Heaven Can Wait

• Charley Ford, Grade 7
• Short Story
• 2014

I inhale and exhale as the tubes up my nose give me air. My pale, white sheets drape down the hospital bed as my skin is bandaged and still.
All I can remember was the glass smashing in my car window and the rolling and feeling of being on a roller coaster ride. But I wasn’t. I felt like I was in a dream. But I can’t have been. This was reality.
Now I’m here, in the emergency department with these uncomfortable, transparent tubes up my nose trying to keep me alive. My mother is lying still in the bed next to me. I imagine reaching out to her but I am in so much pain my body refused.
I could hear the beeping of the heart monitor machines attached to me and my mother. The alarming sound of the machine ringed throughout my ears. My legs aching. My neck in pain as I look over to my mother.
Her beeping of her pulse machine stopped as the doctors wheeled her bed out in a rush. I reach out to her with all my power. I tried to scream but nothing came out.
My heart is racing. I felt salty tears fall down from my face as the doctor was telling me something. All I heard was sorry and I knew what had happened.
My throat aching as I try to eliminate the fact from my head. It goes around and around. Not like a feather though… more like a big thick brick hitting against my head. I feel sick in the stomach. My eyelids flutter as I scream on the inside. Screaming of pain.
My heart. The slow beeping of the machine is started to freak me out as I feel drowsy, dizzy and nauseous. I couldn’t breathe. What was happening?

If only heaven could wait.