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No. No one should be home but me. That’s why I did this.
It’s my mother’s voice that I hear next. She sounds so far away, but at the same time so close, like she’s shouting from a distance, like hearing her under water. No, it doesn’t make sense, but not much does at the moment.
A knock on my door. I can’t even open my eyes.
“Row?” Mom calls. “Rowan?” She says something else, but it’s fading in and out, being pushed aside by a painful buzzing in my head that fills my skull with noise. My limbs are tingling, I think, but it’s hard to tell because I feel so cold.
Another knock. Harder this time. Now Mom is panicking; I can hear it in her voice. I want to reassure her, to tell her that there’s no need to be sad or upset and this is just the way things have to be.
But I can’t. Not even if I wanted to.
“Daniel!” Mom screams. “Help me get the door open.”
I must black out for a moment, because when I come to again, two brand new people are hovering over me. The one I notice first is a woman, an EMT, and despite the situation her voice is calm. So is her expression. Like seeing your big sister for the first time in years. But I don’t know this person.
“Rowan, can you hear me?” the EMT asks. I try to nod, but it’s no use. Just breathing is becoming tiresome and difficult. “My name is Hallie and I’m going to take care of you, okay?” the woman says. It’s then I realize that I’m strapped to a gurney, and there’s an IV in my arm.
“Stop,” I try to say, but yet again words fail me. I don’t want to be rescued. I want to die. I want it all to end.
“Just hang in there, sweetheart,” Hallie says, and the darkness once again begins to fold in around me. Suffocating. Cold. Frightening. “We’re going to get you to the hospital, okay? Just hang in there.”
The last thing I wonder before darkness takes me in its hold is whether or not people will actually show up to my funeral.
