Haven • H.S.

40. Where Are You?

Chapter 40.

"...trippin' over myself, achin', beggin' you to come help..."

Harry. 

I was dreaming of a dark place. There was beeping in my left ear, and there was a pain in my back that throbbed, persistent to let me feel. My thoughts were fuzzy, and the room seemed to spin, even behind my closed eyelids. I did not like this dream. I did not like that with every minute, reality seeped through the corners of my mind, entering with it an anxiety that made me nauseous, and a heart rate that left me sweating.

I tried to lift my eyelids. I wanted out of this dream, I wanted to wake up and find Ella laying next to me, her sweet lips fluttering with her nighttime breaths. I wanted my mom to come tell my four year old self that it was okay that I needed stitches, that hospitals weren't bad places. I just wanted fucking out.

I opened my mouth, the movement slow, and tried my vocal cords. I think a noise came out. I tried again. The monitor in my left ear was beeping louder now. Or maybe just faster. I was growing nervous. My sweat was a blanket now. My throat was vibrating with the noise I seemed to be making, and the noise was long, but my ears didn't hear it. Was I yelling? Why couldn't I open my eyes?

There was movement. The light on the outside world dimmed, then came back, then dimmed again. Someone or something was moving around me. Fast. I think I heard someone, I couldn't be sure. (My ears were useless, except for that fucking beeping). Wait, the beeping stopped. No it didn't! But there were hands on me now, cold, but firm hands, holding my arms down. I writhed; I couldn't help it. I was out of my body somehow and my movements and thoughts seemed so slow, and why couldn't I fucking open my eyes?

There were mumbled voices now, and the words were fast but they sounded female. Suddenly I could smell. It smelled clean in this dream, sterile somehow. The voices hushed and the voices calmed, but until the feeling of a needle sent a dull pain through my arm, I couldn't stop moving, even if I didn't really feel like I was moving. My throat stopped vibrating; maybe I'd stopped yelling. Everything seems slower now, even slower than before. My body sagged, and my already dark dream went darker.

Finally, the beeping ceased.

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I was out of my dream now. The world was suddenly a place I occupied again. The nurse came back to check on me, telling me what I already knew: I was in a hospital, I was under a lot of fucking pain medication, and that my earlier episode was normal for patients that had gone through what I had.

I didn't break down right away. The pounding in my head wouldn't allow that. Instead, I waited until the next dose of morphine sent me to a place of numbness before I cried. And god dammit, they were ugly tears.

I wanted to ask a thousand questions. I wanted them all asked at once, and answered at once, but the nurses were clueless, and other than making sure I didn't dehydrate and checking my vitals every. fucking. hour, they didn't speak to me. I think I spooked them with my earlier indecencies.

The clock said 4:09 a.m.

I was not tired.

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I now understood the feeling of sheer panic. The gray area where you were hopeful enough to stay sane, but your mind still gone so far you can't see past the fog of devastation. I didn't even know if she was fucking alive, dammit, and they were keeping me locked up here, as useless as a hand without a thumb.

And to think of all those times I felt I'd overdone it with Ella. Telling her "too much" just how greatly she means to me, reading into her looks, touches. The jealousy, the idiocy, the possessive instincts. Of feeling like I couldn't tell the world that she was mine. I felt like I'd fucking said too much, done too much, far too many times, in those moments.