Empowerment. Engagement. Authenticity.
Child's Play (Version 2) - Brain Storm
Head feels like a balloon getting bigger and
bigger. Filling with pain, not air.
I’m wide awake in the dark, eyes spinning like bicycle wheels.
Don’t make a sound. Don’t wake Daddy and Mummy.
They’ll take me to the hospital again. Doctors will stick needles in me,
then cut my head open. That’s what they did in Canada last week. And
then – that same week, the day before I flew home to Trinidad -
something went wrong. More needles. More cutting my head open.
If my head pops like a balloon, will it hurt less? Stop please,
please, please.
When I was a baby, a passageway in my brain closed and water had nowhere
to go. The water hurt the part of my brain that made my eyes work
properly. In Canada, doctors put in a tube that helped the water leave
my brain but, now that I am nine and taller than everyone else in my
class, the tube broke. I know all this because I heard Daddy and Mummy
talking. I’m a smart girl. I know all the big words.
Pain pressing, pressing, pressing. Maybe if I press my head into the
pillow…
A week after the two operations in Canada, I’m back home, sleeping in my
parents’ room so they will know if I get sick again. Maybe it scared
Daddy when, after the first operation, I turned over my pillow so he
wouldn’t see the slime that had come from my head while I was sleeping.
He drove very fast to the hospital that time. Heard him tell Mummy over
the phone the doctors had used “faulty apparatus.”
Know all the big words but don’t like getting cut open …not then,
please not now.
I want to be in my room. So many pretty get well cards from my teachers
and classmates. Cut out hearts, curly borders, funny rhymes.
Think of a funny rhyme. Can’t think. Balloon getting bigger. Big red
balloon.
I turn my head left and right, left and right, left and right. Warm
tears slide down my cheeks. Too much pain…balloon not popping. My mouth
opens and I groan. I groan and groan and groan. Then I start throwing up
and my pajama pants get wet with something warm and stinky.
No more, please. No more.
I wake up in another hospital bed. Daddy and Mummy are talking. No time
to fly to Canada. Pressure relieved for now. Waiting for neurosurgeon.
I know the big words. But I still don’t understand. Head feels
better. Maybe I can go home now?
The doctor comes in. “We operate this afternoon.”
(c) 2016
Read feedback on Brainstorm.
Child's Play
Telling a story from a child's point of view can
make your reader experience different emotions and react to the story in
a different way. To see another of my stories written from a child's
point of view read Cords and Wires.
