Chapters (40)
- Cover
- Also by Saumya Dave
- Dedication
- One
- Two
- Three
- Four
- Five
- Six
- Seven
- Eight
- Nine
- Ten
- Eleven
- Twelve
- Thirteen
- Fourteen
- Fifteen
- Sixteen
- Seventeen
- Eighteen
- Nineteen
- Twenty
- Twenty-One
- Twenty-Two
- Twenty-Three
- Twenty-Four
- Twenty-Five
- Twenty-Six
- Twenty-Seven
- Twenty-Eight
- Twenty-Nine
- Thirty
- Thirty-One
- Thirty-Two
- Acknowledgments
- Readers Guide
- Discussion Questions
- About the Author
- What’s next onyour reading list?
The blood starts to drain from her face the second she starts listening. From the first syllable, she knows something is off.
“Mom, call me the second you get this. Natasha’s in the hospital. My hospital. You have to come here now.”
Nineteen
Natasha
Natasha feels another wave of nausea as she watches three stretchers being pulled into the emergency room.
Fuck. How could she have done something so stupid? What was she thinking?
When she closes her eyes, the answer comes to her. She was both thinking too much and not thinking at all. Her mind kept telling her she wasn’t good enough, again and again, until it became like a steady background noise, one she just wanted to finally shut off for good.
But it was all a mistake. Taking the Tylenol was a mistake. Calling 911 was a mistake.
She rubs her temples in an attempt to stop her throbbing headache. But it’s no use. It’s as though someone is stabbing her head from the inside.
Wailing sirens collect outside the emergency room. Natasha watches a cluster of doctors take fast, purposeful strides to an area marked trauma bay. All of them are wearing scrubs. None of them look anything like the ones in her favorite medical dramas.
• • •
Her breathing gets faster as she hears high-pitched screams from a nearby patient’s bed.
The rancid smell of vomit lingers in front of her. It takes her a second to realize that the smell is coming from her. In the ambulance, she had vomited until there was nothing left. The green-yellow bile collected in the folds of a plastic bag that was held by a woman in a black EMS uniform.
“Let it out, sweetheart,” the EMS worker had said as she rubbed Natasha’s back. Her dark eyeliner and uneven haircut reminded Natasha of Janis Ian, her favorite character in Mean Girls. In the daze of her fatigue, she remembers being comforted by that thought. She may have even called the woman Janis.
She has to get out of here. She has to see a doctor, explain that she didn’t want to die; she just wanted to stop feeling so shitty.
She swings her legs over the side of the stiff hospital bed. The beige sheet just barely covers the squeaky blue mattress. On the wall next to her, there’s a blood pressure cuff, one of those constantly beeping monitors, boxes of purple latex gloves in small, medium, and large sizes, and a tub of antiseptic wipes. Now that she thinks of it, the entire place reeks of those antiseptic wipes. Antiseptic wipes and sickness.
The teal curtain that’s supposed to separate her bed from the person’s next to her rustles and a second later gets pushed aside. It makes a jingling sound that reminds Natasha of her shower curtain at home.
Home. She needs to go home.