Day 354 - Turning Point

 TURNING POINT

Prompt - Turning Point : Write about a point in life where things turned for the better or worse

I'd been awake, but not awake, for about three days.  After twelve days in a coma the doctors thought it a significant improvement.  I wasn't so sure.  Total unconsciousness kept me away from thinking, and the thoughts that I had now were the sort I would have struggled to cope with even if I was fully alert.  But my half asleep state, flitting in and out of awareness, I didn't have the power to resist.  

So it was I found myself revisiting moments from my past, both recent and distant, that had defined how I would end up in this hospital bed, recovering from the bullet which had shattered my left shoulder, and the brain damage incurred when that projectile hurled me back down the stairs I'd just run up.  Now I looked, over and over, at the bad decisions that had taken me into that multi story, to be taken out by a member of a rival gang.  They were not the highlights I wanted to see, but the ones that what had survived of my conscience wanted me to see.

I saw myself, aged fourteen, allowing myself to be persuaded into running small drug deliveries around the estate.  Yes, I was just a kid, but one bright enough to have a pretty good idea of what I was getting into.  There were enough examples of how to get it all wrong, including my own big brother.  From there it might be seen as inevitable that I'd end up here, or dead, but I knew better.  That along the way there were times when I could have said no, could have got out.  I always thought about it.  I always took what seemed like the easier path.

I could have said that I didn't want to go on drugs pickups to the coast.  I could have said that I wouldn't carry a gun.  I could have said that I didn't want to coerce those desperate women into selling their bodies.  I should have said no.  I didn't, and new here I was.  Half conscious, under police guard, safe.  For the moment.  I needed time.  I needed hours of being aware, of getting mentally sharper and thinking through my situation.  In my most lucid moments I wondered if I could fake the ins and outs of wakefulness I'd been experiencing, to buy myself a bit of time.  To let me work it out.

Because I knew one thing, the underlying theme behind that showreel of my errors.  I didn't want to be that guy any more.  It wasn't who I wanted to be.  And getting shot wasn't an experience I fancied repeating.  My life was going to change, and it was going to happen here, in this bed.