When Daisy woke up, her eyes felt as if they’d been glued together. She rubbed at them with her fingers, finally able to separate the lids properly by blinking several times, the room slowly coming into focus.
As her vision cleared, she managed a smile. Finally, something made sense. She had imagined the whole thing.
The hospital room she was in was bright and airy. A nurse was talking to the patient in the bed opposite hers. To her left a window let in light from the gloriously sunny morning outside. Electronic beeps reached her from beyond the door to her right.
“Good morning,” the very English sounding nurse said, turning and noticing her sitting up. “Welcome back to the land of the living.”
“What happened?” Daisy asked. “Where’s Jock?”
“Who?”
“The man who brought me here last night.”
“You take it easy. You might be a little concussed. Just rest for a while until Doctor Watson gets here. Can I get you some water?”
“No but I do need to use the bathroom. Where is it?”
“Just out there. Are you all right to walk or shall I fetch a chair?”
“I can walk, I think.” She swung her legs out of bed, frowning at the sight of them emerging from the covers. “When did I end up in a hospital gown?”
“Do you not remember what happened?”
Daisy shook her head, standing up slowly and trying not to fall as a wave of dizziness hit her. “What did happen?”
“As far as we know, you walked out into the middle of the road near the post office depot and got hit by a car. You were lucky it wasn’t going any faster or you’d have a few broken bones rather than just bruises and a concussion.”
“Hit by a car?”
“Aye. The driver said you stepped out right in front of him looking down at your cellphone and he slammed on his brakes. By the the time he stopped there you were, laid out in the middle of the road. Darndest thing, said you never even made a mark on his hood.”
“It wasn’t my cellphone,” Daisy replied, her memory coming back to her. “It was a box I’d just picked up. Where did it end up?”
“No idea. Moira, did bed four come in with any boxes do you know?”
A voice called back from the corridor. “Nope. Just her.”
The nurse continued. “You’re looking awfully pale. Do you want to lay down again?”
“No, I just need to pee.” She shuffled out of the room, wincing each time her left foot hit the ground. Her ankle was swollen and thighs were grazed but other than that, she couldn’t see much wrong with her. Certainly not enough to warrant being kept in hospital overnight. Then a dizzy spell hit and she wasn’t so sure.
Once in the tiny bathroom, she looked at herself in the mirror. There was a cut above her right eye and she had to admit she did look pale.
Her hair was a mess but there wasn’t much she could do about that until she got home.
She sat down on the toilet with her head in her hands, trying to make sense of it all.
What could she remember? The skid of brakes and then waking up with Jock MacGregor standing over her. That must have been a dream. Here she was in a normal, ordinary hospital.
Had her unconscious mind created the entire scene? Was her crush on him so intense he would even invade her mind even while she recovered from her injuries?
Once she was back in bed, she tried to remind herself it had just been a particularly vivid dream. She didn’t need to worry about it. What she needed to worry about was whether they would let her go home any time soon.
She wasn’t a fan of hospitals. The fact this one had proper lights rather than candles was an improvement but she would still rather be recuperating at home.
Luckily, when the consultant came to examine her, he signed her off as free to go.
“You seem to remember things all right,” he said after getting her to tell him what she recalled of the accident. “Perfectly common for there to be a few gaps in memory after a bump to the head like that.”
