My Story (working title)

This story may not be for the faint of heart. It will surely be disturbing, but for Emily, it was just her mundane life.

“Okay,” said the doctor, “You might feel a little pressure, sweetie.”

Emily was looking the other way; the doctor couldn’t see her roll her eyes in disgust. She was almost in her mid-twenties, but apparently that didn’t matter when you were a cripple, Emily noted dully.

“Ah!” She cried out, as a sharp pain went straight to her upper left arm and surged all the way to the tip of her fingers, that jumped uncontrollably in response.

“Sorry, hun. I accidentally hit a nerve.”

They had tried to numb her with several shots, but with so many medicines she had over the years, she figured she was immune to it by now; she always had a high tolerance to pain pills. But as could one expect, alcoholism and addiction ran on both sides of her family. She had wishfully thought they’d give her some loopy meds to deal with this procedure, but of course not.

“It’ll be 43 inches.” the doctor told her nurse, as they finished threading the mid-line IV. It went straight through her arm, above the elbow, inside an artery connected right to her heart. Emily watched as they taped it up for her. This wasn’t her first mid-line, and sadly probably not her last.

One of those mid-lines almost killed her when she was younger, after she had to have her spine fused with the rods in her back. The IV was in there too long that time, causing her to get a yeast infection in her blood stream. One night she was ‘fine’, the next she was trapped in the nightmares and fantasies of her mind, not waking up until a month later. This incident was right after she and her mother had spent four months in the hospital due to yet another infection.

Emily admired her mother’s strength throughout the years, sticking by her daughter’s bedside during every hospital visit. The hospital might as well have been a second home to both Emily and Tracey, yet everyone flocked to Emily like she was some sort of saint. ‘An inspiration to all’ should be tattooed across her forehead, for all the times she’d been treated as such. Disgusting! Emily thought, even more annoyed now than before as she started thinking about it. Her life was shit and she knew it. Yes, others may have it much worse. Her long distance girlfriend would try to remind her on those down days, but those words hardly ever helped, it only made her feel more guilty.

But it was her mother who should truly take the inspirational praise. After all, what other mother would want to continue to be a caregiver to their now adult daughter? Their relationship wasn’t anything close to perfect of course; stress can bring out the ugly in everyone. Well, Tracey already had a drug and alcohol problem before Emily was ever a twinkle in her mother’s eye. Ironically though, her mom always told her she had never drank a drop or even smoked any cigarettes during the pregnancy process. She also mentioned that Emily’s father, Michael, had chased her pregnant mother around with a knife once, and even kicked her out of bed when she was pregnant too. Her father left less than a week after Emily’s medical malpractice that cased a spinal cord injury; forbidding her to walk ever again. But hey, that shouldn’t matter, right? At least it wasn’t brain damage or Down syndrome, like the doctors assumed it would be. She knew it was wrong for her to think this, but Emily’d rather be a paralyzed cripple instead of having to live her life as a vegetable any day. She was really young when it happened to her, only three; the memories were fuzzy, but definitely no ‘out of body’ experiences, even with her other close calls all her life. No experiences, no light at the end of the tunnel and all that jazz she’s heard of, time and time again. Only darkness.

That’s why when she was ten, she started to dabble in the occult and witchcraft; until one of her mom’s friends freaked out about it and made her mom throw away all of her books, nearly crushing Emily’s soul in the process. Luckily for her, Emily’s faith never wavered; by seventeen she began studying Wicca again, but that was just a stepping stone. Now she considered herself an Agnostic Pagan witch. Of course there were days where she believed she was a borderline Atheist and the thought of being a human just about made her sick, especially after being dealt such a shitty hand in life. Especially now, having to deal with her first onset of pressure sores since 2016 and onwards. This time the IV was put in because of an infection in one of those sores. And to top it all off, she was stuck at home on bedrest yet again.

They say the average human spends about 1/3 of their lives in bed; Emily wondered if she had already broke that record, as if it were a competition. No one cared about that of course, but she did wonder.
Of course, she’d never forget this was the year she got kidnapped, the night that would change her life in more ways than one. Something she had always feared was coming into fruition. Of course this just had to happen while she was recovering on bed rest; her IV just got put in a couple of days ago, and now Emily found herself stuck in bed, unable to move or defend herself or her mother. She felt utterly helpless and hopeless to stop anything; her mom’s screams still haunted her soul to this day.

This can’t be happening!

Emily had imagined this scenario over and over again, her biggest fear coming true. She felt a thousand times more trapped in her bed than in her wheelchair any day. She immediately burst into tears, hearing her mom beg for mercy too. Her mom was good at defending herself, but two with knives against one with no weapon at all wasn’t really much of a fight.

“MOM! NO, LEAVE HER ALONE!” Emily screamed, unable to protect her mother from the intruders, and how could she? She couldn’t walk, let alone crawl out of bed, she was too weak to stop anything.

One of the intruders walked right into her bedroom and scooped her up like a baby. She screamed louder, frantically punching the head of her kidnapper, who wore a dark blue ski mask right over their face. Dressed in all black, it was hard to even determine the gender of these people.

“HELP! LET ME GO!” Emily screamed at the top of her lungs, “JUST KILL ME INSTEAD! DO YOU HEAR ME?! FUCKING KILL ME, PLEASE!” She truly would rather die then live one day without her mother; they were connected at the hip since her birth, and now she was gone.

The struggle paused only a brief moment, as Emily yanked, or more precisely, clawed the intruder’s mask off. She gasp, staring right into the eyes of a woman; not just any woman, it was the eyes of her doctor from just a few weeks ago, the one who put in her IV, which she still had in her arm.

“Good thing you still have that, and a rather nice one if I do say so myself,” the doctor grinned, pleased with her work.

She covered Emily’s mouth, muffling her screams. “Now, don’t make this harder than it needs to be.”
The second intruder came with a syringe in hand, and it was then that Emily realized it was the same nurse from a few weeks ago too. She cried out, trying to fight back against her attackers, making the doctor drop her in the process, but they lunged on her, forcing Emily onto her back as the doctor held her arms down tightly, long enough for the nurse to use the syringe; shooting the sedative straight into the mid-line port.

It didn’t take long to overpower her now, as a wave of drowsiness and confusion washed over her entire body; she couldn’t even use her upper body anymore.

“Don’t worry, Emily.”

Emily’s vision was fading in and out and her hearing became almost static; it reminded her of the medicine she’d use to get before being put under for an operation. But before her body succumbed to the drugs, she was able to still look around her bedroom one last time, as both women grabbed her limp body up, the nurse grabbing her under her arms, and the doctor grabbing her legs. She barely remembered being carried out of her house, her mother was still the only thought in her mind and how much she wanted to be reunited with her.

“Kill me..” she pleaded weakly once more.

“Now, why would we do that, sweetie? We’re here to help fix you.”

The voice was really distant sounding now, despite the woman being right in front of her. Her hearing began to crackle and pop before finally, her vision went dark.

Emily wouldn’t awake until a few day later.