Chapter 14
Mia
I was… awake?
It was hard to say for sure. When I first opened my eyes, everything was so hazy that it felt more dreamlike than any dream I’d ever experienced. There was a man and a child, neither of whom I knew. Both stared at me with such similar expressions of shock that I knew they had to be related.
“See, Daddy,” the girl said eagerly, confirming my suspicions. “The reading really did help.”
“Yeah,” the man nodded distractedly, though he was already leading the girl away from me. “It did help. Now that you’ve done such an excellent job, we should let the nurses take over from here.”
Even as he spoke, another man approached me. This person was smaller, with red hair, and dressed in hospital scrubs.
“Hello, I’m Newt,” the man, who was apparently a nurse, said as he leaned over me and looked directly into my eyes. “Can you tell me your name?”
Awareness of my body came back one piece at a time, in a seemingly random order. My left knee was itchy. There was an uncomfortable kink in my right shoulder blade, and both of my ears felt hot, like I’d been out in the sun too long.
My throat was definitely not on the list of working body parts, so when I tried to speak, my voice came out like the scrape of rusty nails over concrete.
“I’m… Mia.”
It was just two words, but each one tore my throat raw. I couldn’t feel or taste any blood, but speaking hurt so much that I couldn’t imagine it wasn’t injured in some way. Surely, if I kept talking, I’d end up spraying blood right out my lips, yet the nurse kept asking questions.
What was my full name?
What was the last thing I remembered?
Did I know where I was?
How did I get hurt?
Did I have any family?
Did anything hurt?
I didn’t answer anything, but the last question made me laugh. The laugh turned into more of a cough deep in my chest, but I couldn’t make myself stop.
Hurt?
Yeah, of course it hurt. Somehow, before I even became fully aware of my body, I instinctively knew that everything hurt. With each new nerve ending that came alive, I was unsurprised to find that I was right.
It wasn’t the worst pain I’d ever felt, but a deep ache permeated every inch of my bones and my muscles shrieked if they so much as twitched. My skin felt stretched too tight over my body, like I might bust apart at the seams if I moved too quickly.
“Do you want to try sitting up a bit?” the nurse asked.
Wetting my lips with an equally dry tongue, I thought about it for a moment, then nodded.
I knew that moving was going to hurt, but I found that I really wanted to sit up.
A whisper in the back of my mind said that I’d been lying down for far too long and I was desperate to see the world at a different angle.
The nurse didn’t expect me to move on my own.
With the touch of a button, the bed shifted under me and guided me into a partially upright position.
As expected, even this much movement caused every inch of my body to cry out.
I was like the layer of ice over a frozen pond that someone had just stomped on.
The very center of me seemed to shatter, and I shivered as if I were cold, though I also sweated with heat at the same time.
On instinct, the pain made me reach out. I don’t know what I was searching for.
Comfort?
A solution to my pain?
Neither of those were readily available, and my outstretched hand hovered uselessly in the air. I grasped at nothing. I expected nothing.
Then, to my surprise, something gripped my hand back.
The other man that I’d noticed earlier, the one with the little girl, had returned to my bedside and held my hand between his own.
His hands were larger than mine, and his palms easily engulfed mine.
The pressure of his grip was neither too hard nor too soft, and so pleasantly warm that for a brief moment I forgot my pain.
“Uh,” the man said when he noticed me staring at him. “Don’t push yourself too much. You’ve been out for a while.”
Out?
I’d been “out”?
What did that mean?
The way he said it made it seem like I’d gone somewhere, but I had the distinct impression that I’d been trapped for a long time.
Luckily, after I sat up, nothing more was expected of me.
The nurse kept asking questions, most of which I barely answered or barely managed to slur out a few words.
A couple of other nurses eventually came into the room, chatting among themselves like twittering birds as they checked the machines connected to me.
The image of their faces swam in and out of view as I struggled to focus, and without realizing it, I fell asleep with my hand still held by the strange man.
I didn’t dream. It felt like I barely blinked before I opened my eyes again, but there was a heaviness behind my lids that said I’d been unconscious longer than I thought. The room was the same and I was still propped up slightly, but the man who’d held my hand and the little girl were gone.
Maybe they were a part of the dream after all and never actually existed in the first place. Or maybe they were real, and this was the dream. It was hard to tell.
Just a few moments after I opened my eyes, a familiar redheaded nurse stepped into the room.
“There you are,” the nurse said with a smile on his face. “Awake again already. We expected you to sleep for longer. You must be eager to get on your feet.”
Ignoring him, I looked around the room.
“There was a man here. With a kid.”
The doorway was empty now, but I could have sworn the man and child and been standing right there.
“Mister Conway has been coming frequently to read to you and keep you company while you were healing,” the nurse said. “He was also here with his daughter when you woke up, but he went home after you fell back asleep.”
The name meant nothing to me, but hearing that the man read to me struck a spark of familiarity.
The few words the man had spoken to me while I was conscious had been comforting.
He had a very pleasant voice. Deep yet soft.
Confident yet soothing. I imagined that it would be very nice to hear him read.
“Will he be coming back?”
I was finally forced to look away from the door when the nurse stepped into my line of vision.
“Perhaps. Mister Conway volunteers often at the hospital and I’m sure he’d be happy to visit you next time he’s here.
Now, if you could please keep looking at me.
I need to check the reaction of your pupils. ”
A bright thin light shone directly into my eyes, making me flinch.
Then it disappeared, before coming back again.
Light and dark. Light and dark. Tears gathered in my lashes as I tried to keep looking at where I thought the nurse was standing.
Whatever my eyes were doing must have been the correct response because the nurse made a pleased sound and proudly announced that everything was in working order.
This nurse had already introduced himself before. I remembered that much, but I didn’t remember the name. It had been some sort of animal.
Frog?
Otter?
Fish?
None of those made sense as names, but I recalled a vague association with water.
Salamander?
That was close. It brought to mind the image of slippery but cute little amphibians.
Newt. Yes, that was right. The nurse’s name was Newt.
Filled with a sense of accomplishment, I tried to smile back, but the corners of my mouth pinched when they moved.
“Newt. You’re Newt.” My throat still hurt when I talked, though thankfully not as much as before.
Newt paused where he was checking a tube that was connected to my arm before smiling at me again. “Yes, that’s right. And I think you said your name was Mia?”
I nodded, and the creaking of my neck rattled in my ears.
“Yes. I’m Mia.”
Each word took the breath of an entire sentence for me to say.
Returning to his work doing… whatever it is that nurses do, Newt nodded along with the conversation.
“And what’s your last name, Mia. That’s a unique name, but unfortunately, it’s still not enough for us to look you up. Your last name will be a big help.”
Although he didn’t say it, I knew what he meant by a unique name. Mia was a common name for girls, but for boys, it was almost unheard of.
“I’m…” I started to answer automatically, then stopped when nothing came forward.
“I’m… I’m…”
My last name felt like it was right on the tip of my tongue and would fall out at any moment if I could just form my mouth into the right shape. Yet, no matter how many times I tried, I couldn’t come up with the name.
“I don’t know,” I eventually admitted.
What kind of person didn’t even know their own last name?
That was such a stupid thing to forget.
However, the more I tried to remember, the more I began to realize how much I didn’t know.
I was in a hospital, but how had I gotten there?
What had I been doing before I ended up unconscious?
Friends?
Family?
It was all just a big blank in my head.
A high-pitched beeping sound rang out near my ear, splitting my head with each painful wail. I flinched and pressed my hands over my ears to block it out, and for the first time, I noticed the bandages wrapped around my arms.
“Mia,” Newt said urgently. “You need to calm down. Please. Your heart rate is way too high.”
The machines kept wailing, and more people poured into the room.
Hands guided me to lie back down on the bed, yet despite the reclined position, I still couldn’t calm down.
The many people, probably nurses, argued around me.
I couldn’t make out everything they were saying, but one statement stood out as clearly as if it had been tattooed directly into my brain.
“Sedative.”
They were talking about using a sedative to calm me down.
That meant drugs. Just the thought of them putting drugs in my system immediately set off every instinct in my brain, as though some ravenous beast was about to close its jaws around my throat.
Like a terrified rabbit fighting for its life, I started pushing against the hands that were holding me down.
An image flashed behind my eyes. A dream or a memory, I wasn’t sure.
People had used drugs before to hurt me. I’d even used them on myself. It had been meant as a way to end pain, provide a place to hide during the bad things, but had really only given bad people a way to control me. Not once had the appearance of drugs in my life ever brought anything good.
Although I fought with everything I had, in the end it was all in vain. A sudden drowsiness overcame me, and I knew the nurses had won. They’d administered their sedative, and I had no choice but to fall into its embrace.
I could only hope it would be kinder this time.