Empoword

Part One: Description, Narration, and Reflection 145 pastel color or unnatural white. The pastels were unsettling — not the kind that reminded you of a sweet Easter morning but the kind that brought to mind dreary hospitals and desolate nursing homes. Mom held my hand, the tiny IV needle pricked into my vein and I was gone. Hours later I was semiconscious with a mouth full of cotton and four less teeth. My parents got me to the car and dad sat in the back with me, letting my limp medicated body lean on his. Blood and drool seeped out of my numb lips and onto his ratty Patagonia jacket. He held me the whole way home. *** Mom is my rock but I know she was glad to have a partner that day. She couldn’t have carried me the way Dad did and she couldn’t have seen me so broken without someone to assure her that I was going to be fine. Dad isn’t always around but when he is, he gives all he can. *** Mom and dad helped me wobble into bed and I floated away, my body heavy with anesthesia and Vicodin. I drifted in and out. The light came in my window, soft and pink like the creamy walls of my room. My eyes opened slightly as I sensed movement in the room. “Hey Mai, how are you feeling?” Mom said, concern and sweetness heavy in her high voice. “It’s time for some more medicine, does your mouth hurt?” “A little bit,” I said as best as I could with numb lips. The words came out muffled and strange. Gauze thick with blood and saliva was tucked over the wounds from the excavation. My mouth had become a foreign landscape with mountains of gauze and slippery rivers of blood. My tongue tried to ignore the upset. The blood was unnerving. Dad reached into my mouth to deftly extract the blood soaked wads of gauze. Mom handed me the pills and dad held the bottle of chocolate milk, letting me sip it bit by bit to get the pills down. The milk was cool. Thick. Chalky. Chocolaty. A lazy breeze drifted in and Dad tucked fresh gauze over the wounds at the back of my mouth. They let me succumb to sleep again. Hours or minutes later, Dad came into my room holding the Seattle Times . “Hey Sweetie, how are you feeling? I have some good articles to read to you,” Dad said