The Quiet Between Beeps Chapter 8 -Asha's Beginnings
The Quiet Between Beeps
Chapter 8 -Asha's Beginnings
Continued from Chapter 7
The needle went deeper than they ever admitted.
Asha lay prone on the sterile bed, cheek pressed into the thin pillow that smelled of bleach and old tears. Her gown had ridden up in the back, exposing the ridge of her spine, the sharp knobs of her hips. She couldn't see the doctor's face—only the blue blur of his gloves and the glint of metal as he positioned the needle against her iliac crest.
"Just a bit of pressure," he said again, the same lie they always told.
Pressure. As if the word could contain the white-hot bloom that followed by the sickening grind of metal threading into living bone. She felt every millimeter as he twisted the handle, slow and deliberate, harvesting marrow like someone coring an apple. Her fingers curled into the sheets. She would not cry out. She never did anymore.
The first time they'd done this, when she was twelve, her entire left leg had gone dead for four days. She'd dragged it behind her like something borrowed, waiting for feeling to return in pins and needles that felt like punishment. They told her mother it was "temporary paresis."
Now, at nearly fifteen, Asha knew the vocabulary of her own decay. Splenomegaly. Possible Leukemia, Possible lymphoproliferative disorder. The words floated through the adolescent ward like ghosts, attaching themselves to different kids on different days. Today they belonged to her.
Asha.
"Almost done," the doctor murmured. Another twist. She bit the inside of her cheek until she tasted copper.
Sometimes she thought the hospital was the only place where no one expected anything from her. Not beauty, not silence, not forgiveness for existing. Here, her body was simply data—temperature, blood counts, the size of her spleen pressing against everything inside her like a second heart that wouldn't stop growing.
But the other children... God, the other children.
Maria whose leukemia had come back for the third time and who now spoke only in whispers, as if volume itself might break what was left of her. The new boy—Ethan?—with the burns covering sixty percent of his body, whose father had fallen asleep smoking in bed. Their pain was loud even when they were silent. It leaked through the walls and under the doors, finding Asha wherever she tried to hide.
She'd learned to sit in the solarium during the quiet hours between two and four a.m., when the night shift nurses dozed at their station and even the IV pumps seemed to hush. There, with moonlight falling through the glass ceiling onto rows of dying plants, she could almost pretend she was somewhere else. Somewhere her body worked properly. Somewhere no one needed anything from her that she couldn't give.
The needle came out with a wet pop. She felt the marrow leaving her like something essential being stolen.
"All done," the doctor said, pressing gauze hard against the site. "You did great."
She wanted to laugh. Great. As if enduring made her exceptional instead of just... tired.
They'd keep her for observation overnight. More blood draws at 4 a.m. More waiting for results that never quite explained why her body was trying to kill itself one cell at a time.
When they finally wheeled back to her room, the ward was settling into that particular hospital darkness where machines glowed and children breathed through tubes. Asha stared at the ceiling tiles—counted the perforations like she always did when the pain meds started to work.
One hundred and sixty-two holes in the tile directly above her bed.
She wondered if the spleen would ever stop growing. If the viruses would ever leave her alone. If there would ever be a night when she didn't dream of closets and hands that grabbed too hard.
The morphine was kicking in now, making everything soft at the edges. For a moment—just a moment—she let herself imagine staying here forever. Not dying. Just... staying. Where the chaos had rules and schedules. Where no one came into your room at night unless they wore scrubs and carried a chart.
Where sometimes, if you were very lucky, there were whole hours when no one needed anything from you at all.
The monitor beeped steadily. Her hip throbbed in time with her heartbeat.
Outside her window, the city lights flickered like they were trying to spell something she hadn't learned to read yet.
Asha closed her eyes.
For now, this was enough. The clean sheets. The quiet machines. The absence of hands that hurt.
For now, this was almost peace.
For resources : RAINN or Support for Men at 1in6.org are lifelines.
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