short skirts ➳ l.h.

t h i r t y - n i n e

I wake up, but only for a moment, just to hear the sirens surrounding me, then everything fades to black yet again.

~

"She's crashing!" I hear a strange woman say before I can even open my eyes, and then I hear nothing.

~

This time when I come to, all I hear is beeping. A steady beep, and irregular high pitched ones.

There's no sign of there being anyone else in the room but me so I lay in silence, too scared to even open my eyes. The room smells too clean and the feel of the sheets I'm in are too rough. I'm not home; I'm not where I want to be.

I want to be able to cry out for someone's comfort, but there's no one here that I would want.

Little by little the memories of Ashton's betrayal come back and the more I think about it, the more it burns. In a certain sense, I understand where he's coming from, he just wants me to get better and have a good life, but before all this, I had a good life, and there's nothing that I could've done better.

I feel like he took that away from me.

I move around a little bit, but I can't much. The pain in my shoulder throbbing.

"Lottie?" A voice coos out to me, "Are you awake?"

For a moment I remain still and silent, the fear hitting me harder than the bullet.

"Lottie, I'm sorry." The voice says again and then in that moment all my fear was gone.

Because this is not the man I thought it was.

This is Luke.

I open my eyes and turn my head toward the direction of the voice and sitting there, with a tearstained light grey shirt, and messy hair is Luke.

"Daddy." I try to say, but my mouth is dry and my lips cracked, and so in return my voice is weak and scratchy. But it was enough.

Enough to get his attention.

"Lottie oh my god." He sobs.

I want him to get up, I want him to comfort me. To hug me to and to kiss me and to tell me everything will be alright, but he doesn't move.

He remains in his seat.

I look into his eyes and see the sorrow. I see the pain. And then, looking down, I see the cuffs.

"Oh my god Luke what did they do to you." I say, tears flooding into my eyes, threatening to spill over.

"They told me that if I was indeed convicted of rape, then this would be the last time I'd see you."

"But we never actually..." My voice trails off.

"That's not what the police were told. Someone told them that's not what happened. Someone told them that I was raping you and that you wanted to get away from it."

"But that's not.."

"I know." He says, his tone deep and somewhat scary.

I wanted to say something more and I'm sure that he did too, but neither of us had the chance before two police officers, one a woman, the other a man, stepped into my hospital room, accompanied by a nurse.

"I need you to be careful with her." The nurse says to the officers, referring to me, "Her heart is still in a very fragile state and I don't need her heart rate going above 120 or she'll crash."

"If we see it rising, we'll call you immediately." The female police officer says.

The nurse nods and steps out of the room.