Rainforest Runaway

We are out in the rainforest and it is super dark, but that's what makes it cool. Mom and James are spending so much time looking at the spider, I mean, it was cool at first but so what? It shoots a web and catches an insect. Big whoop. What would really be exciting is if we could go look at the Kapok tree leaves in the dark. That would really be something. I waited for what felt like a gazillion eternities, even though I was pretty sure it was like 4 minutes but still.  I asked mom, “Can we go now? Please?”

 “Edward, I thought you were better than that? The leaves can wait. Can’t you just be a patient child for heaven sake!” she said.  

I don’t know why but I felt a ball of anger take over my inside until I couldn't hold it back

 “BUT YOU PROMISED!!!!!!! I guess you just don’t have feelings and you hate me!”

I turn my back and run. I begin to sprint, the air burns. It burns so bad. I don’t know why I got so upset. I mean she just told me to wait, but I got upset still, and I couldn’t find the courage or the reason that I needed to turn back. I kept running, it got darker and darker, I was deep in the forest now. Yet I kept running. My legs picked up speed, the air against my face stung like a hive of bees and wasps combined were stinging my eyeballs. Then I decided to close my eyes because it would be no different.  The sadness began to hit me, my mind was racing with thoughts, I will never see James, or mom, or not even uncle again, I won’t see any of my friends or the world again. But that wasn't enough to want to go back.  I started to slow down, I opened my eyes to find myself in the middle of nowhere. I saw the very few outlines of trees from the slivers of moonlight that could make their way through. To be honest I was scared. Very scared. My eyes began to tear up, and I felt a lump form in my throat. I began to move at a fast pace, I began to see more shadows of unfamiliar organisms, they looked like rabbits and elk, but I knew better, we were in the rainforest, and those things don’t live in the rainforest, at least the rainforest of Belize. But then I saw a silhouette of what looked like a giraffe, my better senses faded away and fear took over. I started running again. I started screaming, “No, no, no, no, it can’t be a giraffe no I can’t die from a giraffe, that would be horribly embarrassing, not a giraffe not a giraffe, please stop chasing me giraffe no no no no no!!!!!!”

 I was running so dang fast, even faster than before, until I finally turned around  to see the giraffe from behind me had disappeared but that did not stop me from running. I started to get tired and cold, horrible thoughts were rushing through my head, ”I will die out here, I will die out here I…” That's when I heard a loud crunch come out from under my foot followed by a loud “hiss” sound. My brain stopped working. I felt whatever it was somehow wriggle out from under my foot. Then I realized It was a snake. I tried running but my body was taken over by fear. I wobbled for a second until I stepped. My body was unstable. I took another step, then a searing pain like a needle stabbing through my shoe and foot hit me, I stumbled over what I thought was my own foot and fell down. My head slammed into a rock solid tree stump, the pain in my foot was unbearable, my head and neck started to hurt, like two rocks were slamming them together, I couldn’t think straight, the dark was too overwhelming and so was the pain, I saw a sliver of moonlight, until it all faded away. 

I heard the faded beeping of a machine. “That can’t be possible,” I thought to myself, “I am in the middle of the rainforest.” I slowly opened my eyes to see a ceiling, and a very bright light. The light burned my eyes. I slowly closed them again when I heard James’s voice,”La, la, la, truck goes roar!” he said.  I opened my eyes to see mom was sitting at the end of a bed. In fact I was in the bed too. She moved her eyes over to me and a big grin took over her face. She did that thing where she put her cold hand over my face, it felt good, in a weird way. In a soft voice she said “Oh Edward baby, you’re awake! I am sorry honey, I was so afraid.” A little speck of joy grew in my stomach, but I was still trying to make out where I was. I quietly said, “Hi Mommy, where am I? And what happened?”

She looked at me with a shocked look on her face, She said “Well, if you really want to know…”

“Yes,” I said. “I do.”

“Well okay then, you see we are at the hospital, You kinda well I guess you…”

An unfamiliar voice interrupted, it was sweet yet aggressive, and it was a woman. She said “You see kid, Ya broke ya neck, kay? Ya also broke ya foot and got bit by a Maya Coral Snake, so ya. You are not exactly healthy but at least ya okay… ish” I looked to mom and she was sobbing her eyes out. It was then that the pain came crashing in, I had only been awake for about 2 minutes so it made sense why the pain was a little late. I noticed that my neck had one of those casts on it and I looked like a fool. But at least my neck didn’t hurt that bad. It was my foot that had caught my attention, it was all red and had blood stuck in my toenails, so gross. I caught a glance of the nurse coming toward me with a shot, I asked softly, "What is it?”

When I woke up I just wanted to keep sleeping. I looked up and Mom was hovering over my face, her warm breath going in and out of my nose. My neck hurt more now, but it felt like there was nothing on my foot. I wondered why? Mom helped me sit up like she could somehow read my mind, and when I sat up, I saw that there was no foot. My stomach dropped and my eyes started getting wet, James crawled up on the bed to come hug me. His arms were warm, and I could feel his love just by the way he hugged me. But I didn’t want his love, I wanted a foot, I didn’t want to almost die, I didn’t want to get bit by a snake and I didn’t want to break my neck. I saw the nurse getting a wheelchair out of a very small closet, she said in a more soothing voice now, “ Ok, well giddy up kid, we’ve done our part and now it's your turn, come on, you will be okay. Remember, rest is the best medicine. We'll see in a few weeks for physical therapy." None of it registered with my brain though, I was completely out of it. I was still kinda zoned out when mom and the nurse helped me get into the wheelchair. Mom began to wheel me out while the nurse carried James, I started to doze off. I was half asleep when I felt mom lift me into the back seat, her hand securing my neck just as she had when I was a baby. She laid me on my back with a pillow under my neck, and then the nurse laid James right beside me, he had the same warmth from before, and this time, it was even better, because he loves me, and this time, I loved him back. 

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