57. Bailey
fifty-seven
Bailey
Three Days Later
Fuck, it’s cold.
Someone turn that fucking alarm off, will you?
My throat is killing me.
I can’t see a damn thing.
Are my eyes even open?
I reach up to scratch an itching spot on my face and can’t move my arm.
I try the other.
What the hell? This bitch ass arm is also stuck. I try moving them both at the same time, like some video game cheat code. Down, down, left, right. Nope.
My throat feels like someone forced me to drink battery acid. The last thing I remember is wiping my sweating palms on my jeans as I entered the club.
Looking for Lolly.
Is this one of those sleep paralysis dreams everyone talks about? Too bad I wasn’t paying attention because I can’t for the life of me remember how the hell you wake yourself from one. The loud beeping increases in volume and rhythm. Each shrill tone is painful as it ricochets across my brain.
This might take the cake for the worst hangover ever.
Goddamn. Hangover paralysis? I immediately envision Uma Thurman in Kill Bill and try to wiggle my big toes.
Ah-ha! The demon has no control over the tootsies.
Alright, bet. I keep wiggling all ten of my little piggies while I again try to move my arms. This time, they respond, but are met with resistance.
Something has me tethered to my bed. Is this some kind of sick joke? Lolly isn’t even into BDSM, is he?
What the fuck?
“Simon?” a disembodied voice calls to me from somewhere in this hellscape. “Simon, it’s okay. You’re okay. Try not to panic. You’re at the hospital. You had an accident.”
Who the hell is speaking? I still can’t see a fucking thing.
“Simon, I want you to open your eyes for me. Can you open your eyes? It’s going to be a little bright at first while your eyes adjust but go ahead and open them if you can,” she says.
I don’t recognize her voice. That horrible sensation in my throat is now radiating into my chest. Some invisible force spewing air into my lungs forcefully. I cough. She said don’t panic.
Do sleep paralysis demons often manifest in female form?
This is wild.
Oh fuck, that really hurts.
The shrill sounds around me amplify.
“He goes by Bailey,” I hear another voice say from farther away. It’s hushed, they sound like they’ve been crying.
“Bailey, open your eyes,” she says again.
Maybe this is how the dream ends? I can’t pinch myself so this will have to suffice. I slowly open my eyes, white light assaulting my retinas.
Fuck, that hurts. It’s too much. Too bright.
“Good job, Bailey. Now try opening them again and blink a few times,” I hear her say.
I follow her commands, risking the initial pain again and for what?
This time, the startling white lights are offensive, but not painful. I do as she suggested and blink. I blink and blink until a ceiling comes into view above me. A head of brown hair in my periphery.
“Wonderful,” the voice says. “You have a breathing tube in your mouth right now that has been delivering breaths to you while you couldn’t.” I feel a warm hand grab mine.
I beg your finest pardon?
A fucking what?
“I want you to squeeze my hand once for yes and twice for no. Do you understand?”
I squeeze once. Yes.
“You’re at Twin Rivers Hospital, Bailey. You had an accident and the emergency room team had to put a breathing tube in to stabilize you. Do you remember anything?”
I squeeze twice. No.
What the fuck is she talking about? Why the fuck would they intubate me? Isn’t Twin Rivers the place with the adjoining inpatient psychiatric unit? I fucking did a clinical rotation here!
Oh my god, someone kill me.
“It’s okay if you can’t remember. What I need you to do right now is just remain calm. If you can stay calm and continue breathing over the ventilator, we can remove the tube. Do you understand?”
Squeeze. Yes.
Please for the love of god get this fucking thing out of me.
“You also have restraints on your wrists for your own safety, but I can remove those soon as well.”
She adjusts some of the tubing above me, some Alien vs. Predator type shit humming and hissing.
“Okay, you can shake your head yes or no now. Do you think you can keep your hands away from that tube if I untie your wrists?”
I nod my head yes. I nod again just in case she missed the first one.
I can see her face now, and the top of her blue scrubs.
My vision is in and out but it seems to be improving.
She gently removes the restraints and I slowly open and close my fists, raising my arms off of the bed until I can see them.
These are mine, aren’t they? Gnarly.
This is so fucking weird.
I must be stoned.
I would venture to guess they had me on Fentanyl and Versed for sedation. It’s no wonder I can barely keep a grip on reality.
Re-al-i-ty.
Huh.
“Bailey, your mom is here with you. She hasn’t left your side,” the brown-haired woman in blue scrubs says sweetly.
Mom is here? Here. Twin Rivers. Accident. What the fuck happened? Can we please get this extubating show on the road?
“Hey sweetheart,” Mom says, voice quivering as she takes my other hand in hers, squeezing it tight.
I squeeze back as our eyes meet. She looks exhausted.
“Dad’s here too, he went back to the hotel to get a few hours of sleep but I already texted him to tell him you’re awake. He’d kill me if I didn’t let him know immediately,” she says with a small smile.
A single tear falls down her cheek. I reach our hands up to wipe it away.
“You scared me Bailey,” she whispers.
I have no fucking idea what she’s talking about but no doubt that I soon will.
“Okay, Bailey,” the nurse says. “Can you cough for me?”
I cough and gag around the tube.
Maybe I can deep throat after all.
Noted.
“Great. Now, I’m going to turn down your ventilator settings and see if you can breathe on your own. Are you ready?”
I shake my head, yes.
Fuck yes Nurse Angel, turn that bad boy all the way down. Get this tube out of me.
The alarm on the ventilator changes to a lower tone, the humming quiets as she watches both me and my monitor.
“Good. Your oxygen saturation is still ninety-eight percent. I’m going to leave you on low level pressure support for thirty minutes and if you are able to maintain adequate oxygenation on your own, I will remove your ETTube.”
I nod in understanding.
“I’m going to have a seat over here so I can closely monitor you. Would you like a pen and paper?”
Yes, I nod. She hands me a clipboard and a thick pen before retreating to a seat on the wall where she can see both me and my cardiac monitor. Mom looks at me in apprehension as I bring the pen to paper.
“What happened?” I scribble, almost illegibly. Her free hand goes to cover her mouth as a quiet sob escapes her.
“Oh, Bailey, Liam called me and said he had called 911. You hadn’t been answering your phone and…
” Her voice catches, tears streaming down her cheeks.
“He found you at the cemetery. Liam stayed with you, never left your side. They wouldn’t let him ride with you, but he came. He’s been here every day, Bailey.”
“They tried Narcan but you didn’t respond so they loaded you up as quickly as they could and got you to the emergency room.
I got to the hospital as soon as I could but they wouldn’t let me see you.
They said you had come in unresponsive and because you didn’t have a gag reflex they had to intubate you and put you on a ventilator. ”
My eyes widen in horror. Tears leaking in steady streams.
Hot molecules of shame and regret flowing freely.
“The toxicology report showed a significant amount of benzodiazepines, and your alcohol level was dangerously high. They weren’t sure if you had aspirated or not because you were initially difficult to ventilate.
They later told me that your lungs were clear but that you would need to remain on the ventilator until it was safe to wean you from the sedation. ”
This can’t be right. I literally just took a few pills to help me survive the panic. I only had one bottle of whiskey. How in the hell could that have been enough to put me in a complete stupor?
“We found your pill bottle and it looks like you took about fifteen of them based on the fill date,” her voice catches. “Bailey, why didn’t you call me? Why didn’t you tell me you were hurting this badly?”
I wasn’t trying to kill myself.
I was with Nat.
Crying. Hysterical, really.
I was crying and telling Nat about Lolly.
The pieces float in broken fragments, small blips of slurred words and hot tears.
They’re going to think I tried to kill myself.
I’m utterly fucked.
I must have forgotten I had already taken a few of the pills. Whether in a blackout or complete drunken haze, I had to have grossly miscalculated the amount.
Fuck.
This is bad.
This is so very fucking bad.