Chapter 257 : Oxygenated battle

Edward came back as he promised along with a tall thin nurse called Ava. She was in her early twenties, had Ash blond hair that went down to the middle of her back in tight ringlets framing an oval shaped face. Her eyes where no distinctive colour but resembled a grayish blue and she wore golden eye shadow and a shiny clear lip gloss the made her plump lips stand out. I had seen her around the unit before but had never really had much to say to her even the times she had hovered around me in my times of observation she didn’t offer any conversation just a body to make sure I didn’t hurt myself.

“Edward told me you weren’t doing so well.” She said sweetly in her high pitched voice that would have suited a child as she bent down beside me and placed a mixture of different things on the floor the included my morning tablets and an oxygen cylinder with mask already attached to it just in case. I shivered hoping that it was intended for another patient or being used as a strange form of decoration.

“I just want to put this on one of your fingers.” Ava half smiled at me battering her mascaraed eyelashes twice as she unravelled the lead of a hand held oxygen monitor and clipped it onto my finger. It took a little while but soon the beeping of my fast pulse filled up of the room with life, my life. Without this pulse the pain wouldn’t exist. The void wouldn’t matter. I tried to convince them that there was no reason for me to stay around. What real life was I living when I had to literally be kept in cotton wool?

 “You seemed to have got yourself in quite the pickle here,” Ava said as she took the opposite wrist into her hand and looped her fingers around my skin finding the spot in my wrist that I had searched for many times before just with a different intention. I had craved the spot to end my life. She craved to find it to preserve it. Ava smiled at me again as she finished her counting and I tried to return it. I normally hated people that acted like Ava, she had all the features of a paediatric care bare. She would have fitted well in the bright colours of the skylight ward; even her tee shirt had a sketchy drawing of Bambi on it from the Disney film. If she hadn’t worked here in the middle off all this madness and desperation I would of swore that she never knew mental illness existed let alone chose to get her hands dirty with it but because she did, was the reason I actually liked her.

“Esmee said that you had a rough night too but she finally managed to get you off to sleep at around 4am” My stomach lurched as I heard her name and I wasn’t sure why but I couldn’t stop the retching noise rippling up my throat. Why didn’t she just wake me up and tell me she was going? It would have all been OK if she told me. The world would have been fixed of all its issues if she had stayed. Stupid idiot even you know that that is a lie.

“Do you think you are you going to be sick?” Ava asked sweetly as she finished getting the information from the monitor and turned to the oxygen tank twisting the knob on the top of it and placed the mask subtly by my chin. At least that grated me the answer to her question. I could feel the vomit push against my throat and I gagged moaning that I was going to throw up.

Edward sprang to his feet in one fluid motion and rushed off to the side of the room opening the bathroom with his card key. He reached inside and grabbed a pile of cardboard dishes off of the only shelf then returned to me placing one into my lap. I chocked hard twice as I curled my hands around the cardboard lip but I brought nothing up.

“This will make you feel a lot better at least physically if you let me hold this properly to your face Mi, All tis crying are really giving your body a work out and your lungs are struggling to keep up.” Ava smiled, showing her teeth this time, allowing me to see that they were neatly concealed behind a layer of train track braces; it made her look very young. “Maybe you could hold this mask to your face or let me, or Edward if you would prefer, I know you know him a little better than me.”

I grimaced at the thought of the supple plastic sucking itself to my cheek bones, at the slight anti septic taste the air had as it swirled in my mouth and made tracks down into my greedy lungs. I needed it and I wanted it but a barrier that contained no logic blocked the only path to it.  I wailed harder in the desperate confusion before reaching out to take the mask then backing away before I reached it. I bashed my head hard against the mattress trying to knock the thoughts out.  

“Mi you need this and that it OK,” Said another voice entering into the room before scooting his giant body in between Ava and Edward his jade eyes looking directly into mine. “You need some help right now and that is OK. There is no price to pay and I can promise there will be no repercussions. Trust me. I did there was no way I couldn’t and  immediately I removed my hands away from my face and let him press the mask up against my mouth.