Coach's Number One

Chapter Forty Two

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Dedication: -November for sending in the awesome cover! Thank you so much! <3

Recap:

"It's okay, I'm here," he told me, grabbing me and lifting my body. He hugged me to him.

I felt myself crying as he carried me down the stairs. My cries drowned out his heavy breathing as he placed me in his car.

"Stay with me, Grace," he urged, gripping my shoulder as he started the car. "Stay with me."

Those were the last words I heard, before I blacked out.

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The first sense to come back to me is hearing.

My body is motionless but my mind starts whirring away. Gradually, things around me get louder.

"She had sleeping pills in her system, Dr Connaway," I hear an unfamiliar female voice say. "Is there any reason why she would have taken four times the recommended amount?"

I fade in and out of focus when I hearmum's hushed reply, saying something about a situation at school and that I've never done anything like that before.

A crackly groan emits from me before I can stop it.

"Grace, honey?" I hear mum say, her fingers pressing against my shoulder. Another strange sound came froms my throat before my heavy eyes finally open. I squint around the bright room, trying to focus on my mother's concerned eyes.

Continuing to make weird, unnatural noises, my mother frowns.

She springs to her feet and I distantly hear water running, before the bed dips beside me.

"Here, drink this," she instructs, passing me a plastic cup.

Slowly, my arm feeling like lead, I lift it, only to feel a ripe, burning feeling shoot through it. A strangled scream leaves my lips at both the pain and the physical sight of seeing my arm in a cast.

"Don't freak out, you're okay," she says to me in a soothing voice. "All your muscles will be sore for a while."

She leans forward, lifting my hand and wrapping it around the cup. Tingles shoot through my arm but not as bad as the pain that my left side endured. Pushing my hand to my face, she forces my lips open and tilts the cup. The cold, delicious water feels amazing on my dry tongue. My throat burns as the water trickles down it.

After skulling three glasses and suddenly feeling a stomach ache form, mum pushes my hair back from my face.

"What do you remember?"

Running my now-moist tongue over my dry, cracked lips, I feel much better. I can finally form a coherent sentence.

"I'm really confused," I whisper and gingerly touch at my sore neck. "Am I at your work?"

She nods. "Yes."

"Why?"

"I'm not sure on the details," she says to me. "Hayden brought you in two days ago-"

"Two days?" I hoarsely exclaim.

"You've been in and out of consciousness, due to the stress and exhaustion your body faced and also due to the sleeping pills in your system," she explain in her doctor voice that she always uses with patients. "Why did you take them? Did someone force you to?"

"I just wanted to have a break," I hang my head, my eyes tearing up. "I wanted to sleep for a while and forget about everything."

"Because of the fight you had with Hayden?" she questions, the nurse hovering over her shoulder, listening.