David forced me through the passenger side door. His rough meaty hands, which had carried me to the family van, unclasped like an iron blood pressure valve around my arm as I was thrown into the seat. “Buckle,” he commanded. Anger seized his voice in a hand not unlike his own. I buckled. I’d like to think I hesitated first.
David stormed around the back of the car because David didn’t like to wait. Though I’m sure he would have stormed even if I had made my own way into the sticky fake leather seat. Taking time off from watching porn in his bedroom was certainly not how my father wanted to spend his Thursday. The door slammed, the key was shoved into the ignition, and the gears violently churned into reverse. Out my window, the high school looked more like a jail than ever. We sped dangerously down the road.
Uncomfortably large and ugly (another thing not unlike my father) the hospital sat its concrete ass off to the side of town. David parked between two spaces because David didn’t want dimwits scratching the car. I could see him trying so hard to keep the corners of his thick greasy lips from turning upwards. He knew I hated when he parked like that.
As he ambled to my door, I glared out the window, struggling to keep the corners of my mouth from pulling in the opposite direction. I'm in no mood to let David see me cry.
My door opened. “Unbuckle.”
Concentrating on the asphalt, I once again was pulled against my will. Double doors greeted my heavy feet with a sigh, groaning like most when treated with my presence. I saluted their discontent with a silent laugh. Well, fuck you guys, I’m not too thrilled either.
An endless whitewashed hallway was interrupted by a desk with a thin balding woman perched on the edge of her seat behind it like a pageant queen, before returning to its infinitely putrid endlessness. David conversed with Miss Wrinkles for a while, their voices sitting like mud in my ears, their revolting smiles plastered pleasantly in their plastic faces. David smiled at strangers because David genuinely believed he was a credible person. He had smiled at the school’s social worker earlier today too. Even as she urged this impromptu father-daughter field trip. Even if her expectations of his parenting left him no choice but to comply. I dug what was left of my destroyed nail beds into my palm. Even as she told him I wanted to die. Skin beneath my fingertips parted as though before Moses' staff, leaving specked crescents in the Red Sea. David was a fucking moron.
“Darling?” Miss America 1901’s eyes flickered down at her computer screen. “Isabella? Just pop a squat for a moment, okay, honey? I’m calling an escort right now, sweetie.”
Mentally gagging, I started a tally of the sickening nicknames she felt the need to call me. Rows of thin uniform chairs, each backed with a hideous grey-green cushion, lined the windowless walls. Different shades of blue followed geometric patterns around their legs. I never took my eyes from the nauseating squares. With a grunt, my father fell into the seat beside me. He spilled out under the armrest and pressed against my hip. My retching was no longer just in my head.
The longer we waited, the more impatient my father grew. Two and a half minutes in, he crossed his arms aggressively over his chest. About twenty seconds later, his foot started tapping. Then his thighs became bongos. Then he started sighing with an uncomfortable loudness which Pageant-Queen Victoria either ignored, or which proved that time had taken its toll on her pearl ornamented ears past what the elongated lobes were showing. David continued his symphony. I was stuck beside the fucking Fractious Philharmonic.
A tall man came up from down the hallway, carrying a package over his arm. Probably a nurse, I glared suspiciously at the dark blue scrubs marching closer. When he reached me, his monotone voice simply got lost in the mud still clogging whatever pathway to my brain was meant for registering words.
“What?” I asked, agitatedly rubbing my ears.
“Hold out your hand please,” he repeated for me.
No sooner was my arm out than it was attacked with a laminated paper bracelet, complete with my name, (Helm, then Isabella) birthday, (the sixth of June pretentiously expressed with a 0 before each 6) blood type, (apparently O negative, huh, that's actually kinda cool) and whatever other shit this dump felt necessary to adorn my wrist with. The array of colored hair bands who now had to share a home with the intruder were pushed aside. My rainbow grinded erotically against the coarse red rivers it hid below. Their dance grabbed my throat and needles of threatening tears jabbed at the corners of my eyes.
Thanks man, that fucking hurt.
I was escorted to a small room and told to strip to only my underwear. Sealed in plastic to assure the user of its sterile status, was a robe made from some blend of felt and construction paper. It waited patiently on a table. Once alone and almost naked, I walked slowly to the mirror fused to the wall. Back at me stared a mutilated wreck of land, rivers and streams flowing in all direction, cutting through the hills and valleys before me. Or metaphorlessly: my body was a mess. It could never fully recover. I hoped it wouldn't get the chance to come close. Tearing the plastic and myself away, I slipped into the striped robe.
Out I was once again a pulled, then from the hallway to another room. Height and weight were checked, then my vital signs. Fingers crossed they find out I'm dead, I joked to no one in my empty head.
Then they drew blood, needle stabbed thoughtlessly into my arm, searching blindly for a vein or an artery or a capillary or whatever the hell needles so desperately search for. Vial after goddamn vial of the shit that I apparently have too much of to die conveniently was drained for whatever tests were apparently crucial for my stay. Maybe they were just getting whatever O negative they could while they had me trapped. I've heard it's hard to find blood as empty as mine. That feels about right.
Down the hall again, moving faster now. Hospitals run tight schedules, you know. I looked back over my shoulder to find my father, but he was gone. David had left because David is a fuck. Simple as that.
Escorted by navy scrubs, a very close to naked me trotted down an endless hall to an unknown future in a building that smelled like the death I so desperately longed for.
Eh, at least it's better than high school.
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