Before Sunday

Thirty Two

WHO THE HELL CARES WHAT TIME IT IS?

The sterile smell is overwhelming. My mind is fuzzy for the first few seconds after I wake up until a jolt of reality clears the fog and sends me reeling back into the present.

"Jackson!"

I pull at my arms to help myself up but they've been replaced by concrete and I can't. They're stuck. I turn my head to the side to discover that my wrists are anchored to the hospital bed with brown, tattered leather shackles. I follow the length of my leg, and although I'm covered in a flimsy blanket I pull and feel that my ankles are also imprisoned. Oh my God. They think I'm crazy.

I'm not crazy.

I'm about to scream when a nurse enters the room. She's wearing scrubs with a pattern of little suns, complete with sunglasses and rainbows on them.

Doesn't she know the sun is gone?

Doesn't she realize it's grey and grim and cloudy and awful?

I want to ask her these things. Don't you know the sun will never shine again, nurse? Don't you realize there is only darkness?

She offers me a contrived smile. It's the kind of smile that works to disguise tremendous sympathy, like when someone dies. "Look who is awake," she says brightly. Her voice is wrapped in a deep, southern drawl.

Ugh. She's so peppy I could puke. Leave it to the world to hand me a nurse with the same personality as the hideous scrubs she's wearing.

"I wasn't asleep," I point out flatly. "I was drugged. Big difference."

"Well from what I heard, you were fixin' to cause quite the stir."

I don't care what they think I was fixing to do. I need to get out of here. I need to find Jax. I don't have time for this. I pull upwards on the restraints. "I'm not crazy," I tell her. "Undo them. Please."

She picks up a clipboard affixed to the end of the bed and her eyes scan the papers. "Afraid I can't until the doctor clears you."

"Get him," I say. "Please." I clear my throat, realizing how demanding I must sound right now. "I mean I would really, really appreciate it if you would get the doctor."

"He'll be round soon, dear." She moves to the side of my bed and slips a blood pressure monitor around my bicep, cranking the small handle, pumping it up and watching closely as it deflates. "How are you feeling?"

What does she mean how am I feeling? I've just lost the best part of myself. The person who made me feel everything I've always wanted to feel, to be the only person I ever wanted to be. I can't even wrap my head around the tragedy of it all so how am I supposed to feel?

I pull at the restraints again. "Please," I say. "I need to leave."

She stifles a laugh. Bitch. "Afraid not."

"I need to make a phone call."

"What you need to do is relax, alright? The doctor will be around soon and once he sees you, we can decide what's next."

"What do you mean decide what's next?"

"What the best course of action to take is."

"The best course of action is to let me go. I'm fine."

There's that God awful smile again. The one reserved for the living in memory of the dead. "Well we'll just have to see about that." With those words, she sets the clipboard back in its place, turns and leaves. I'm alone with my thoughts and that hurts almost as much as the realization that Jax is gone.