" Oh my God Mel, you are finally awake! You scared the words out of me. How are you feeling? Does your head hurt? Are you hungry? Do you need anything?" Sarah was panting, running her hands all over me.
" By God, give her some room Sarah, one question at a time. We don't want to overwhelm her into another fit of unconsciousness, do we?" Helen said rousing. Her voice laced with tiredness and the book on her lap falling to the marble floor as she yawned and stretched.
They stood aside as the doctor ran tests on me, flashing a torch to my eyes, checking my pulse, checking my heartbeat, my bowel sounds and blood pressure with his stethoscope. I tried not to fidget as his hands tickled my skin.
"She's in perfect health, get her something to eat and let her rest and after a few more tests, we can then talk about discharging her" the dark-skinned doctor told them before retreating from the room.
An awkward silence settled as they watched me eat. I could tell that Sarah was barely keeping a leash on the questions hanging on her lips. Any second now…
"Oh fuck it!, no offense Mel, but what was that? What happened or was happening to you?" she asked as I was licking the sugar from the muffins coated on my fingers.
" Why must you always be hasty, allow her to finish eating, perhaps all the years you spent in solitude have drenched you of your patience." Helen glared.
" Don't start with me again, look at you pretending like you don't want to know when it's written all over you, hypocrite."
" Yes, I'm a hypocrite, but at least I can hold myself unlike you with a tongue you can barely keep on leash, bringing her here has never felt more like a mistake." Helen growled.
I could sense the tension between them like a vengeful wraith hovering around. Both glared at each other with eyes like burning coal and I could only imagine what transpired between them when I was unconscious.
No doubt, they would have exchanged blames on whose fault it was that I was in such a condition.
The safest thing to do was to avoid them altogether, but with the fierceness of their gaze, it was only a matter of time before one of them rushes to the other and shreds her to pieces.
After eating a whole box of muffins and draining my coffee to dregs, I made a gesture of helplessness which wasn't faked since I could barely move with the machines connected to my body. They fought for who will take the mug, for who will prop the pillow as I made to sit straighter.
"Leave it, I'm fine" I ground out as Sarah made to adjust my coat. I really have to get them separated before whatever this is escalates to something I can't handle.
"Well?", they returned, teaming up for the sake of impatience after I made no move of saying anything even after I had been made comfortable.
"Fine, but you might want to sit down for this cause what I'm about to say is going to sound very weird?"
The sound of metal scraping the marble floors echoed through the room as Sarah pulled her chair away from Helen's.
Heaving a sigh as they watched me expectantly from both sides, their patience running on thin ice. I began,
"I can't really tell how it began or how it started, but one minute I was standing there with the two of you at the cottage and the next I was… I was… I… Oh my God, what is this? I… I… I'm having a really hard time remembering. I don't think I remember anything past that. Isn't that weird, I could swear that I saw things, experienced things, but now I don't remember shit."
"Really, that's what we are doing now. That's what we are going with. How do I know you are not saying this because you want to share what you saw only with her" Sarah spat, standing and throwing a foul look at Helen.
"I swear, I swear it's the truth" I said hastily as Helen rose too, matching Sarah's look. They were really going to have a go at it, right there… in front of me. Did my words have any effect? Hardly, as Helen thundered pointing at Sarah,
"You better be mindful of the accusations you throw around, do you think I don't want to know what happened? What was going on with her for two whole days? I want to know everything just as badly as you do, so don't stand there making assertions when we are after the same thing. I even abandoned everything to be here and yet you accuse me who's not her family of having a hand on why she can't remember, some aunt you are."
Sarah was ready to retort, she had even began,
" Don't tell me that, you must really think me a fool if you think I don't know what's happening here? The twisted mind game y'all are playing, shocker I…"
That was when the sting of Helen's previous statement got to her. She looked at me, really looked at me and saw that she was indeed a terrible aunt for I, her niece was telling the truth.
I watched her stagger and slump to her chair as the weight of her own statements settled on her shoulders. I noticed the slight change from rage to guilt and shame.
"Are you quite sure you don't remember, I could jog your memory too." Helen was telling me and before I could give her a response, she began,
"I have not seen anything like it, one moment you were taking in your new surroundings and the next, you were crouched on the ground holding your chest as if the gunshots we heard pierced through. As if that wasn't weird, your eyes changed, it became an orb of swirling smoke darting from here to there so fast like you were in motion.
"At times, you would look back at nothing in particular and then your speed would accelerate, how did I know, I saw it in your eyes. When I got close enough to peer through them, I saw trees, shrubs, grasses, flowers, mushrooms, I saw them disappear and appear like the vision of someone in pursuit. When we heard another gunshot, your hands went to your left leg as a guttural scream that sounded nothing like you, escaped your lips. It didn't take me long to piece it together, you were there, but you were also in the woods. Like you were seeing through the eyes of the wolf they were pursuing. Fear gripped me as I shook and shook you, I had to wake you up because I didn't want to know what would happen to you if they killed the wolf. But you didn't bulge, I slapped you a few times, yet nothing happened until I heard you say "what the hell was that?" before you slumped."
It was Sarah who continued,
" We were at your side at once, pulling you whilst you remained incapacitated. Then you started burning up, your skin like the metal body of a boiling kettle. We managed to get inside on the couch. And tried cooling your temperature with cold water and towels, but the towels would sizzle as they came in contact with your skin. The thrashing began after that, I could tell you were seeing something, something so bad that you wanted to wake. We couldn't help you not when your skin was over a 100 degrees.
"Left with no choice, I called the hospital and we got you hospitalized which wasn't an easy feat. The people that loaded you on a stretcher had to use layers of wet towels before they could touch you. Keeping you on the stretcher was the next issue, they had to scrap you in even though the binds burnt away after a few seconds. I have never been as scared and helpless as I was that day watching you. I prayed. I cried. I wailed. Your temperature was off the charts when you were admitted, the sheets on the bed were removed and even the leather wrapping of the bed was almost burnt by your skin.
"People said things, they called you a demon. A possessed girl and I feared they were right. You looked like you were possessed by something. The tests the doctors managed to run showed nothing amiss even though we could see everything that was wrong. Just when they were about to make us go back with you… you became calm. Your breathing slowed and your temperature returned to normal. It was then that they were able to install these machines and yet they found nothing medically wrong with you."