I must be dead. Everything around me was warm and soft, very unlike what I'd felt like for a passage of time. I heard a faint beep to my left and a slow machine noise to my right. My eyelids were closed and I found it a struggle to open them, but when I did all I saw was white. White walls and pictures and lights.
I wasn't alone. A samll body was curled up next to me. Mason? No, the shape was too feminine.
"Mom?" I whisper.
She jumped out of her fragile sleep an rushed to my side. "Oh baby, my sweetheart." Tears were startignto fall. "Oh, honey are you alright?"
Someone had asked me the same question, but the memory was too blurry to recall.
"Where am I?"
She looked down at her shoes, hesitating to answer. My mother opened her mouth to speak but the door creaked and in walked the same dark skinned man from before, Sebastion.
"How are we feeling Ms. Bringer?"
"Like shit." I answered, ingorning my mother's raised eyebrow.
Sebastion chuckled and grabbed a clipboard from the foot of my bed. "Would you like the good news, or bad news first?"
"Bad news please."
"The injuries you sustained were very severe. Most paitents don't survive. But you it seems, are a fighter."
My mother and I looked at each other.
"The good news is, we got to you just in time. Any longer spent without treatment, and you would've died."
A small miracle. "Can you tell me what happened? I'm a bit fuzzy on the whole thing." I ask.
"Unforutnetly I have been forbidden to give that information out." Sebastion sighed.
"Bullshit." I said.
He gave me a look. "I'm sorry. I can't disobey orders-" Sebastion didn't get a chance to finish as I leaped for him. The tubes and wires strapped to me tore off and some of the bandages too, pain was distant, though I could still feel it. Sebastion called for someone and soon nurses swarmed me before I could reach him.
They pushed me back onto the bed, quickly bringing up my shirt, trying to keep the bandages on and to make sure I hadn't split the gashes already healing. I finally aknowledged the pain ripping through my stomach and I clenched my teeth to keep from screaming out.
"Why," I said through my teeth, "Did I feel a needle through my neck when I got out?"
"You weren't listening. We couldn't have you going inside and hurting yourself further. So," Sebastion shrugged, "we sedated you."
A new wave of anger rushed up. "You what?" I growled.
"It was the only way we could get you to calm down."
"So you knocked me out like some dangerous animal?!" I yelled.
"Ms. Bringer,-" Sebastion was cut off by the door opening.
"I'd like a word with her please," Nick said as he strode in. He looked at my mother, "her alone."
My mother nodded despite my silent protests. When everyone was gone he casually strode over to me and sat down in an empty chair near my bed, crossing an ankle over a knee. "How are you Calsy?"
"I'd feel better if my stomach stopped hurting." I answered.
He smiled. "That will happen when you try to jump a doctor." Nick interlaced his hands and put two fingers to his lips. "Calsy, do you remember anything from the other day?"
The other day? "How long have I been out?"
"Couple of days. We had to give your body a little time to heal, and you were in no state to cooperate."
"So I've heard."
Nick chuckled. "So, remember anything?"
I shook my head. "No, not really. Why?"
Nick's blue eyes avoided my eyes when he answered. "We can't find Mason." He mumbled.
"I'm sorry, what?"
"He went in for you and didn't come back out. We've searched the building, he's not there."
'What do you mean he's not there?" I hiss.
"We can't find him, or his body."
Body.
"You think he's dead?" I whisper.
Nick looked at me then, saddness and hope warring in his eyes. "If I know Mason at all, and I like to think that I do," He paused, "I believe he is still alive."
A memory was starting to come back to me now. "Mason went after Caden."
Nick's eyebrows raised. "Why?"
"When Mason found me I-" I swallowed, "I wasn't in the best condition. My shirt-"
"I know."
It was a little reilef not to go through it again. "Mason asked me who had done," My throat caught, "Who'd done it to me. I told him Caden."
I wasn't sure Nick was breathing.
"He handed me off to Liam and ran back. I-I tried-" Tears started to fall, "I tried to call hm back. To get him to stop. But he didn't stop. He didn't come with me."
My fault. It was my fault Mason was missing and not here right now. I shouldn't have told him.
Nick nodded. He knew there were no words he could offer me to make it better.
"It's all my fault. It's all my fault." I repeated the words as tears ran rivers down my face. Nick stood up and climbed into the bed with me. If I wasn't so hurt I'd question him about it, but he pulled me into an embrace and I stopped caring.
Mason wasn't here. He could be dead. It was all my fault.
-
A few days later Sebastion cleared me to go home. A nurse would be by everyday to clean and re-dress the gashes. There wasn't anything to do at home though, so I sat on the couch, I sat in my bed. And I did nothing. I cried everynight, cried for myself and my family for what they must feel right now.
I cried hardest whenever Mason entered my mind. Every memory was surfacing each one mor painful than the last. Each came with the same phrase, repeated over and over again.
It was my fault.