THE TRAVERSING SERIES
Ecaterina Scarlat
"We are in Boston. I'm heading to Massachusetts General Children's Hospital now. They are waiting for us," Amanda smiles. I felt relief wash over me, knowing that hopefully Sepa will get great care and she will fight this, then we could go back to the way it was; the way I liked it. I liked taking more of a motherly role with Sepa, make sure she has clean clothes, make sure that someone is there to hug her when something goes wrong or she got a bad grade on a test. But Sepa won’t wake up. I tried nudging her and even tried to tickle her, but I got no response.
We drive toward the hospital, and it is immense. So many different buildings scattered about. Amanda drives toward the Hospital for Children, and we see that there are people waiting for us. They open up the ambulance doors and stare at me.
“No EMT?” a doctor questioned, looking inside.
I shook my head, a little embarrassed, but jumped out so that they could wheel Sepa into the emergency room. A nurse took her vitals, and Amanda got out of the ambulance and started answering questions. She then walked toward me, kind of looking down, and I felt she was going to say something bad.
“What?” I said to her, then looked over at Sepa.
Amir opened his eyes slowly and looked around. His head hurt and he thought he was dreaming. He opened his eyes wider and saw a lot of white and in the corner was a droid, bent over and silent. He lifted his arm and saw that it had an IV in it, so he knew he was in a hospital. He looked beside him and saw a button on the table, so he pushed it, hoping it would summon a nurse or somebody that could give him answers. A few minutes later a pudgy, middle aged nurse with silver hair walked in, smiling.
“Oh, hello! You are awake! Wonderful,” she said and talked to a man by the door. Amir hadn’t noticed him standing there, and he didn’t recognize him. He saw his head peek around the corner and he met his gaze, then went back out of sight. The man whispered a few more minutes to the nurse, then walked in and introduced himself.
“Hello, I’m Special Agent Darby with the FBI. You are Amir Malik?”
Amir sat there for a minute. “Yes, that’s me. I am an American. My father made me be
part of the ITAQ,” he says, shifting in his bed.
“Hmmm. Well, there is no denying you were with the ITAQ, your tank shot Americans,
and you were in full ITAQ fatigues. I am willing to cut your jail time considerably, or even
eradicate it if you are willing to divulge some information.”
Amir started to sweat at the word jail, and as he sat thinking, his thoughts went to Kokia. He promised her he’d try to stay alive. So what did he have to lose? He didn’t want to go back. He was not a fighter, no matter how bad his father wanted him to be.
“I think I need a lawyer. I also need the nurse to come,” he said slowly. He didn’t even know what injuries he sustained.
“Absolutely, Amir. We will get you a lawyer. We can talk tomorrow, OK?”
