🔪Doll🔪

Chapter 11

My little country bumpkin. 

"This is your fourth day here," I answer as her eyes widen. "Do you remember how you got here?" I ask. I'm not trying to overwhelm her, but anyone coming out of a coma must have their cognitive skills checked, especially memory.

"I...I was in a phone booth," she grimaces. "And that's...the last thing I remember." Interesting. The only phone booth I saw in that neighborhood was about four blocks away and heavily vandalized.  

"What about before...what brought you to the phone booth?" I ask, hoping for more information about that night.

She squeezes her eyes shut tightly, as if trying to block out the bad memories.

"Take your time, sweetheart," I soothe, lightly touching her fingers. 

She opens her tear filled eyes. "I...crawled."

I keep a neutral expression, despite my complete and utter shock. Those two words will haunt me for the rest of my life.

Is she telling me that she crawled four blocks, through that dangerous neighborhood, in her condition? To a phone that appeared to be no longer operational?

No...that can't be...can it???

Nina walks in and hands me the Vaseline packet.

I tear the corner off and squeeze some onto my pointer finger. "Allow me to put this on your lips. They look rather painful," I offer, despite knowing that chapped lips are the least of her problems. But this is the only way I can offer her comfort right now, especially with Nina present. 

She nods and I gently slather her full, beautiful lips, feeling tingles flow through my fingertip and up into my hand.

She gasps and her eyes widen in bewilderment, as if she feels it too.

God, how I wish I could hold and comfort her, tell her how much I love her...how much I care.

I never believed in such things as love, soulmates, or any other romantic nonsense, but since I've met Amara, I know it exists.

I tell Nina to hand me a box of tissues and she does.

I pull a few out and reluctantly wipe my finger off before using the other to tenderly dry her tears, which she seems to revel in.

My poor angel...she's starved for touch...love.

Me too.

There's so much more that I want to ask her, but I know I don't have long until the morphine makes her sleepy, and I need to check her motor functions.

"There...all better," I smile, even though she's far from better. "I know that you need to rest, but I have to check a few things first. Is that alright?"

She nods.

I walk to the end of the bed. "I'm going to take a look at your feet," I tell her before pulling the covers back.

Her feet are dreadfully filthy, which pisses me the fuck off. I told that lazy fucking nurse to thoroughly cleanse Amara as much as possible, but I guess she figured, out of sight, out of mind.

I take a deep breath, trying to calm myself. I don't want Amara to think I'm upset with her because I'm not.

Standard procedure would be me poking the bottom of her feet with a needle to check for any loss of sensation or paralysis, but there's no way in hell I'm going to risk opening a small wound there and possibly cause her to contract a staph infection or worse, due to the bacteria that's covering them. After seeing the basement and house that she had to walk around in, there could be Ebola on there for all I know.