded into nothingness, I could still hear your voice echoing in my head. Your cries reached me, and I hoped mine reached you too. Don't worry about me, the pain was almost tolerable now. I couldn't tell you what was happening around me, but I heard their frantic orders crowding in my peripheral.
The pressure on my wound was gone and someone put an oxygen mask on me. I could hear a bunch of rustling around me. I knew were going somewhere as I heard the squeaky wheels of the hospital bed that was carrying me. The lights on the ceiling flashed by even when my eyes were closed. I guessed they were running.
My friend's voice followed us along. He was panting and crying. He kept calling my name, each one sadder than the last. I wished I could have responded, but after a while, it felt like my consciousness had been transported somewhere else.
I was alone in the dark; crouching. I walked along the void; screaming and shouting for me to wake up. My body moved fine, and I could hear what was happening outside, but nothing happened.
"Open your eyes!" I bellowed at the darkness around me; hoping for a respond. "Please! Let me see him one more time. Please…"
Then a miracle happened. I saw him at the foot of my bed. He was running with the doctors and nurses around me. A nurse stopped him before I entered a bright room. Roberto and Tadashi were by his sides too.
I pushed myself to crack one last smile to let him know I was going to be alright. One last hope. I wasn't sure if he had seen it, but that didn't matter much to me anymore. For once in my life, I was satisfied.
And that was the last time I ever saw him. I was under the operating table for hours. I was back in that dark prison in my mind again. Alone. Cold. Doubtful.
Suddenly pictures of events in my life started to pop up around me. Before I could fathom what just happened, I was surrounded by clips of my memories.
The time dad fell on mom's vegetable garden after chasing Kirby. My first-time swimming in the lake behind our house. It was freezing cold. The first math test I failed.
My first science fair trophy. I remembered it took me half a day just to set up my booth. But it was all worth it. Oh, and how could I forget, the first time I cried while watching a movie. My high school friends had invited me to a sleep over and someone decided we should watch 'Forrest Gump'.
The first prom that I went to was during my Junior year. I went with a guy in my friend group. We had been friends since we were just 10. Now he's living it up in New York.
I guess I might not be able to visit him after all. I'm sorry Frankie. But enough about the sappy stuff, if this was the last of my consciousness, then I will make it count.
Look! The time I went fishing with mom in the lake and she caught a giant trout. We invited my friends over for dinner that night. We couldn't finish it by ourselves.
And there's the time Granny Tina knitted me a sweater two sizes too small for Christmas. I was too scared to tell her about it and mom laughed at me for trying them on. I guess it did look funny.
Then there was the time I tried for the baseball team because I was peer pressured by my jock best friend. I was never a huge fan of sports. It wasn't the inability that scorned me from trying. I just had very bad stamina and awful head and hand coordination.
But I went for the trials anyway, because I knew she was too scared to do it alone. For obvious reasons, I didn't get in. But she went on and joined a collegiate baseball team in Boston.
How could I forget? My mom tried to feed me durian as a prank, and now I'm in love with it. Jokes on you, mom! I have poor taste in almost everything. Who's laughing now?
Wow, I've been talking a lot about my parents, haven't I? What would they have said if they knew what happened to me? Maybe:
"I told you not to get in a car with strangers!"
Or perhaps:
"I knew it. She was too young to live alone. How could she have known what she was getting herself into?"
*Sigh*
I owed everything to you guys for taking me in, and this was how I repaid you. I tried to be happy and grateful. But sometimes I couldn't help but think about all the other possibilities in life. Was that so selfish to want something you can't have? I'm going crazy. Arguing with myself in my own head; surrounded by my past.
I know you lived your lives for me, but some days I just wished you hadn't. What if my biological parents didn't die? What if they had faked their deaths and eloped somewhere in the tropics? What if someone else was stabbed instead of me? What if I had died years go?
I guess it would be pointless to think of the 'what ifs' now that my life is nearing its end. Or maybe it's not as crazy of an idea to imagine my own happy ending. Delusion of grandeur isn't always bad, right?
Argh! I feel like I'm going mad. I don't know how to think or feel. Should I just embrace my inevitable end? Or is it a sin to dream just one last time? There's no one else to answer my questions now. I guess it's all up to me. That's all I got now anyway. Just me, myself, and I. The unholy trinity.
Is this the anesthesia talking or have I always been this irrational.
Maybe it's the dying.