The False Flat

CHAPTER 14

SEVEN BOTTLES OF WATER

Through the molten pain, I squinted at the two people across the room. No, after blinking, it was only one.

“Chad?” I sat up, but I immediately had to lie back on my pillow when my head erupted like a volcano.

The light was too bright, searing my retinas and making me feel like I was on a spaceship, about to be probed.

“Why is it so bright in here?” My voice came out scratchy, veiled with a weakness I didn’t understand.

What happened?I wanted to ask this out loud, but I couldn’t make the words come out. Had I been in an accident, a fight?

“Thank God you’re awake.” He was beside me in two large strides. “What can I get for you? Do you need water?”

My eyes snapped shut as my breath stuttered to a stop. The man talking to me, the man moving in my bedroom wasn’t Chad—it was Grant.

After several seconds, my eyelids slowly slid back open, and my eyes tracked Grant to the bedside table, where three bottles of water poked out from a plastic-lined cardboard box.

I didn’t own a table like this. My nightstand was wood, white, part of a suite of furniture I’d picked out with Deanna. This table was plastic, gray, and portable.

My chest went hot, the bad kind of hot. Too hot. My insides charred.

Not only was the man in this room not Chad, but this wasn’t my room.

“They’re chilled,” Grant continued. “I wasn’t sure what kind you preferred, so I got every kind they had, and if you’d rather room temperature, I have those too.” He pivoted to the windowsill, where four other waters stood at attention. “Which can I get you?”

I needed the water. All the fluid had been sucked out of my body, leaving my husk of a self to look around the room, dry eyed and dry throated.

Nightmare. This had to be a nightmare.

I bit the inside of my cheek so hard that were I actually dreaming, the pain should’ve jolted me awake. I closed my eyes again and let my hands fall to my sides, hoping to feel the line of cording on the edge of my mattress. But the sheets were rough and the mattress unfamiliar.

No. No. No.

My breath caught in my throat, trapped by the decreasing size of my windpipe. Panic seized everything inside me until my body bucked against what I could only guess was a hospital bed.

Definitely a nightmare.

“Penelope?” I was vaguely aware of Grant moving beside me. “Talk to me.”

A strangled scratch clawed its way out of my throat.

“What?”

“Out!” The single word tore into the room. My head felt like a shaken bottle of soda pop, waiting for someone to unscrew the cap and release the pressure, but that wouldn’t stop me. “I want out!” Clearer this time.

My eyes flew open, my eyeballs wild, skittering orbs barely contained by my eyelids as I looked around the room—the florescent lights, the curve of the chrome sink, the sickly gray countertop, the skinny metal pole beside the bed, the flat screen that swiveled out from the wall, the black keyboard underneath it.

“Let me get the nurse ...,” he started, but I was already moving the flimsy sheet aside and placing my bare feet onto the speckled ER linoleum. “Nurse!” Grant was in the doorway, but to me in that moment, he wasn’t a person, just the obstacle I had to eliminate to get out of here because I was getting out of here.

A large woman in scrubs scooted us back as she pushed her way into the room, a man in a white lab coat just behind.

“What’s going on?”

I wasn’t sure who had asked the question. Their voices melded together, one robotic tone that I didn’t want to hear.

The doctor’s hands moved to my shoulders. “Ma’am. What’s the matter?”

“Out!” I jerked away from him, moving again toward the door.

“Your IV!” the nurse shouted, stumbling forward to prevent the IV pole from crashing to the floor.

I stopped long enough to stare into the crook of my elbow, where I saw a thin tube sucking like a leech at my soft flesh, and then, I was twelve, back in my brother’s hospital room, the same vines clinging to him, choking the life right out of him.

My hand clasped the thin plastic tube, and I yanked. Blood followed, but I was free.

My bare feet slapped the hallway as a nurse with a clipboard fell into the wall to get out of my way.

Escape, retreat, bury.

Shouts reverberated down the corridor, echoed in my head. But my body moved on its own, without fear of consequence, toward the exit. I flew through the waiting room—past the stunned-faced patients waiting to claim my now-empty cage—without pausing to wonder how I knew where to go or what I’d do once I got there.

The bright sting of sun landed too harsh on my too-wide eyes. But I wasn’t in that place anymore, and the rest didn’t matter. The cool air brushed against my face as it entered my lungs, and I breathed for the first time since realizing where I was. The last time I’d been in a place like this, I’d vowed never to step foot in one again.

Small drops of blood landed like spilled paint at my feet. I bent my elbow, holding my arm close to my chest, like a wounded animal, like a chicken.

Arms—firm, comforting, scented with nature and trail mix—circled around my shoulders, the grounded counter to the erratic hum under my skin.

Tears dripped from behind my closed eyes, and we were quiet, until I was steady enough to say, “Take me home.”

His silence made me turn, made my belly constrict. But I stared into his blue eyes and willed him not to betray me, to obey my unreasonable demand.

He put a hand to my face, swiped a tear with his thumb.

“You have a concussion,” he whispered.

“I’m not going back.” Nausea rippled in my upper abdomen. “Nothing you say will change that.”

He glanced at the entry to the ER, where a nurse stood, her arms folded tightly in front of her.

“You won’t go back?” Grant confirmed, indecision creasing his forehead.

Several beats of silence passed between us while I let my eyes tell him I’d rather die on the pavement than go back through those doors.

Motion pulled my attention to the car beside us, where someone else in a lab coat stood next to a security guard as they waited.

They think I’m unstable.

If they only knew what a hospital had taken from me, they might’ve understood.