Within seconds two massive paramedics, dressed in dark-blue uniforms came through the open door. One of the medics was carrying a huge plastic tackle box. The other a clipboard and a big square canvas bag with the strap pulled across his chest. They saw Sybil and Dax and within seconds the one with the clipboard was on his two-way radio to the hospital. My conversation with the 911 operator became an afterthought as I watched one of the medics take over for Briggs.
Medical terms were spat as the urgency in their conversations flew from their mouths. I could tell they were words weighted with life and death consequences, I felt helpless in not knowing what any of it meant. I was so fucking scared as I watched them work on Sybil.
“Key,” I huffed under my breath, hoping it was just loud enough that he’d hear me. He looked over at me, his eyes unbearably tragic as he shook his head back and forth.
“No? . . . What? . . . No, what? . . . What Kean, what are you saying?” I shouted. My words scraped my lungs and every pain I had became a ghostly ache as I rushed toward Sybil. Briggs stopped me, held me back, his muscles were rock hard as he wrapped me in his arms.
“Sssshhhh, com’ on, Rosie; it doesn’t look good. Let them do wat tey need to do.”
My face buried in his chest, I screamed as loud as I could. I screamed for every time my mother hit me, screamed for the monster that took my innocence, I screamed because my parents didn’t believe me. I screamed for all the times I fucked someone for money. I screamed for the only person who cared about me. I screamed for my voiceless friend Sybil.
“Briggs? You Kean Briggs?” Someone’s voice interrupted my breakdown.
“Aye.”
“I’d like to ask you a couple of questions.”
“Rosie? Listen sweet’art, I need you to settle down,” he said as he pulled me away from his chest. I didn’t want to feel the air, I didn’t want to breathe. I just wanted to go numb.
“Rosie, you need to go wit’ Sybil. You understan’? Sybil needs you.” His voice was stern, thick with his accent and yet soft enough to keep me focused. His eyes narrowed, like he was telling me that I shouldn’t be here anymore tonight.
I pulled away in time to see them rolling Sybil out of our apartment on a gurney. I glanced over at another pair of paramedics working on Dax before nodding at Briggs. He grabbed my sweater off my bed, snatched my purse off the table and in a gentle sway he ushered me out of my apartment.
“Go be. I’ll lock up. Meet you in the hospital in a wee bit.”
In a fog, faded thoughts, clouded ideas, floating anywhere but where I was supposed to be, I heard the ambulance door shut behind me and one of the paramedics asking me what I knew about Sybil’s family, and next of kin. Something she hid since the day she came to live with me and sadly enough, in the two years we’d been roommates I didn’t know any more about her family then I did the day we moved in together. Well, except for the fact that she had an older sister.
THE HEART MONITOR clambered for a steady tempo echoing some form of life, while the oxygen that kept Sybil alive hissed a sickening rhythm that was scorched into my mind. Every once in a while the lilt of measuring her blood pressure broke the monotony.
Psssshhhh. Click. Psssshhhh. Click.
Beep . . . beep . . . beep . . . beep . . .
Grrrrrrrr . . . tick . . . tick . . . whoosh.
It was like a symphony of unbearable noise that wore raw against my mind like a bad song, until it tangled itself into my thoughts and became the only song I craved. Any deviation, pace change, or missed beat and my heart would fall into my stomach.
Motionless, Sybil lay there in a medically induced coma. The doctors told me that her brain had swelled and they had to keep her sedated to avoid brain damage. I asked the nurses a couple of times if they got a hold of her parents or her sister. They would just shake their heads and frown. I expected Sybil’s family to show up any minute and inevitably I would be asked to leave; but no one ever did and until it happened, I wasn’t going to leave her side.
The nurses explained the more I talked to her, held her hand, and spent time with her the better results they have with recovery. So, I sat next to her hospital bed and watched her life on pause . . . unable to press play, listen to her voice, see her smile or hear her laugh over stupid shit we saw.
“Sybil, it’s me, Rose. I’m right here, sweets. I’m not going anywhere.”
I looked at her expressionless face—no emotion, nothing. Her flesh marked with the pain and bruises of her lifestyle, I would be a fool if I didn’t realize that it could have easily been me in that bed, fighting for my life. Quite frankly, that scared the living hell out of me.
“They tell me the more I talk to you, the better chances you’ll sit up and argue with me.” I held her hand. Soft and warm enough, there was no tension, no response.
“Come on Sybil, you can’t leave me. You fight, you fucking fight to get better.”
Unable to answer me I hoped that Sybil could sense I was there, that someone was there who cared.
I leaned down next to her ear, tears dampening my cheeks, “Come on Sybil, we had a deal. You and me, we’re getting out together. Don’t leave me here alone. Just give me a squeeze with your hand.”