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My hands were not the only red parts of me. My shirt had blood splatter, too.
I’d been covered in blood this whole time and hadn’t realized it. My mind must’ve blocked it out, and in the next few moments, I found out why.
I tried to breathe, but no breath came to my lungs. It kept getting caught in the base of my throat, short, quick, erratic breaths that did nothing to ease my need for oxygen. My chest felt like a heavy weight rested on it, and my fingers started to shake. Over and over, terrible thoughts entered my head and refused to leave.
He was going to get me. He was going to make me his. He was going to kill me if I didn’t…
Too lost in my own head to realize it, Kelsey had pulled her car off the side of the road, undoing her seatbelt to reach for me. She grabbed a shoulder, her fingers digging into my arm, her eyes calm, considering her best friend had called her in the middle of nowhere covered in blood.
“Slow your breathing,” Kelsey murmured, her hand warm on my otherwise cold skin, even through the shirt. “In and out, Ash. Whatever happened, we’ll get through it. If you don’t want to talk about it, that’s okay. We don’t have to. You just need to breathe.”
Breathing. Seemed simple enough, yet it was breathing that gave me so much trouble in this particular moment.
As I stared at my hands, as I fought to listen to my friend and get my breathing under control, as my mind spiraled into all the possible ways this could go wrong, how stupid I was for thinking that this was all okay, I couldn’t help but wonder one thing.
What have I done?
Beeping. The first sound I heard when I came to in that hospital room was beeping. The machines went on behind me as if nothing was wrong. My vitals were…just as vitals should be. I was alive, which was more than I could say for sixteen other girls.
The one in the basement didn’t make it. By the time the police arrived on the scene, her body was room temperature.
Mine, luckily, was still warm. Because unlike that girl in the basement, I was still alive. Somehow. Someway. My body felt like a million pounds in this hospital bed, and as I moved my neck to study the room, I found that it moved about as well as Kelsey’s rust bucket did, too.
Slowly, but at least it moved.
My eyes fell to my hands, and I spread out my fingers. Though they felt like shit—every part of me felt like shit, actually—I was able to move them. I was just about to check my toes when a nurse came in, saw that I was awake, and rushed to my side, giving me a smile that made me feel…useless. Like I was some injured kid who she felt bad for.The pity in her gaze and her smile made me want to turn away.
“How are you feeling?” she asked, and I had to avert my eyes from her smile. She was only trying to be nice, but I wasn’t in the mood for pleasantries. If she knew what happened, she wouldn’t be so kind to me.
“Fine,” I muttered, staring at the window near me. The sky was blue…huh. Seemed odd. Seemed like today should be a rainy day, didn’t it?
“Do you know why you’re here?” she asked, peering down at me, patient.
I nodded once. “A car hit me,” I mumbled, reliving the way the big metal frame of the car had lifted me up and over it, how I’d rolled off and fell to the concrete below. How I’d grown numb, not able to feel any of my limbs. And then Ray…
“Let me get the doctor,” she said, scurrying out like a good little nurse. But I didn’t want the doctor. What I wanted—what I really, truly wanted above anything else—was something I could never have, because it involved some time travel and a whole lot of flashes from those fancy Men in Black memory joggers.
The doctor was a middle-aged man who looked like he was tired—to which I would say, tell me about it. He asked me to wiggle a bunch of body parts as the nurse took my blood pressure. I complied, being quiet as a mouse. The sooner I got out of here, the better. Will was also in the hospital, so I doubted he’d be paying my medical bills this time.
No, I wouldn’t be so lucky twice.
“None of your bones are broken,” the doctor rattled off, looking at whatever was on his clipboard. X-rays, maybe? Other scans taken of me while I was out of it? “No internal injuries. You’re just bruised, fortunately. You’ll feel like you got in a bad car wreck for a while. It’s going to get worse before it gets better, but you were lucky, Miss…”
“Ash,” I spoke, throat dry. Nothing broken, which was great. “So can I go now?” I wanted out of this room ASAP, so my bill wasn’t too high. I didn’t have insurance, and paying for this room for even an hour was far too much. Judging from the bright light coming in through the window, it was at least noon. Maybe later.
“Ash,” the doctor spoke my name with a smile. “I want to keep an eye on you for at least twenty-four hours to make sure there’s no concussion. You hit your head pretty hard on the pavement. There are some police officers here, waiting to talk to you once you’re feeling up to it.” He waited a moment before asking, “Should I let them in?”
A twenty-four-hour surveillance. Great.There would be no running from this, from them. I would be forced to answer their questions eventually, so might as well get it over with now and not prolong it needlessly.
I shrugged, and the movement made my spine ache.
The doctor and nurse both left the room, but they were soon replaced by a pair of officers, both of them women. One blonde, one brown-haired, both middle-aged. They seemed nice, for cops. Then again, I didn’t really like being around cops, not after what happened with Ray. A part of me thought they’d take one look at me, know what I did, and arrest me on sight.
I was no angel.
“How are you feeling?” the blonde one spoke as the other pulled out a pad of paper.
“I’ve been better” was my answer this time. I wondered how many times I’d be asked that question today. The brown-haired one asked me my name, and I gave it to them, watching as the one scribbled it down. I didn’t have my ID on me, I guess. And my phone… “I dropped my phone in the bathroom, before I…” I trailed off, before I got hit. For some reason, I couldn’t say it again.
