ONE

The last thing Yasmin reminisced was waking up in hospital phasing in and out of consciousness every now and then. Despite the fact that she had no idea how she ended up there, she remembered being struck by this horrendous feeling of terror, and a sharp pain across her chest every time she regained consciousness. Her blurry vision would spot the doctors and nurses rushing around in sheer panic then relief after resuscitating her. One time she overhead the doctor confiding in one of the nurses, telling her her case was hopeless and how she was not going to make it. Yasmin’s heart sank when she heard those dreadful words that she bitterly wept when everyone left. On the days that followed, the young woman started drowning in sadness and she was slowly sinking to the bottom of an ocean of desolation that  she started to believe she was going to perish along with her forgotten dreams,  but deep within her was a flame, a flicker of hope that sought to triumph over her despair, a flame ignited by the blurry memories of a young man in his early twenties whom she would wake up and find sitting next to her bed holding her hand in his with a smile on his face. Sometimes she would wake up to flowers, and a get well soon card, sometimes he would leave a few novels for her to read when she woke up and a box of expensive chocolates. Despite the fact that she did not know who this man was, his visits gave her great comfort that she became hopeful she was going to recover and indeed one day she woke up for good  with a nurse attending to some cuts and bruises that were clearly visible all over her arms and legs. Her bulging eyes were sunken with dark circles around them. Her frame was thin. Her body was weak. She struggled to sit up feeling very tired and shaky and then all of a sudden a wave of memories flashed back in her mind, unwanted memories of a frightful   accident were she had saved a man from meeting a fate most gruesome  to  all yet embraced by some,  a fate  dreaded by most….death.  She remembered the night's events like it had happened just yesterday.  Yasmin had been living in the city for almost two years. She travelled all the way from her home town to find work.  The night had been cold with a little drizzle. It had been raining the whole day but at least the sun had been out. Now the night was chilly and Yasmin was stranded, hungry and homeless with no money. The young woman was about two weeks shy away from her twenty- second birthday. She'd been in the streets for almost two weeks and had spent all her money almost down to her last cent on food and hotels and now she only had enough left to catch the bus back home, which arrived at 5 a.m. She had been sitting at a bus stop for most of the night clutching her backpack and suitcase with both hands shaking, from the cold, her blue coat drenched form the rain. It was almost 4.30 a.m. A dog could be head barking in a residential building nearby and also two voices of a quarrelling couple. Slowly the lights in the building started to turn out. Out of boredom she decided to go for a little stroll. She had gotten used to walking in the night that fear didn't bother her much at all.

She struggled to remember some details but the most haunting ones flooded her mind……… like the moment she had come across some pieces of broken concrete and shattered glass,    pieces of fabric that seemed to be leather in white smeared in blood, a few broken green bottles of alcohol and a dented expensive car door casually laying on the ground near a broken ledge on the  bridge that had been  violently crashed. How she had plunged sixteen feet into the cold dirty waters of the river with hopes of saving whoever was in the sinking rubble that was once an expensive blue Lamborghini. The last thing she had felt was a gut-wrenching feeling of fear of suffocating underwater, as her blurry vision spotted the man swimming towards the bank leaving her to die.A sudden   scream then pierced the silence and then it dawned on her that it was just a memory, when she felt the nurse's strong grip holding her down the gurney while she tried to calm her in a quiet voice.  Yasmine's head hurt terribly.

"Finally, you're awake!"The nurse whispered with a smile on her face."How long have I been here?"  Yasmin murmured in a hoarse voice. She seemed to have a terrible fever and her temperature was very high. "You have been in a comma for three and a half weeks; you need to take some rest because you have a very high fever." The nurse replied irritably waving her hand telling her to lie back on the gurney. "Almost a month?  Is the man doing ok?" "What man?" The nurse replied with a puzzled look on her face. "The man I saved from drowning after the accident. Wasn't he brought in here with me?"She asked irritated at the nurses reply. She was eager to know if the man had survived because he had been bleeding terribly. "No there was no man dear, you were brought here by some stranger who said he saw you jump over the bridge trying to commit suicide." The nurse retorted with a disappointed disapproving   look on her face. Yasmin could not believe her ears! She would have never tried to commit suicide; the thought of death alone was appalling enough to nauseate her and to make her lose her consciousness. Had it all been just a dream?  An illusion? Had there really been an accident that night? Did she really see that car floating in the water?" You must have imagined it, after all you hadn't eaten for days.""What do you mean I must have imagined it I know what I saw!" She retorted this time annoyed thinking the nurse was trying to play a trick on her, or maybe the man had passed and she did not want to disclose the heart-breaking news to her. That all her effort had bee for nothing and the man couldn't make it? Looking at her terrible state the nurse felt sorry for her. “Just have some rest ok? " The nurse said, this time with a serious oak on her face."But I remember clearly I saved a man from an accident."

"Listen madam, you really need to take some rest like i told you there was no man or accident , you should be happy and grateful some kind stranger risked his life to save yours, he's also paid all your hospital bills for the rest of your stay here as well." The nurse replied really trying not to lose her temper. She had seemed like a quiet person with a cool temperament. "Not another word from you or I'll ask the doctor to put you on sedatives. " That was enough to make Yasmin quiet but she just couldn't shake off that awful feeling that something bad had happened to the man and that the nurse was trying to hide something from her.