It seemed as though the second I had finally fallen asleep in the eerily quiet hospital room, I was rocked awake at 4:30 in the morning to more than one nurse staring at me, abruptly turning the lights on, and poking at me with all sorts of metal tools I had no knowledge of. I was instantly pissed, they were yelling a variety of Macedonian words at me that I had no intention of trying to understand along with multiple shoutings of Nikol!!! What in the literal hell, I thought. I’m not sure if I was pissed because I was tired or if I was pissed because I actually had no control over what was going on---I didn’t know what they were doing to me, what they were saying to me, and they were getting mad because I was obviously not complying to their orders. I continued to lay flat on my back, that was the one thing I understood I needed to do, and allowed them to do whatever the hell they were doing, tuning them out as they went.

 

After the nurses left, the only thing I could reach was my phone. I updated my parents on that I had slept about four minutes and woke to people touching me with all kinds of things I was unaware of. I knew most of them wanted to just make sure my toes were still moving, so they’d stroke my inner calf or poke my pinky toe and just stare at me until I gave them (and myself) the reassurance that everything was still moving down there. I read through the Facebook messages in our Birthright Macedonia participant group chat, mostly things like “we’re all thinking of you, stay strong” and videos of the boys walking around the hotel in long white robes trying to cheer me up. I remember telling them not to worry, I was feeling fine (maybe a lie) and that nothing was that serious (also a lie). 

 

I started to think about how hungry I was as I felt the vibration of my roaring stomach through my navy hospital gown. I hadn’t had any food (aside from mini chocolate croissants) since the day before, so no REAL food in over 24 hours. And now that I say that, I hadn’t had real food in more than that because I only had a protein bar and some Nescafe for breakfast before our bus trip. At that moment, the food lady in her navy blue outfit that matched mine, walked in. She wore white crocs similar to the ones everyone else had in the hospital, and sported a large chef’s hat as if they were really cooking some gourmet meals in that hospital kitchen.

 

Alright, I’m sorry, I don’t normally degrade people’s careers or jobs, because after all I am a teacher, but this food was pretty comparable to my dog’s food at home--the difference being I might choose to eat my dog’s food over this.

 

Anyways, at this point this lady walks in all wide eyed and bushy tailed with a tray of “food” for me to eat. It was around 6am at this point and I was just happy to see and smell anything other than my sweaty body in a diaper. I had a tray table that was about a foot taller than what my arm could reach next to me, but it was also about four feet away. She sets the tray down, waves goodbye, and closes the door behind her. Let me remind you, that yes I was STILL laying flat on my back not allowed to move. So yes, no food within my reach.

 

I waited nearly two hours for someone to come in my room again, and no they did not tell me that the little button on the side of my bed was not actually for adjusting the bed (which I was sheerly terrified of, already having a little PTSD from hitting every bump on the road and screeching until my lungs hurt), but it did call the nurse if you needed help to the tune of Für Elise.

 

The next person I saw was my hectic Teta, all done up with pink lips, a pretty dress, and her shiny blonde hair done. She was a beautiful hectic, something I felt like I needed at that point in this mess. She fed me the food that stared at me the couple hours before she got there, and I smiled as she just gently stroked the side of my face. She was the only person I felt like I trusted right then, and I had met her for the first time just a week before.

 

My family continued to text me ferociously about what was going on, but what WAS going on? My mom finally called to tell me what the neurosurgeon in the American hospital had told her, that I had a T12 burst fracture in my back. This meant that upon landing, the blunt force had been so severe on my spine, that I had essentially crushed the T12 vertebrae. The reason everyone was keeping things from me and being so secretive in making sure everything was moving is that a good chunk of that vertebrae had chipped off and was pushing pretty harshly against my spinal cord. Of course at that time I didn’t know what all of this meant, I just wanted to know when I could go home. Little did I know that wouldn’t be for a lot longer than I, and many others, imagined.

 

Some of the people that ran the program from that side of the pond had come to check on me, in tears because “it was my first time visiting the homeland and this bad bad thing happened.” I, being the suppressive personality that I am, kept allowing people to hold my hand as I comforted them in their state of uneasiness. Yes, messed up, I know. I think the same when I look back on that day. I literally broke my spine and I was rubbing people’s hands telling them that everything was going to be fine.

 

My host mom and sister came that day along with my roommate. I hadn’t really been able to communicate with them much, but the people that sent me away in the ambulance at the ropes course must’ve contacted everyone. Along with my mom, who’s first instinct when finding out something was wrong had Facebook messaged my roommate to ask her what happened. She didn’t know yet, so she told her I was fine! Of course she did, because the last time I saw her, I was fine. I don’t remember a lot about the visit with these three, and later Dillon came again to the hospital. I told him he was crazy for wanting to spend as much time in the hospital as he was. But really he had nothing else to do because everyone was still away on the excursion and he probably wanted to hangout in the air conditioning now. No one quite knew how to react to the situation still, so I found that everyone’s go to was squeezing my hand and staring at me. They were waiting for me to crack somehow, they just weren't sure how. Neither did I.

 

The day cycled through similarly, hand holding, staring, crying, replying to frantic texts, repeat. I went to sleep happily (or as happily as I could have) knowing that both of my parents were on their way to that very hospital room, desiring to hold my hand and cry just the same as everyone else.