All the Fury of a Woman Scorned
All the worst moments of my life run through my head
Like scenes from a Tarantino flick
Detached, impersonal, shocking but, entertaining
This one is no different
Moments of consciousness come and go
When I strain against the fog
Of fentanyl and propofol
I find myself in a hospital bed
I’m gasping for air
And with every breath
A deep pain envelopes my chest
Both from my bleeding lungs and bruised ribs
Ribs bruised by my Father’s hands
Not in violence
But, in a desperate attempt to resuscitate the daughter
that he found blue and unconscious, lying on her bedroom floor
On the first day that I begin to come to
In the intensive care unit
I must’ve asked a dozen nurses, a dozen times each
What had happened to me
Most nurses say that they don’t know
That my lungs are just very sick
A few tell me that I overdosed
They ask if I was trying to kill myself
It’s a reasonable question
This isn’t my first time in this hospital
In fact, it’s my third time so far this year
It is, however, my first time outside the psych ward
I can’t answer the question
I don’t know
I don’t remember taking any drugs
I don’t even remember who I am
My nurses explain patiently
That I’ve been in a coma for the past week
I don’t believe them until I look at my fingernails
They’re longer than they’ve ever been before
I’ve never been so miserable as in those first few days
After I woke up in the hospital
My mind isn’t working
And neither is my body
I can’t think
Or eat, or walk, or breathe
Or speak above a raspy whisper
I’m barely a person anymore
I beg the nurses to restart the propofol drip
To let me slip back into the
Omnipresent nothingness of a coma
They refuse
The nurses tell me that I’ll make a full recovery
I just have to fight
Fight for what?
I can’t remember any life before this
When my begging for sedation goes unmet
I will myself to die
I tell the nurses that I don’t want to live
If living is like this
They call for a psychiatrist
He’s a condescending, pretentious man
Who does a poor job of feigning sympathy
He asks me why I would say something so morbid
I tell him that he’d want to die to
If he woke up in a hospital bed
With no memory
And a completely non-functioning body
I don’t want to fight
I don’t care if I survive
I don’t have any option
But to lay in my bed and keep breathing
So that’s what I do
I fight, not because I’m afraid to lose my life
But because I have absolutely nothing else to do
They’re not going to let me die
I learn days later
Why they thought I tried to kill myself
The boy who’d given me the pills told my father
that I must’ve made an attempt because he’d rejected me
I didn’t remember enough to say for certain that he was wrong
But the feeling in the pit of my stomach
Told me that he was trying to absolve himself of guilt
For giving me laced pills and leaving me for dead
After I learned that he had said such a thing
I refused to die
I fought for my life
With all the fury of a woman scorned