The clues are there: the lights, the sounds, but my thoughts swirl around the answer for eons before I finally connect the dots:hospital.
Little by little I peek through my eyelashes, confirming the guess. The bright lights burn my retinas again, intensifying the headache that’s splitting my skull wide open.
The first vines of fear sneaking my gut are quickly tamed by acidic annoyance. I don’t like this helplessness and confusion. And I don’t like the colors—red, white, orange, and blue—twinkling and growing bigger before my eyes until they explode like fireworks in the night sky.
I’m starting to think I’ve been drugged...
Though surely drugs would minimize this pain not just make me all drooly and disoriented. That’s not the case right now. Every inch of my body hurts. Every inch is three times heavier than it should be, as if someone ramped up earth’s gravitational pull to match Jupiter’s.
Questions pop into my head like jack-in-the-boxes springing to life. Why? How? What happened?
Each demands an answer while I have none. Zero. Not even my own name. There’s a big black hole in the center of my brain, swallowing all information.
God, whatismy name?
I swallow hard, shifting uncomfortably under the damp bed sheets clinging to my skin.
I’m overwhelmed and groggy, like I woke up from a decade-long nap, but it’ll pass. The big, fat nothingness in my mind where the answers towhy,how,andwhatshould be will clear as soon as I come to my senses.
The answers will come.
As soon as I calm down, they’ll come, I’m sure.
I just need caffeine.
Squeezing my eyes shut, I center my breathing. In through the nose, out through the mouth. Too bad calming down on command is nearly impossible: my fingers tingle if I try to move them, and I can’t assess my body for damages without burning my eyes out.
Still, I try. I ignore the icy centipedes marching down my arms as my fingers inch across the rough bed sheets, searching for the nurse call button.
It should be within my reach, close in case of emergency...
It isn’t. I can’t find it.
Damn it!
My heart collides with my ribs again, the steady beep of the monitor no longer so steady. It matches my racing pulse, fueling a vicious cycle... The faster it beeps, the higher my anxiety level. The higher the level, the faster the beep.
I’m panicking.
It’s a terrifying feeling. Helpless and... familiar even though it’s been years.
My panic-attack-free streak is about to break because I can’t contain the thoughts consuming my mind or the fear exploding inside every cell of my body. I swear the beeping grows louder and louder and louder still and I-I... I can’t breathe.
Calm down.
I desperately grasp for control, for a semblance of calm, but panic courses through my veins, distorts reality, and mingles with the pain throbbing everywhere at once.
Parting my lips, I swallow small gulps of disinfected air that catch halfway down to my lungs.
Calm down. You’re alive. You’re okay. Breathe.
Breathe.
Fucking breathe!
“Hailey.” Dad’s voice cuts through the buzz filling my mind like a knife slicing butter.
Air leaves my lungs in a relieved gush.Hailey.
