The Cortez Chronicles: Volume One

Story One: Night of Fire and Stars: Chapter Three

CHAPTER THREE

June 16th, 1998
10:12am

Books often comment on the sound of a beeping heart monitor being the thing that a newly conscious person picks up on first upon waking in the hospital. But it wasn't. It was the pain radiating from the crown of his head to the tips of his toes. Pain that caused his breath to hitch in shock. This sharp draw of breath brought awareness to the nose piece stuck into his nostrils and the tubing wrapped over his ears. The constant flow of oxygen into his nose made him breathe more slowly and he cleared his throat, as a result he attempted licking his lips finding that his mouth was completely dry.

It was only after all of these things had made themselves known to him that Alex noted the constant beeping noise off to the left side of him, originating somewhere behind his head. Slowly his eyes opened, lids squinting at the brightness of morning sunlight working against overly sensitive pupils. A slow look around the room verified that he was in fact in the hospital and that he was not alone.

With his brain still hazy from pain and what he could only assume was morphine, Alex peered over at his best friend Pete, who was leaned back in the single chair in the room with his feet propped up on the windowsill nursing a coffee that had not come from the hospital but a coffee chain close by.

"Isn't it bad enough I have to wake up in the hospital, does it have to be your ugly mug I see first?" Alex's words were croaked out, his throat screaming. Damn it, when had he swallowed razor blades?

Pete's sneakers hit the floor and he sat up so quickly his paper coffee cup nearly went tumbling to the floor. He managed to recover however as he spun to face him, turning the chair along with him. A number of choice expletives were shed as he scooted his chair closer, worried but relieved eyes gazing down at Alex.

"I may be ugly but you haven't seen your face yet pal, you're not gonna win any beauty pageants for the next little bit."

Alex tried to crack a smile but felt the motion pull at what had to be a split in his bottom lip, and as he tongued at the area he could feel where his teeth had definitely punctured the skin there. Damn. Had he got hit by a train? No... ambulance.

Suddenly the bed ridden man was filled with a sense of doom and panic, looking around the room again to see if he had missed anyone Alex's eyes quickly sought out Pete who was already looking like he knew what was coming and was wishing he were anywhere else.

"Erin... Liv...where's Olivia?" One moment his daughter had been in his arms and the next he was waking up here in the hospital. Where was his daughter?

"Everything is going to be alright Alex. Let me just go get the doctor. They're going to want to know you're awake."

Alex watched his friend leap to his feet and practically flee the room, causing a pit of dread to open up inside him. Alex didn't really believe Pete when he had said that everything was going to be all right, and if the look on his face said anything, it was that Pete wasn't so sure he believed his words either.

The wait was killing him, the questions suffocating him until he was certain he was going to be buried alive by it all. What had happened last night? When he thought back on the events that he remembered none of it made sense. The moving shadows in the corner of their room that had woken him, the sudden appearance of the black haired stranger, or the wind storm that had torn through his house. In the light of day it didn't seem possible and made Alex wonder just how hard he had hit his head.