The Not So Sad Rejection

Chapter Nineteen

Aftermath

Ba-beep. Ba-beep. Ba-beep.

I really wish someone would stop that bothersome beeping. While they're at it the lights could stand to be dimmed. The inside of my eyelids are lit up by white. I groaned and decided to just go get them myself. I opened my eyes and waited impatiently for them to adjust to the onslaught of brightness. I moved to get up but to hands reach down from the light and held me in place.

"Get off," I mumbled, "I gotta turn that damn light off."

The light moved out of my line of sight and revealed my little sister. "Better?" Trina asked gently.

"Where am I?" I asked confused. I turned my head to see more of the room I was in. "Am I in a hospital?" Trina nodded. "Why am I in a hospital?"

"What's the last thing you remember?" she asked.

I closed my eyes and thought back through the fog in my mind to dreg up her request. Something important. I have to tell them something. I have to tell them about... the traitor! My eyes shot open and I lurch up against Trina's hands. "Let me go!" I said frantically clawing at her hands. "I have to warn him! I have to tell Grant-"

"There's a traitor," she cut me off. I halted my actions in surprise. "You were mumbling something incoherently when you showed up out of nowhere. We caught enough to know that there was a traitor and Jason, Lily and I already suspected as such. You scared us half to death when you just collapsed. I think Tristan just about lost his mind." She gave me a tight smile.

"What is it, Tree?" I asked gently. "Something's bothering you."

She looked away. "The people working on you..."

I let out a deep breath. "I take it they told you about my injuries, along with theories on how I obtained them."

"The knife wounds are self-explanatory," she mumbled. "The burns on your wrists. They're electrical burns, along with a touch of hypothermia it wasn't too hard to figure out. They missed the shackle bruises." She looked pointedly at my hands and wrists. "Dislocated your thumbs to pull your hands out?" I nodded. "Water and metal shackles to conduct electricity."

"Did you tell the others?"

She shook her head. "What good would it do them? The past week has been hard enough."

"Week?" I asked. "Have I been gone that long?"

Her face turned stricken for a split second before she composed herself. "You were gone for four days before you showed up. But well, you've been asleep for nearly three days."

My head hurt to think about all of that lost time. "What have I missed?"

She opened her mouth to speak just as the door opened and Justin came through. He entered using his back to open the door because his hands a tray of food. "Hey Tree, I brought you some din-" he turned around and when he saw me awake he dropped the tray. It crashed to the floor with a loud bang and splatter Justin and the floor with what looked like some type of pasta dish. "Kate?"

I held my hand up to give him a slight wave. "Hi Justin. Why did you come? We were having so much fun without you."

He grinned and laughed. "Hold on, I'll get the others."

"Clean up your mess!" I called after him and his laugh echoed back. I turned to Trina. "When did he come?"

"He dropped everything and raced here when you went missing," she answered. "Jason had him on double-shifts for shirking hi responsibilities for a while."