Witch’s Wart

 

 

The hallway outside of Mac’s room was frantic madness. Nurses and doctors swept in and out. Mom and Tabitha and Howard and the gang of Morton relatives, eleven or twelve of them, watched helplessly. They whispered, hugged, and prayed.

I stood a few feet from the group’s edge. Safer that way. Every so often, I’d sneak a quick glance through my glasses. Whenever anyone in the Morton gang looked my way, their auras flashed dark and spiteful. Most of them ignored me. I wasn’t a girl anymore. I was a hairy witch’s wart they wanted to cut off.

Only fifteen minutes had passed, but it felt like fifteen hours.

Finally, Dr. Myles approached Howard, Mom, and Tabitha.

“The good news is that although Mac’s seizures caused him to go into cardiac arrest, we were able to get his heart to resume normal function rather quickly. What’s the bad news? Well, he’s not yet out of the woods. The latest EKG is not what we had hoped to see, and the MRI results also concern us. But Mac is off the respirator, and he’s breathing on his own.”

Howard tried to smile, but it ended up looking like a wince. “What happens next?” he asked the doctor. “What’s the plan?”

“We wait, we run more tests, and we hope to see signs of healing,” Dr. Myles said. “I have to be honest, it could go the other way. If Mac’s brain shuts down to what is sometimes referred to as a vegetative state, things could deteriorate rather rapidly. My best advice is that you should try to be prepared for all possibilities, good or bad.”

Tabitha lost her breath. She glared at the ceiling like she was searching for her mother.

Howard’s knees buckled. My mom wrapped an arm around him, doing her best to keep him strong and upright. I don’t think anyone believed that their upcoming wedding would actually happen. It couldn’t. Not unless Mac recovered.

I felt my blood burning, furious with myself. Every negative emotion I had ever owned burned hot inside me, waiting for the right moment to boil over and send me on a destructive rampage. The big problem? I didn’t have a good target for my rage. It wasn’t Dr. Myles’ fault that Mac hadn’t woken up yet, and wasn’t getting better. It wasn’t Howard’s fault, or Tabitha’s fault, or even the truck driver’s fault. No, only I was to blame for this horrible and hurtful mess.

Sometimes the truth will crush you into dusty bits. Other times it will act like a fuel. In the middle of all that sorrow and brokenness, I told myself I had to do more to help Mac turn things around—somehow or some way—so he would wake up and open his eyes. And that meant I would need to ignore my father’s order to stay far away from Mac’s room.

“Sorry, Dad,” I whispered to my absent father. “Maybe one of these days you’ll understand and forgive me.” I looked around and saw Tabitha’s squinched eyes and pinched-up face. She was throwing more hatred and disgust my way. I just nodded and turned away, knowing I deserved her revulsion and even worse things.