Parts: one, two, three, four

“Hello?” her mother answered the phone, her voice groggy and full of sleep.

“Mom,” she began, gasping for the breath and courage to betray herself the rest, “I had sex. I’m bleeding. I have to go to the hospital.”

She’d said it quickly and without taking a breath, for she knew if she waited for even a moment she’d change her mind again. She waited for a few tortuous moments as she heard her father mumble in the background, asking who was on the other line, and as her mother answered him in hushed tones.

“We’ll meet you there,” her mother said before reminding her which hospital their insurance would cover.

***

She could hear the sound her shoes made against the hospital’s floor as she looked around the empty room, searching for a helpful face.  Her mouth twisted into a strange grin as a cackle escaped from her lips, “Figures,” she mumbled to no one in particular.  Her footsteps grew quieter, or perhaps it was just that her concentration had shifted, as she began to make her way around the winding passages to find someone working.

Finally, she found a nurse.

“Um, excuse me…well….I had sex…and, I’m bleeding.  They told me to come to the ER?”  She said, almost hesitantly, very unsure of herself.

“Who told you to come to the Emergency Room?”  The nurse countered with an odd look on her face.

“The…well, I’m not sure.  I called and they said this wasn’t normal…”

“Whatever.  Take a seat.  You’ll have to fill out some paperwork.”

“Well…okay,” she said, and then hesitated “but, it is a lot of blood…”

The nurse walked away, as if she’d never really heard and the girl sat there, wondering if it’d been a mistake once again.

***

She had finally showed them the blood, and it was then that they took her seriously as she was given a bed to lay down on because her legs had begun to betray her.  They wheeled her back as her head floated in and out of consciousness.  The lights blurred by and she could make out the voices of someone else chastising the nurse who had all but welcomed her to this hospital tonight.  She could hear the nurses arguing with the doctor on-call about whether or not she should have the transfusion, and then she heard the silence of their resignation as they did what they were told.  She heard a voice saying “She’s back here…” and she heard the muffled footsteps approaching.  She cracked open her eyelids, and positioned her elbow just so to prop herself – but, the swarm in her head forced her back to the pillow, where she focused her attention to the two people standing before her: Her parents.  Her mother’s blue eyes were cold and the rims of her eyes were a bit rosier than usual – she couldn’t really tell if it was just from being woken up in the middle of the night or if she’d actually been crying.  Her father…well, her father refused to look at her.  “Mom?  Dad?…” She started, then let her words trail off, understanding in that moment that he wouldn’t be looking at her, no matter what she said.

She resigned as tears flooded her eyes, but refused to let them escape until the nurses had wheeled her off and away from them for the surgery that would stop the bleeding.  “It was a mistake.  I want to go home, now.  I changed my mind.  I shouldn’t have come.  He hates me!”  She cried.  The nurses tried to shush her as they brought the mask of magical gas down over her face as they’d promised to do before inserting the IV.  “I told you, he hates me!  I don’t care anymore!”  She sputtered again, wishing that the downcast eyes and disapproval from her father had been saved for when her eyes had been sealed shut by death itself, wishing she’d just went back to bed to wait.

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