Pudgy
3,784 seconds
Writing is slow and frustrating. The pain medication turns my brain to cotton, making it hard to hold onto thoughts long enough to write them down. I need to do this, so I push through. Griffin calls Zoey and gives her all the information.
The first couple of days smear together. I drift between sleep so deep I might as well be inside a black hole, and nightmares where I’m back in the abandoned building. During the day, I can pretend I’m just recovering from the flu or some other normal human ailment that doesn’t involve axes, glass, or the sound of bones breaking. When the sun goes down, and I’m alone, my nervous system has a hard time not losing its shit.
I need Nico here. I need him with me to tell me we’re not in that room anymore.
The nurses change my bandages. The doctors pump me full of enough antibiotics to make everything feel disconnected, like I’m operating my body via remote control with a delay between thought and action. The drugs they have me on are doing a bunch of heavy lifting, but I can feel the edges of real pain lurking around the pharmaceutical buffer.
An older woman is sharing the room with me, but she’s in a coma, and it would be easy to forget she’s here if it weren’t for the rhythmic beeping of her vitals monitors.
I eat ice chips and pudding. I watch whichever movies come on the small TV hung up in the corner. Mostly, I lie in bed and try to ignore the loneliness. It creeps in when it’s quiet. I never notice it coming until suddenly it’s here, hardening inside me like wet concrete and just as impossible to shake.
But the feeling doesn’t have time to truly settle thanks to Griffin. He’s here every visiting hour, watching movies with me and napping in the chair. He gives me updates on Nico as soon as DJ texts them: still unconscious, stable, no change.
There’s no telling if Morrow changed who he’s possessing. Griffin doesn’t think Morrow knows we’re alive. He thinks Morrow definitely would’ve tried to stop me if he watched me climb out of that dumpster, but just in case, every night before he leaves, Griffin sets up a salt ring around my bed in plastic tubing. It’s not unlike the one I built for my car, but this oneworks because it’s on the floor. The nurse tried to remove it on the first night, but I pitched such a fit that she eventually let me keep it.
Because I have the salt circle, part of me doesn’t expect Griffin to come back in the morning, but he shows up.
On day three, the police ask me some questions about what happened. I nod or shake my head when their questions allow me to, and write any other answers in a notebook Griffin brought for me. I’d already prepped my answers with Griffin so it’s not hard to remember them: I was hitchhiking when a masked man picked me up, and he held me, alone, in an abandoned building, where he cut off my hand. I never saw his face. He used a voice modulator. I escaped when he left the door unlocked and ran through the woods for I don’t know how long. I’m glad not to be expected to speak because I can choose my words carefully, and my voice can’t betray how much of a liar I am.
By day six, the infection is responding to treatment. I’m given a wheelchair I can drive with one arm and shown how to turn with one rim and how to move forward and backward with both. The doctors encourage me to speak a little.
“You havenoidea how hard this has been for her,” Griffin tells the doctor, laying a hand on my shoulder from where he’s sitting by the bed. “It’s been nice to get a word in edgewise.”
“Asshole,” I rasp out.
On day seven, Griffin steps through the curtain, working his jaw from side to side.
“There are journalists downstairs,” he says, whipping the curtain closed behind him. “Three of them. Apparently, someone on staff recognized you.”
“They can’t come up here, right?” I get out.
“Legally? No.” Griffin crosses his arms, planting himself between me and the door. “But that doesn’t stop them fromcamping in the lobby and harassing nurses for information. One of them tried to convince an orderly that she was your cousin.”
Of course they did. I stopped being surprised at the lengths some journalists will go to a long time ago.
I’ve survived three killers now. I’m worth at least a three-book deal. Those reporters would be frothing at the mouth if they knew about William Caine.
“What do you want me to do?” Griffin asks.
“Get them out of here,” I croak. “I don’t care how you do it.”
“With pleasure.”
He’s gone for maybe twenty minutes. When he comes back, he’s looking awfully pleased with himself.
“So?” I ask.
“Told them you died,” he says, dropping into the chair beside my bed and kicking his boots up on the mattress. “Massive infection. Couldn’t save you. Very tragic.”
A laugh bursts out of me before I can stop it, which immediately turns into a cough that makes my throat sob with pain. Griffin’s there with water before I can reach for it.
I doubt they bought it. Reporters are roaches. You can stomp on them all you want, but they never go away. Hopefully, this will keep them away until I can get back to the house.
Griffin gestures at the TV. “So,Greasetoday?”
