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