Wait.
Did Iplaya game last night?
Where the fuck am I?
Why does everything hurt?
I try to open my eyes, but they feel glued shut, dry, swollen, too heavy to lift.
I push harder, manage a slit, then give up. My whole fuckin’facehurts.
I try to unscramble my brain, to piece together how the hell I ended up here.
It comes back in fragments.
I remember working out with Paul.
I remember a strip club.
A woman danced for me.
I remember going somewhere new, pounding shots, and music, and hitting the dance floor.
I remember deciding to walk back to my car.
Pizza. Water.
Then.
Men with baseball bats.
Oh. That happened.
My chest tightens. I blink hard, but everything’s blurry, edges smearing together like bad watercolor.
I move my hand and feel something tug—a thin, plastic line, running up to a bag hanging above me.
What the hell?
An IV?
I blink again, slower this time, and the sharp pain hits, spreading through my ribs and into my side. My breath catches. There’s something under my nose. I reach up, fingers brushing plastic.
An oxygen cannula.
Every breath feels shallow and foreign. I try to push myself upright, and a bolt of pain rips through my side.
I force my gaze downward.
There’s a drainage tube anchored into my ribs, taped tight.
My chest is a mess of wires and sensors, each one blinking or beeping in time with a machine that’s tracking every damn beat of my heart.
A sharp alarm goes off. I struggle, looking around to see what it is.
The heart monitor, maybe?
A nurse walks in, presses a button, and the noise stops.
