To My Dearest Roseanne- Chapter 30
Liz Juzynski woke up in her room. It was the middle of the night. Her neighbours were sound asleep in both beds between her. She was still in the same room on the top floor and travelled down the elevator to the physiotherapy ward every day. A faint corridor light luminated the darkness through the open door. Liz tried to swallow, but she couldn't. Her throat was as coarse as sandpaper. She was thirsty.
In silence she got up on the bed, avoiding to wake up her neighbours. Unfortunately, it was difficult because the springs were always unforgivably squeaky in hospital beds. She drank a cup of water, refilled it and drank another one, then refilled it and drank once more.
Before she knew it, she needed to use the bathroom.
Even grunted in the darkness and climbed into her wheelchair. While doing so, the lady who was run over by a harvester turned on her bed and gasped.
"Are you a ghost? Am I dead?!"
"No, it's just me." Liz waved at the neighbour. "Go back to sleep."
The lady closed her eyes and began snoring again.
***
After flushing the toilet, Liz rolled out to the corridor. It was completely empty. In fact, the whole floor seemed abandoned. Still, it was just an illusion because all the patients were sleeping in their rooms. Out of curiosity, Liz didn't return to her room, but she journeyed to the elevator lounge, which was a large rectangular space with a wide window in the middle of the floor, separating the departments of internal medicine and ophthalmology.
Here, the lights were turned off and the air was noticeably cooler, but it wasn't inconvenient for Liz. She stopped the wheelchair by the window and observed the city skyline consumed in clouds of fog. The humming of air conditioning made her feel like on a spaceship that's about to take off.
Still, she knew it was wishful thinking. She wasn't on a spaceship, and she couldn't reach the stars, let alone witness the meteor shower. She wanted to see at least something in the fog, and suddenly a flash of blue light appeared under the window. Liz leaned over, hoping to see better the strange optical phenomenon, but it turned out to be just an ambulance speeding towards the ER.
As she looked at the fog again, her thoughts drifted to Roseanne.
Liz wondered how her daughter was coping on her own. Did she feel tired? Exhausted? Even if she did, she never showed it. Roseanne always slipped into the posture of a brave topper in front of her mom, doing the best she could for her, never complaining, never arguing, always smiling, always supporting. This made Liz feel all the more like a burden.
She knew she had to survive, be strong for her daughter. That's why she refused to break down after the accident, but Liz was aware that it took away so much from her life. She didn't have the strength to be angry, but she felt a deep sense of injustice to God, the universe, fate, or whatever the supreme force is called.
Perhaps there is no supreme force. Perhaps we all are in a bus, but there's nobody behind the wheel? Is our ride just a string of accidental decisions? Liz thought to herself.
Her hands firmly grabbed the resting pads of the wheelchair and she pushed her body up in the air. She desperately wanted to stand up. She wanted to prove to herself that she could do it, to stop this nightmare of dependency once and for all.
But it was a fool's errand. In spite of continuous physiotherapy, her legs were still too weak to support her weight.
"Holy crap, you're gonna fall or something!"
Liz heard a loud cry behind her back, but before she could turn her head, the stranger already helped her descend on the wheelchair. It turned out to be a blonde teenager with blue eyes and an upturned nose.
"Are you alright?" she asked.
"Yes, yes, I'm fine. Thank you for helping. I'm sorry I scared you."
"It's nothing. I needed to use the bathroom and saw you."
"Oh, that's the same reason I got up," Liz looked closely at the girl in the darkness. "I don't remember seeing you before. Were you admitted today?"
"I've been here for like three days already. Excuse me, I'm in ophthalmology. You're in internal medicine?"
Liz nodded her head.
"I must say you look really beautiful and healthy. Do you have problems with your eyes?"
"Well... with one eye actually." The girl's voice hung for a moment. "I went in for a check-up after school and they said they have to monitor me. Each day, they examine my eye and do blood tests."
"I'm sorry to hear that, sweetie. I hope everything will turn out fine," Liz said with sincerity, even though it sounded like a cliché.
The girl began to turn around when she received a notification and took out her phone. The brightness of the screen even hurt the eyes of Liz who was a metre away.
"It's bad for your health, you know," said Liz, pointing at the phone.
"So are these," she said, pointing at a pack of cigarettes sticking out of her coat.
Liz cleared her throat and tucked the pack deeper into pocket.
"I'm sorry, but still, you shouldn't be careful looking at that screen if your eye may be unhealthy."
Notifications kept popping one after one.
"I know, but it's my boyfriend writing to me."
"Your boyfriend?"
"Yes."
"If he is your true boyfriend, then he should value your health first and foremost rather than bother you in the middle of the night."
Upon hearing this, the girl muted her phone, but she was still holding it in her hand.
"If it's bothering you, then I will go now," she said.
"No." Liz was visibly upset, yet she didn't want to scare away her conversationalist. "It's just that your situation reminded me about my own youth. I don't know... maybe my high school days were simpler because there was no social media at all. People would go to social events or apartment parties and meet each other through friends."
"Nowadays, boys and girls cold approach each other in school, but it doesn't end well most of the time," the girl said.
"That so-called 'cold approach' was unthinkable in my days. People would always strike up a conversation about any mundane topic imaginable. I remember going to the same high school with one boy. We lived on the same street, so we commuted together by bus. I always felt good around him because he was such a good colleague. We chatted about school dramas, teachers, neighbours, and our daily lives. Then, came the graduation day. We got on a bus one last time. He told me about his college plans, and I told him about mine. When we got off, he pulled out a shoebox out of nowhere. But the box didn't have shoes in it, it was definitely lighter, and it had a pink ribbon wrapped around it. He gave it to me with instructions to open it only after coming back home. I did as he told me..."
Liz paused and lowered her head. She touched a pack of cigarettes in her pocket.
"Well, what happened next?" the girl asked.
"I opened the box and it was filled with envelopes, dozens and dozens of them. And in these envelopes, there were love letters and poems, everything about me."
"Oh my God, that's so cool!" the girl exclaimed, her blue eyes sparkled in the dark. "You married the guy?"
Liz looked at the girl and smiled faintly.
"I got scared, petrified to the core. When I finally found the strength to face him, I knocked on his door and his parents told me he had already left for university. We never saw each other again."
"What a bummer!"
"The moral of the story is that people are experiences, not possessions. Your boyfriend should be aware of this. I cherish my experience with that colleague. I didn't fall for him, but I will never forget his grand gesture, and it taught me not to be afraid of the next declaration of love."
"And who was another broken-heart?"
"My husband."
***
Liz took out a cigarette, but she knew she couldn't light it in the building. She desperately needed to smoke. Meanwhile, the girl completely turned off her phone.
"Thank you very much for the conversation. I guess I'll have a serious talk with my boyfriend in the morning. Oh, by the way, I didn't say my name. I'm Kate"
Liz shook her hand.
"I'm Liz. We are like two ships passing in the night," she laughed. "Come tomorrow afternoon and I'll introduce you to my wonderful daughter."
"Actually, I'm getting discharged in the morning."
"Oh..."
"But thanks a lot for the chat."
The girl withdrew herself and disappeared in the corridor. Liz was again alone in the empty lounge.
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