Chapter 22

I lay there feeling the pain in my head, I felt a lump on my head where I hit the wall, my neck hurt, and I felt a pain shoot up my leg as I tried to straighten it. I cried, oh how I cried. I stayed there and closed my eyes and drifted back to black. When I woke, the sun was up, it was warm. The pain in my head had eased but not the lump. The sticky knot in my hair warned me I had been bleeding.

It was still throbbing. Every time I moved my right leg the pain went shooting up it and I winced. I didn’t notice the pain in my thighs until I stood up, or tried to stand up. I couldn’t put any weight on my right leg whatsoever. My left arm was limp at first I thought it was because I was sleeping on it, but the pain when I tried to move was excruciating, my breathing was short as pain shot through my chest. Short shallow breaths were all that I managed.

Still no noise. It was Monday I thought to myself. The boys would be at work by now. Dad definitely. But where was my mother, the woman who had nurtured me when I was young, who cared for me when I was ill, who schooled me on the important things she had learnt as a child herself? The woman who had beaten me until I bled.

I pulled myself up onto the bed, looking for my alarm clock, but it was nowhere to be found. I looked down at my leg and saw the bruises. My knee was swollen and misshapen. I lay on my bed and cried again. Thinking through everything that had happened in such a short space of time. I opened my eyes and the shooting pain in my head sent warning sounds to my brain. I had to get up and do something about it, see a doctor. I hobbled over to the bedroom door, turned the handle and nothing happened. I banged on the door. No answer. I banged on it again, harder, but still no answer. Everything hurt, my leg, my arm, my chest, yes even breathing was so hard, but the light in my room hurt my eyes most of all.