This is the last stop.
The end, right? Where it’s supposed to be all light and shit? I try to think clearly.
Nothing happens. Then a vicious wrench yanks me off course, the impact so violent I lose the last breath of air in my lungs.
I crack my head on rocks, stars bursting behind my eyes. My shoulder slams against more sharp debris and blinding pain floods me, lungs screaming for absolution.
Fecking-A.
I’ve already died, thanks. I don’t need this shite, and anger has me fighting it. The darkness, the current, the cold. The hands clamping onto me, ripping me free of the bitter drink by sheer and brutal force.
It hurts.
Christ, it fecking hurts, and the panic that’s been absent until now detonates, tearing through my body sharper than any pain, obliterating my senses.
I don’t know which way is up. If I’m underwater, sinking to the bottom, or if the hooks digging into me are dragging me to the surface.
I don’t know if I’m alive or dead, and for the first time in…goddamn, I don’t know, I find myself giving a shit.
Live. Or you’ll never get to tell him to his face that you really do fecking love him.
As motivation goes, it isn’t half bad. I fight with everything I have. Against everything I thought I was if I can ever grasp the metaphor.
Right now, all I know is a life that’s dark dark dark, until it’s not, and air slams into me like fire. Bright light. Someone shouting my name. Another pair of hands forcing me onto something solid as I choke and spit river water, the world tilting so hard faces bleed into the snow.
And then…nothing. Everything cuts off. Silence like the end of civilisation. Like a winter wonderland without the joy.
Likedeath…
Except, I’ve never been so cold and wet in my life. Or more vexed, with anyone and everyone, from the coppers and paramedics who won’t let me stand up, to Sonny who keeps threatening to call Logan if I don’t calm my tits and lay the feck down.
“I’m fine,” I repeat for the hundredth time, to anyone who’ll listen.
Trouble is, no one is listening to me, and as a HEMS doctor appears like a devil in red, waving a syringe, I take my cue to shut the hell up.
Almost, anyway. “Don’t fecking stick me with that. Or I’ll get my nanna to curse you for a thousand Christmases.”
The doctor ignores me, talking to someone over my head. He sticks me anyway and I have no idea what happens next. How much time passes. How often the scenery changes until I wake up in a room that’s horribly familiar, and I have no idea if this is the flashback nightmares are made of, or if the last two years of my life have been nothing but a dream.
And the panic…it’s still there. How the feck—how thefuckhave I ended up here again? In this same room? On the same bed? With the same tubes in my arms and pain in my lungs?—
“Easy.” A gloved hand hits my chest, forcing me down from the wild lurch I’ve propelled myself into. “Galen. It’s okay. You’re okay.”
I’m not okay. My head is spinning and it hurts as if I whacked it on a river rock. My limbs ache too, like I have the flu.
Or hypothermia is kicking your arse.
I slow-blink, trying to catch up. Wriggle my fingers and toes. Test my lungs.
Everything works.
Everything iswarm, which doesn’t do much for the intense confusion rattling my sore brain.
I’m in the hospital. Again. That much I do know. And the hand on my chest?
Christ, I know that hand, and it’s not actually fecking Jesus. “Shit the bed, Bhodi Jones-Dubois. Aren’t you bored of my pretty face yet?”
It takes a second for Nurse Bhodi’s face to solidify, and while Sab Dubois is the most beautiful man I’ve ever laid eyes on, it’s impossible to deny that Bhodi’s the prettiest. Blond hair, blue eyes, a smile like sunshine on snow.
