• Insight. Part one.

    I felt pain. Indescrible pain all across my face. I tried to touch my face but I couldn't move my arm. My only sense was pain. I could hear nothing except my own screaming. See nothing but darkness. Then, I saw a flash of light. Then there was another and another. Slowly, I opened my eyes and found myself being hurtled down a long white hall. The type in hospitals. There was people, many, many people all around me in scrubs. I was in a hospital.

    Then it went blank again. I felt nothing, knew nothing, sensed nothing.

    I awoke to the beeping of my heart monitor. I was pretty disorientated and confused as I looked up at the white ceiling. Everywhere, everything was white in my room, except the tan of the drawn back privacy curtain. There was nobody leaning over me to make sure I wouldn't die like in the movies. I didn't see any eyes at first sight, just white ceiling. I tried to sit up, but I got a throbbing pain in my ribs when I tried. So I just laid there for a couple minutes, trying to remember what happened, when a nurse came in.

    She was a nice nurse, the kind you sterotype nurses as. She smiled when she looked at me, but it almost seemed alittle forced, and said,

    "You're awoke! How good, the doc said you might be out for a couple hours longer. How are you feeling?"

    I just stared at her face, trying to figure out what the heck she was saying, I was that disillusional I guess. Then I looked at my hands. They had a whole bunch of tubes in them, as well as my arm, and at my ribs was a bulky feeling underneath my hospital gown. I touched it and felt bandages. I looked up at her again, who had been tracking my movements.

    "What-what happened? What hospital am I at?"

    "You're at the Swedish Hospital in Seattle sweetie. Oh, and according to this-" she paused to check her clipboard that I hadn't noticed until then, "you were in a head on collision at roughly seven fifteen pm. You broke three ribs, blacked out, damaged one of your lugs, sprained your neck, and-" she hesitanted like she was trying to decide how to word something correctly, "damaged your face."

    "Damaged my face? What do you mean?" I asked puzzeled, trying to touch my face, but being stopped by the weight of the tubes. She opened her mouth to say something, but then the doc came in to rescue her. She seemed relieved.

    "Good morning, and how are you feeling sunshine?" asked the middle-aged, greying haired man in a white coat.

    "Um...I-I don't really know. I-I'm trying to remember what-what exactly happened," I stuttered.

    "Well, you broke three ribs-" began the doc.

    "Yeah, I know that. She already told me. I mean, I can't really remember being in a car or anothing except-" that's when the memories flowed back. My name is Jasmine Brooke. I am nineteen years old. I was driving with my mom on my way back from college for summer break. It was raining, we went around a bend, the car shifted, there was an awful crunching sound, and then blackness.

    I bit my lip. I didn't know where my mom was, shouldn't she be here when I wake up? Where was my mom? I voiced this thought too, and got a weird response. The doctor's shiny eyes dulled and put on the expression of awkwardness and... pain? Nobody said anything though. I asked the question again. There was still no response. So I sat up, ignoring the achy pain of my ribs and started yelling the question repeatedly. The doc tried to calm me down, as well as the nurse, but I was becoming frantic. This people wouldn't tell me where my mom was. Why won't they tell me where my mom was? The doc kept on telling me to lay back down, that I was still weak from the accident. He kept on going on about me also probably needing another blood transfusion, meaning I was even more weak. None of this mattered, I kept on yelling, until I finally got out of bed, even with the tubes attached. I walked, or more like staggered, to the frantic doctor who looked like he didn't know what to do. Well, I guess I can't blame him. I wouldn't know what to do if a teenage girl charged at me, dragging along tubes that were still hooked up to different machines on wheels,either.

    The more the doc was avoiding the question, the more I knew. My mom was dead. She was dead, and I was still alive. I think I totally realized this right when I was within three inches of the doctor, that's when I broke down and cried, as I slumped to the floor, in a hospital gown. The doctor patted my back awkwardly as I sobbed my insane heart out. I think I vaguly remember him talking to somepeople to help me back into my bed. Well, anyway, somebody tried to left me up, but I refused and whiped my eyes.

    "I can go back myself. I-I'm sorry, I am so sorry, I need some time alone please," I said as I slowly got back to my feet, pretty hard when you're hooked up to tubes, have broken ribs, and are as sore as heck. The doctor looked very conflicted, aswell as the nurse, who looked startled out of her wits, but they still left. I turned around to head back to my bed to cry some more, when I saw him.

    There, staring right at me was a boy. Well, actually, he probably was like twenty something, so I guess he wasn't a boy, but he's green eyes were shinning like a little boy's. I stopped and stared right back at him. He didn't seem freaked at all by the scene I had just caused, and that's when I realized how his eyes were unfocused. They were staring right at me, but somehow, he was looking at something else. He was blind.

    I stood there for some time, before he startled me by saying,

    "I know your still there, I can hear you breathing right in front of me. Are you okay? Actually, scratch that, that was the lamest question ever." He gave me a half smile and said,

    "I'm Bradin." I looked at him sort of in shock and weirdment. Then, I realized he couldn't see that so i murmured,

    "Okay then." and climbed back into bed to cry myself to sleep. I remember thinking that I was going insane, right before I feel asleep.


    I woke up suddenly, for no apparent reason. For a moment, I thought I was safe again in my own bed, and that everything I had just gone through was a crazy, horrible, weird dream. Then, I looked over and saw that kid Bradin, who was awake with the privacy curtain drawn back. He looked...sad. I don't know why, but he just looked like he was deep in thought about something that upsetted him. I released the breath I had held in when I had woke up. He heard it, and looked over in my direction.

    He smiled and said good morning as I struggled to sit up, the aching in my ribs had gotten slightly better. I guessed that the nurse had given me some pain killers through one of the many tubes, while I was sleeping.

    I rubbed my eyes and looked throught the half drawn windows. There was a faint light coming in. It seemed like either the sun was rising or setting.
    "How-how long have I been sleeping?" I asked.

    "I don't know, pretty long though...maybe a day and a half. You weren't being very restful though. You kept on thrashing around so much that the nurses had to give you some sleeping pills, then you stopped," he smiled and then went back to staring off right in front of him. He seemed like he was concentrating on something very hard though, not like he was sad. After a while he sighed.

    At that time, I was too caught up in self-pity and confusion to really care why he sighed, but I was bored so I asked him what was the matter. He shook his shaggy brown hair and sighed again before saying,

    "I keep on thinking it'll come back, but it won't," then he went back to concentrating for maybe a couple minutes longer before shaking his head again and smiling.

    "You have no clue what I'm talking about do you?" he asked to me, well, I mean he was still looking right in front of him but I knew who he was talking to.

    "Nope. No clue," I said dryly.

    "Well, I'm trying to see if my blindness is lifting or not. Sometimes, I think or I guess feel like it's lifting, just a little. Sometimes it get's to like a filmy black screen, so I can see movement. Most of the time everything is dark though."

    "Oh...i'm...that's um...not...i'm sorry," were the words that finally came mumbling out of my mouth. I really didn't care that much though at that point for some blind guy. In fact, I really didn't care about anything. I got up, realizing i should go to the bathroom if I haven't gone in a day and a half.

    As I was washing my hands, I looked up into the mirror above the little sink. Staring back at me was my long black hair in a mess, my hazel eyes, my face structure. It was me...but with one addition. From about the middle of my forehead, slanted down to just below my temple was a gash with stitches in them. The gash cut through my right eyebrow and dragged down in a angry, red line. I looked like something from a horror movie. I gave a small scream, more like a yelp and moved my hand to touch the scar. That was also the first time I noticed how clamy and pale I looked. My cheeks were sunken in and my eyes looked heitic and blochy. I hardly looked like the heroine of a story. In fact, I wasn't the beautiful, brave, intelligent girl that gets they guy at all.