How could the homeless have something like a ‘home recovery’?
There were still bandages wrapped around my forearms, but my hands were free. The skin on my hands was mostly free of injury, and the fresh burn scars peeking out from the bandages were sturdy enough for me to move without issue. I pulled the discharge papers closer and started reading.
Line by line, it all started to make a little more sense, until reality hit me like a rush of cold water dumped right on my head.
Now that I was awake and reasonably healed, there was no reason for me to stay at the hospital anymore. The medical staff had deemed me stable enough to leave andrecover at home.Never mind that I had no home, and that recovery would likely be impossible on the street. My time at the hospital was done and I would be kicked out, whether I liked it or not.
Something itched at the back of my mind. A memory, maybe. I couldn’t quite recall, something about this situation felt familiar.
Perhaps this wasn’t the first hospital I’d been kicked out of.
“But where will I go?” I asked, though I already knew the nurse wouldn’t care.
Surprisingly, however, the nurse actually had an answer for me.
“Don’t worry. Your caretaker has promised to be here on time for your discharge, and he’s already been given your recovery instructions as well.”
“My caretaker?” I echoed once again.
“Yes,” the nurse said, a big smile on her face as she tied up the room. “Your friend. He’ll be here soon.”
There was only one person she could be talking about, because there was only one person I knew well enough to call a friend.
Auggie?
He was going to take care of me?
I couldn’t bring myself to actually ask that question for fear of being told I was wrong. However, I got my answer a few hours later.
Auggie arrived just as he had every day since I woke up, but this time he came bearing a new set of clothes and wheelchair.
“Ready to go?” he asked as he held out the clothes to me.
I was too dumbfounded to do anything but nod and accept the clothes.
Auggie was taking me in?
That’s what this had to mean, right?
He wasn’t the kind of person who would take me out of the hospital just to dump me on the street.
Asking would be pointless. If it turned out I was wrong about Auggie, and he actually was that kind of person, then he wouldn’t tell me ahead of time. With no better choice, I went along with him and waited to see what my fate would hold.
The clothing felt strange on my skin. Until now, I’d only worn a thin cotton hospital gown that was so loose I could barely feel it and may as well have been naked. The pants and shirt that Auggie also gave me, although soft, were much more restrictive than anything I’d worn in conscious memory. It felt like there was something wrong with them, and I moved stiffly, especially when the clothing rubbed against the bandages and newly healed burns hidden under the cloth.
Once dressed, I was wheeled out of the building in a wheelchair and loaded into an unfamiliar car. Before I could fully comprehend what was happening, the hospital disappeared in the car’s side mirror and only the open road lay ahead of me.
It was a surprisingly short car ride. The hospital was centrally located, and so was Auggie’s apartment. He seemed to sense that I was overwhelmed by my change of surroundings and didn’t talk very much during the trip. The sight of so many buildings going by outside the window, and the open sky above, was a complete visual overload.
For as long as I could consciously remember, I’d stayed in the same hospital room, with only the brief glance out of a window for variation. I’d almost forgotten that the rest of the world existed, and to suddenly be bombarded by so many new sights made me feel very small in my own skin.
My very scarred, beat-up skin.
Until now, I’d avoided looking in mirrors for too long, but while getting dressed earlier, I couldn’t help taking a peek in the bathroom mirror. The sight was even worse than I feared. A bandage still encircled my head, as the grafted skin on my scalp was still particularly tender, and what little hair I had stuck out between the strips of cloth like straw poking out of a scarecrow. It was theorized that I must have covered my face with my hands when I was caught in the fire, because the burns, thankfully, didn’t touch this area, but they came close, and one particularly daring scar crept near the corner of my eye. Overall, it was a ghastly appearance, and that wasn’t even taking into account the rest of my body.
It was honestly a miracle Auggie could stand to look at me at all, let alone show up so often to read to me and take care of me. I could barely stop staring at myself in horror, and I didn’t know how he could stomach the sight of me enough to sit so close to me.
We eventually pulled into an apartment complex that was… probably the same as every other apartment complex. I honestly couldn’t tell. The few memories I could recall all involved living on the street. I wasn’t sure I’d ever been inside an apartment, let alone lived inside one. I had a vague understanding that Green Hills was a place that I had once lived, but I was also certain that it was not a home, and probably not a place I wanted to remember, anyway.