SADIE
My head hurtas my eyes fluttered open. I immediately shut them when a bright white light shined in them.
“Sadie, can you hear me?”
A voice I didn’t recognize was speaking at an entirely inappropriate level. Anything above a whisper seemed entirely unnecessary.
I must have gotten drunk, right? This was a hangover. It had to be.
My stomach was turning and my head was pounding. I also felt like I was floating. Was I still drunk?
I tried to recall the last thing I could remember.
“Sadie! Can you hear me?!”
I tried to turn my head away from the rude person shouting at me, but when I did a sharp pain shot straight through my skull. That got my eyes open. My vision was blurry but after blinking I squinted and saw there were people surrounding me and one of them was shining a light in my eyes.
My lids tried to shut but were held open by an outside force. “What are you…where am I?”
“My name is Dr. Lowe. You are at San Francisco General. You were found in the alley beside the Bay View Senior Center unconscious.”
The senior center. Right. I went there and then I was going to go home to get ready for Alex to come and pick me up.
Oh no!
Alex. He would be worried.
“Alex!” I tried to yell but it came out sounding weak. “I need to call Alex.”
“I think there is an Alex here. I’ll go check and see if he can come back after I finish my exam.”
I wanted to protest. I wanted to tell the doctor that I had to see Alex now. But I didn’t have the energy to do that. So instead, I did what he asked. I gripped his finger. I followed a light. I told him when I felt his pen on the bottom of my feet.
And then, finally, he said that he would go get Alex.
As soon as the door shut, I closed my eyes. I don’t know if I fell asleep or not, but it felt like only a second later the door opened again. I looked over expecting to see Alex, but instead Charli walked through.
She’d been crying.Oh crap. She was crying. Charli never cried. Not even when her nana died.
Was this really bad?
Was my face messed up?
“Bitch, if you ever scare me like that again, I will kill you!” She rushed to my bedside as she was wiping tears from her face.
“What happened?” I asked, my throat was dry and I wanted to ask for water but I also thought if I drank it I might throw up.
“You were mugged. Someone attacked you and grabbed your bag. Your phone. Everything. If Christopher hadn’t gone to take out the trash…if you wouldn’t have been right behind the senior center…”
“Am I hurt?” As soon as I asked it, I knew it was a stupid question. Of course, I was hurt. I was lying in a hospital bed.
“They think you were hit over the head with something and then you hit your head on the concrete pretty hard. You lost a lot of blood. You had to get ten stitches. I looked at your MRI, there’s no swelling or bleeding around your brain but I think it’s safe to say you have the mother of all concussions.”
“Concussion. Stitches.” That didn’t sound too bad.
“And you have a black eye.”
“I do?” I’d never had a black eye in my life. Or broken a bone.
