Throbbing

"Lucky she won't be needing a blood donor, sir. Here is her bill. I hope you will be able to comply in an hour's time. If not, it may get worse and she might die." Said a doctor who came forward to meet him after some nurses had taken over the situation.

"Are you kidding me? Commence treatment right away. I am transferring the money now!" Jack exclaimed and took out his cellphone to make a transfer of funds.

"Tabitha, get everything ready for that child immediately." The doctor said hastily to a nurse who was about to go into the room. Sarah was, because Jack had already made payments for professional treatment of the little child, although she was given first-aid treatment some minutes earlier. The nurse nodded "yes doc." …and went in immediately.

"Very well sir, we will communicate with you about the status of the child by Monday. We have your contact, so, do not worry, we will take it from here." The doctor assured him while giving Jack a handshake before proceeding into the ward where Sarah was laid. Jack stood there for a couple of minutes thinking about the little girl and her story while peeping through the window of the ward to see Sarah.

"Dad, are we going to sleep in the hospital now?" Maria asked with a deep moan to get his attention drawn to them, feeling jealous that he was giving a strange girl more of his time and attention than he had done for her over the years. Maria was seven and a year older than Frida, but Jack felt Frida was being more reasonable sometimes than Maria and so barely paid attention to anything Maria was saying except for this one: he turned around to look at his family sitting down on a long chair and looking, warn out already, and, for the fact that Maria called him, he walked up to them immediately.

"Alright, come on, let's all go home." Jack muttered quietly, holding the hands of his two daughters as they walked out of the hospital premises. Rose felt the little girl would not survive because of the way Jack kept his face like someone in sorrow at heart. She did not get to hear everything he discussed with the doctor all the while they were standing by the door leading to the ward, and so assumed she must have been dead for him to have accepted to leave the hospital. The moment they entered the car, Rose pretended to be grieving for the little child without even asking Jack any questions to know if she was still alive or dead. She believed strongly that her assumptions were correct, so she muttered, "poor little girl, look how much she had to go through in a short time!" and sniffled, she touched her dried eyes as though she was crying while looking away in another direction from Jack; but Jack did not even care to talk back, rather he turned on the music as he drove out of the hospital premises.

"That's enough for now, we will give her more tomorrow morning. Give me the drip now." The doctor muttered slowly to one of the nurses in the room with him. He tried to project his voice onto others to be heard, even with the face-mask on his face. The blue medical cloth they were wearing made everything in the room look blue in the eyes of Sarah as she gradually squinted to be more aware of her immediate environment.

"Sir, I think she blinked!" exclaimed one of the nurses quietly as she brought her face closer to observe the little girl.

"Are you sure she did?" he asked immediately and came close to her to see for himself, for they were all about leaving the room when the nurse observed that Sarah had blinked her eyes. But when the doctor drew near, she closed her eyes again, knowing she was in a hospital.

"She did just now." The nurse muttered quietly, the second the doctor lifted his face in doubt to look at her, she knew she was sure of what she had just said.

"Come on, we have to leave now. We will check on her in the morning tomorrow." The doctor sputtered and covered her properly to ensure he was warm before exiting the room.

The minute Sarah noticed that the door had been shut, she opened her eyes slowly again to really see and to find out where she was.

"Dad… Jason…" she sobbed in pain and kept on trying to move her body but was unable at the moment. After an hour of struggling to get up from bed, she finally gave up and fell asleep again.

The noise of the door woke her up the following morning and she opened her eyes to see a nurse smiling at her,

"Hello dear, how are you doing today?" the nurse asked, but she did not say a word to her, although she knew it was the same voice from last night that exclaimed to make the doctor believe that she had blinked her eyes. The nurse sat there beside her for some time waiting to see if she would reply, but when she said nothing, the nurse kissed her on her forehead after carrying out a brief medical check-up on her as required; for the doctor had assigned her to be the one to check on the little girl first thing in the morning.

Sarah stayed there for a couple of hours after the nurse had left until she felt strength had surged into her. She lifted her body to sit upright and observed herself for some time, after which she pulled the drip out of her left arm and moved away the covering on her body. She dropped her left foot slowly on the ground a minute after her right foot felt the floor. She was able to feel a little pain on the left side of her head more than on her left foot and so, felt she was strong enough to leave the ward. She hopped a bit further to the door and soon felt more comfortable walking now than she had done earlier on. She was unable to remember how she got to the hospital and so felt that someone must have picked her up from the streets. The fear of belonging to a total stranger who must have picked her up, made her escape from the hospital, and she left the door open on her way out and slowly sneaked out of the premises. An old woman who was sitting on a chair in the waiting room was the only person who saw her leaving the premises but could not say a word because she was very old and had many wrinkles around her mouth.

"Shh!" Sarah shushed her the second she made eye contact with her. Her heart throbbed for fear that the old woman might raise an alarm.