About the author
12 year old that loves to play hockey with his friends
“ORDER UP!” boisterously yelled Allen’s co-chef, Owen.
Allen is 20 years old and is in his second year of college. He works a summer job at Georgie’s Beachside Grill, has a brother named Ben, a best friend named Justin, and a beach house in Newport, Oregon. His life is successful but he has a lung disease called Cystic Fibrosis. This disease makes him incapable to some things that other people can do easily…
Justin
I wake up in the hospital with a clear tube snaking out of my mouth. Normally I would be gagged by the tube but in this case it was steadily pumping air in my lung. Lungs? Lung? I could not feel the left side of my chest comfortably and reassuringly rising and falling. I tried to ask the nurse that was watching over me what was happening, the tube gagged me, and I started having a coughing fit. It felt like a wildfire was raging in my throat. At noon I found out that when I was driving home from my family reunion, my right tire of my car popped. It sent my car, and two other members of my family, over the side rail. I broke my leg and punctured my left lung.
Later that day at around 4:30 pm my nurse came in and started to prepare some snow white gauze and an assortment of what seemed like endless needles and doctors tools. The needles were glistening in the lights like a disco ball of pain. The last thing I remember after that is the clear tube slowly scraping against the sides of my neck and my nurse reassuring me that the mask she was putting on my face will put me into a deep sleep.
She also said something like, “Th docrt…”
After that, all of the words blended into a smoothie and my eyes felt like they had lead rimming them.
When I woke up there was a pain like someone was running a knife down my left side of my body, slowly cutting my flesh and turning it into a one thousand degree fire. When I picked up my head to look at my left side I realized that there was a giant cut stitched about eighteen inches long. It was crimson red and had small amounts of pus where the string entered my skin along the cut. When I lay back down I see a note on the side of my bed that says, Internal lung damage, 3 month recovery, not concussed, leg severely fractured. At that moment I look at my leg and it looks like a giant white balloon. A white balloon with crimson patches slowly spreading along it that is...
Allen
When I was driving home from my job at Georgie’s Beachside Grill I spotted a poster for a puzzle competition in Olympia, Washington. I stomped on the brakes and my car screeched to a utterly fast stop. I veered the wheel to the right and my car pulled over to the side of the road. The poster had a ‘haunted house’ on the front and a statement that said that there is a $1,000,000 prize for winning. This was enough to pay for an expensive medicine that can ‘fix’ my CF, with money to spare. I immediately called Justin but he didn’t answer. I texted him again and again. Still no answer.
Later that night, when I was falling asleep in my air conditioned, humid dorm at Oregon Coast Community College my phone started ringing. It was a call from the hospital. The caller said Justin was in the hospital with a punctured lung and a badly broken leg. I rushed to the hospital in hope to find my friend. I found him lying in his hospital bed motionless with a giant gash on his left side and a light red blotch about as long as his cut smeared on the mattress and sheets. I started to break down, but then I somehow noticed Justin’s chest lightly moving up and down. Then I noticed his leg. Like cotton candy with red food coloring spreading through it! I called the front desk and before I knew it, 3 nurses were in Justin’s room. I told them about his leg and they woke him up. He started to moan and bellow in pain. He also asked the nurses what was happening. The nurses said that his leg was healing, but somehow his cast was not made with the right material for the type of fracture. The other material was supposed to be a less supportive material than he needed. This meant that his skin would be bleeding horribly. The only way to stop the bleeding was to take the cast off and set a new one. The cast setting was successful but Allen had to wear the cast for an extra month…