An Excerpt From: FINDING EDEN

I want to stop feeling like I’m supposed to be special.  I want to let go of the notion that I’m born to be some kind of a hero, or some kind of saint.  I ain't Superman.  I must think that I am, but I’m not, and the proof came flying at me like magic knives floating on a dark breeze.  I dreamed that my sister was in danger.  
     I dreamed that she was in trouble and -somehow- only I could help her.  She sat with me, asleep in the uncomfortable chair at the foot of the bed, huddled beneath a ragged blanket in that dark and dismal little antiseptic smelling room.  
     I sat up in my bed, pulled the countless fluid giving -life giving- needles out of my veins and moved to the end of the bed.  I didn't hear the alarms going off.  I ignored the garish red and orange lights flickering like a bonfire behind me.  I had to save my sister.  I am the only one who can rescue her from the imaginary danger of my weird and tormented dream.  When I awakened I was falling off of the bed, threatening to leap into some nonexistent fray to sacrifice myself for my baby sister, my baby sister who caught me –who rescued me from falling onto my face.  
     She’s the hero.  She’s the rescuer.  
     The nurses rushed in, eased my body back into the lumpen sterilized disaster of a bed.  They looked at me, studied me carefully –studied my right hand, and were amazed that I had removed the countless needles without causing further injury to myself.  Then, unable to find the veins after fifteen minutes of exploratory piquerism by the expertly trained vampires, they decided that the veins on my left hand were suitable enough, and stabbed me back to sleep.  
     The look of concern on Simone’s face is bothering me more than the new pain in my hands.  How did this happen to me.  
     How the hell did I let this happen to me?