Lady of the Night

Chapter Two

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     IT IS SAFE TO SAY I have the  mother of all headaches.

A sharp groan travels up my throat, clawing its way up with the sincerity of knives edges. I feel like I've swallowed a bowl of broken glass, when in reality I must have screamed too heavily.

A twinge of humiliation begins to build in my side, manifesting until I'm seething in humiliation. I freaked out majorly. There's no other way to describe what happened other than disastrous.

I try to recall what happened and the memory of chanting voices rises like a towering wave and I shudder violently. Those voices hadn't been quiet nor were they asking for particularly nice things. They'd felt distant but I heard them distinctly, as if they were all converged in a blockade nearby, impossible for me to escape or destroy. Regardless, the voices were a stretch too far even in my somewhat varied definition of normal.

Aches shoot through my limbs, and exhaustion lingers like an ever growing nuisance in my mind. I shake my head and try to sit up, a bunch of straps across my wrists restraining me from doing so.

Panic seizes my chest. "Hello?" My eyes desperately scan the room, noting the monitors beside me, the abhorrently bland decor of cream white walls and floors. The fact that I'm in a hospital bed — restrained — ploughs me backward onto the bed where I release a quiet string of curses I'd surely be smacked for at school.

They think I'm crazy, I think to myself, remembering my outburst vividly. Of course they do.

If I wanted to, I could just burn through the straps. However, that poses the risk of the nurse coming inside and thinking I'm a pyromaniac who's randomly setting alight everything I come in contact with. At the moment, I'd prefer to avoid any mislabelling — or anymore mislabelling.

Before I can wallow in a steaming pit of despair, the door handle jiggles and I wiggle upwards expectantly. If the doctor came in, I intended to talk his ear off until he undid these ridiculous straps.

Although, the man who comes through the door is no doctor.

He's middle aged, well-groomed with greying hair parted to the one side, slicked back with a seeping amount of gel. Creases mark his face, the ones on his cheek wrinkle as he flashes me a smile I deem to be one that says 'I'm non-threatening, don't go crazy again you little loose canon'.

I decide to break the awkward silence. "It's not visiting hours, stranger."

To my surprise, the man chuckles and it ages him even more (if possible). He strolls over, hands bunched in his blazer pockets which is elegantly refined. My first thought is that this guy is rich, possibly a mountain of money stored at home. "I'm Alastair Campbell and I've come to see if you're alright," Alastair says, oddly sincere.

My eyebrows furrow and my gaze runs over my strapped arms and his frame. "I'm ... good." The last word barely coherently makes it out of my mouth, I try to stop myself from glancing at the straps sealing my wrists — clearly I'm not good. But, I suppose Alastair was trying to be nice. "Just peachy." I smile but it might as well have been a grimace.

"Look, this is all a big misunderstanding," I tell him, bottling up my leaking desperation to escape this hospital room. Alastair stares at me expectantly. "What happened at school was nothing. I haven't slept in a while, or ate and I'm a bit cranky, that's all."

Alastair picks up a clipboard which is neatly attached to the end of the bed. He narrows his eyes at the writing, then turns to me, a small smile teasing the ends of his lips. "This said you had a psychotic breakdown," he explains.