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Rose didn't see the bullet come racing at her head, that was what the nurse had said. You'd have thought it would have been hard to miss- a roundish hard object fired with a loud noise, but the nurse had told her parents that she hadn't , so that was that. What would she know anyway? She wasn't there at the time, watching her daughter get shot at, was she? If she had a decent brain on her she would just let sue see her daughter. Apparently she was sleeping. Well she's likely to be sleeping permanently with an injury like that so sue wanted to see her now, check her poor baby was ok. Sue's brother, Rick, came back with the hospital polystyrene cups filled with machine coffee. The sharp taste did nothing to her nerves and the sugar did not help the shock as it always does in soppy action films. Finally, when she had already established that she had waited far, far too long for anything to be good news, the nurse poked her head round the door of the relatives room and said that sue could come and see rose. Sue took her time and trooped to the ward filled with anticipation. She was only slow because she was afraid of what rose would look like. Would she be covered head to toe in bandages, would she be hooked up to so many things she was more machine that human? Would she even be awake? Sue quickened her pace and braced herself by the curtain, then took a brave step in. what she saw looked perfectly normal on first glance, at least. She was only hooked up to a drip and one of those funny machines that you only see in hospitals and never make any more sense, no matter how much time you spend gazing at the display. Rose was awake, but only just. She smiled weakly as her mother met her eyes. Sue resisted the urge to run over and bear hug her, as it was pretty obvious that it would be painful for both of them. She stepped over and squeezed her hand as a compromise. There was no need for words so they stared at each other for what could have been either an eternity or a few seconds. Rose's eyelids closed slowly and the machine's display changed and beeped. Sue panicked. Did this mean she had lost her daughter for ever? Several nurses and a doctor ran over to rose and spoke in a serious tone and through the mayhem of her thoughts and fears she could hear words they use on hospital dramas, like 'charging to 360', which usually was bad news and ended in tears. Rick had come through and was comforting her, but failing miserably. The doctors and nurses stopped and someway along the line confirmed to her that Rose was, in fact in a coma. Sue now controlled her own daughter's life. She could pull the plug on her and end her life peacefully, or she could deny she was in a coma and wait for her to wake up from her sleep. She knew what was right before, what with watching these events happen in a safe place in front of her own television but now she wasn't so sure but she had to make up her mind. There is always a middle road though, and that is always the easiest option. She could keep putting it off. Rick restrained her again, which probably meant she was screaming and lashing out. Oh, what was the point? There was no reason. She wasn't genuinely angry, or upset. Why should she be? They were only joking , weren't they? It was all just one big lie. Then it hit her, like a tonne of bricks on someone who already has a broken back. She stopped and slumped on the floor, wailing. Her baby had really gone. No. there must have been some mistake somewhere along the line. This is only the stuff you hear about, from a friend whose friend was told by her friend. This never actually happens, right??
There was a faint feeling lulling her away from the pain within and she went with it, pleading the pain for mercy and her brain to rewind and stop the gun, maybe even jumping in front of it to save Rose. No, that would be too heroic for sue. She was a coward, her brain told her. She drifted willingly into the unconsciousness her brain kindly offered her, but the pain did not go. She was verging into the numbness, but still on the hysteria end of things, making her unbalanced. In her dreams she managed to wake Rose up and they left hospital together, but rose was like a ghost and never spoke, just wandered aimlessly with a dreamy look on her face. Sue had that dream time and time again in that one unconsciousness but then roused suddenly to find a crowd of nurses around her hospital bed. Her eyes widened and filled with tears as she remembered Rose. She was always her first thought whatever she did. One of the nurses told her that Rose wasn't dead, but actually still alive, but just having a long sleep. She retorted that she wasn't two and that she knew that in most cases, they don't wake up and that you usually find yourself having to unplug the machines that they live on. That was the worst bit, that they were giving her just a teeny bit of hope that she would wake up. Soon, very soon, because everyone would say this to her, she would actually start to believe she was going to wake up any day soon. That was cruel to make her think that. She tried to start to think sensibly and thought of what had happened when they did this on TV. Nothing came to mind and she felt more deflated than ever. Rick led her to his car and drove her home. All the streets that she passed could have been anywhere, and to be frank they didn't look much like what she remembered, but she didn't care. She didn't care if she was being sent to a concentration camp, even though that would be impossible, but she didn't care. In Rick's driveway, he lifted Sue up and carried her to the master bedroom. This was in fact his own bedroom but desperate times call for desperate measures. If she could still stand when her daughter was in a coma, then she could live if he had someone else occupying his bedroom. He angered himself for being so feeble. He gave her some sleeping pills and kept them by her bedside. That was his mistake and it was fatal. Sue drifted into an easy sleep due to the pills but her dreams were troubled by rose and the pills soon wore off to leave her awake with nothing. Sue decided she would take no chances of further interruptions from her time with Rose, real or dream, and emptied out the pill jar and swallowed them one by one. There must have been about twenty pills in there and that knocked her out cold in about five minutes.