by J. N. Baker
Beep. Beep. Beep.
“Zoe, can you hear me?”
The voice seemed closer this time, though I was sure the speaker was still under water. Had I died and become a mermaid? Someone grabbed my hand and gave it a gentle squeeze. I couldn’t seem to get my hand to reciprocate. The mere thought of moving hurt.
“Sir, I told you, you can’t be in here. She’s lost a lot of blood. She needs to rest now. You’re going to need to wait in the waiting room with the rest of the family.”
“I’m not leaving her,” the male voice replied, a little clearer now. I knew that voice. “I want to be here when she wakes up. Please.”
Beep. Beep. Beep.
“Fine. But you need to let her rest. Come get one of us the second she wakes up.”
Someone squeezed my hand again. “I’ve got you, Zo. I’m here.”
Josh.
Beep. Beep. Beep.
I had to call Josh, but I couldn’t remember why. I just knew he would keep me safe.
But safe from what?
“You will look at me! I want to see those pretty eyes of yours.”
“No!” I screamed, shooting upright in the hospital bed, fighting off monsters that couldn’t be seen because they were no longer there.
“It’s okay, Zoe,” Josh tried to soothe as I flailed on the hospital bed. “You’re safe. You’re going to be okay.”
My entire body screamed in unimaginable pain as I struggled to get free of the sheets that were now tangled around my body. I cried out again until my voice went hoarse. The hospital room door flew open and a number of nurses charged into the room.
“You need to leave, sir.”
“She needs me!”
“Get out. Now!”
Hands came crashing down on my arms and legs, pinning me to the hospital bed and I thought I felt bones crunch and grind. Something sharp pinched my arm and a warm feeling spread throughout my body as my limbs floated away.
“Shit, she busted open her stitches.”
“We’ll need to reset the arm.”
“Keep her sedated for a while.”
Beep. Beep. Beep.
“Miss Brooks? Can you hear me?”
The voice was different this time. Feminine. Where had Josh gone? Was he ever really there? I tried to ask for him but my throat felt like I’d swallowed razor blades.
Beep. Beep. Beep.
“If you can hear me,” the voice chimed again, “squeeze my hand.”
My hand clenched around hers and pain shot up through my arm. Something tight was wrapped around my skin. A cast, maybe?
“Good job, Miss Brooks. You’re doing great. Now, do you think you can try to speak?” I found the woman’s voice oddly soothing. Perhaps it was her subtle accent, or the calmness her voice carried. And her scent—she smelled like vanilla with a hint of lavender—it helped to mask the awful sterile smell of the hospital room.
“Yes,” I croaked.
“Very good, Miss Brooks. My name is Dr. Singh and I’m going to ask you a series of questions. I know that some of these questions might be confusing or even a bit hard, but I need to ask them to see if there’s any brain trauma. Now, do you know where you are?”
“Hospital,” I rasped, not opening my eyes.
“Yes. Do you know what happened to you?”
Beep. Beep. Beep.
I clenched my eyes tighter as if I could will the whole thing to go far away. But his dark eyes were there, lifeless and watching me in the deep depths of my mind. “Attacked,” I finally said, my eyes shooting open.
The lights were blessedly dimmed. It took a moment for my eyes to focus on the doctor’s face. She was older than she sounded and her large rimmed glasses made her kind eyes seem that much more tender. I fixed my gaze on the ceiling, sucking in a deep breath. The stabbing pain in my chest told me that was a horrible idea.
Kicked. He’d kicked me in the stomach and chest. But that wasn’t all he’d done to me, was it?
“That’s correct,” she said, her voice soft and gentle, as if she were dealing with a child. “You were attacked and lost a lot of blood. You also had some substantial internal bleeding and will need to rest in the hospital for a while.”
“Josh?”
“Yes, your family is here,” she tried to reassure me. “They are in the waiting room and will come in soon. Now, do you remember what happened to your attacker?”
Tears streamed down my cheeks. I shook my head, afraid to speak.
“I suppose it is common to block out such things,” she concluded, standing from her place beside the bed. “Probably for the best if you don’t remember every detail.”
What she didn’t understand was that I did remember. I remembered everything. The way the knife carved through his flesh. The heat of his blood as it splattered across my face. The way his chest rose and fell for the last time. How his lifeless eyes continued to stare at me after he was gone. I killed him.
Beep. Beep. Beep.
The tears continued to fall and Dr. Singh patted my hand delicately. “You are going to be okay. It just takes time. When you finally go home, you should consider doing a few therapy sessions. It is helpful for those who have experienced trauma like yours to talk through things with a licensed therapist. Our job here in the hospital is to help your body heal to the best of our ability. But the soul is a different matter altogether.
“I will have one of the nurses come in to give you some more morphine,” Dr. Singh said as she made her way to the door with her clipboard. The sterile hospital smell returned and I wished she’d come back. “You are lucky to have survived. Very lucky.”
“Lucky?” I whispered to an empty room.
How could anyone call this lucky? I was supposed to be dead. Why couldn’t they have just let me die?
Beep. Beep. Beep.
The next time the door opened it was my nurse coming to up my morphine. I could have kissed her. The rush of numbness racing through my body was pure bliss and a welcomed change from the world of pain I was living in. It didn’t take all the pain away though, but enough that breathing no longer hurt.
“How long have I been out?” I sounded like I’d just smoked a pack of cigarettes. Or twelve.
“A couple of days,” the nurse answered, handing me a Dixie cup filled with ice chips. “Let them melt in your mouth. You woke up shortly after surgery but you weren’t ready to be awake yet. They put you into a drug-induced coma for the past twenty-four hours to let your body rest and get a head start on the healing process.”
“How long will I have to stay here?”
“I’m not sure. I’ll see if I can find anything out for you. On the brighter side, the doctor said you can have visitors now if you’re up for it. Should I bring in your parents?”
“No.” The word was out of my mouth before I even registered what I was saying. Based on the look the nurse was giving me, she hadn’t expected that response.
“Just your mom?”
Maybe some girls wanted their moms after something like this, but I most certainly did not. “Is there someone named Josh out there?”
Beep. Beep. Beep.
She looked at me for a moment as she gingerly adjusted my pillow. “You must mean that boy that was in here yesterday. He’s a hard one to keep away. I’ll check and see if he’s still here for you.”
I mumbled my thanks as she slipped out of the room.
Next thing I knew there were footsteps rushing toward my door before it flew open. Josh stood in the doorway, panting heavily as if he’d just run a mile. He had dark circles under his eyes and his face had a thin layer of growth on it from not shaving. His hair was a mess and his clothes were wrinkled as if he hadn’t changed in a few days.
And I thought I looked bad.
He rushed to my bedside and took my hand in his. The sudden movement sent a shockwave of pain throughout my body and I wished the nurse had turned the morphine up a bit more. I swallowed my cringe so as to not make Josh feel bad.
“Zoe,” he whispered my name as if it were a prayer. “You’re okay.” I wasn’t sure if he was saying it for my benefit or his.
I waited for him to ask me what happened but was grateful when he didn’t. I was sure by now he knew. Hell, he was probably the one that called it in. Did I have Josh to blame for my survival? The thought made me sick.
Beep. Beep. Beep.
“I was so worried,” he said, his voice cracking. He took a deep breath. “I don’t know what I would have done if you’d…”
I squeezed his hand as it trembled in mine. “I’m alive,” I assured him. Not that I was sure I wanted to be.
His ice-blue eyes glazed with unspent tears and his other hand came delicately to my face, cupping the cheek that wasn’t injured. His eyes roved over my face. I was sure it wasn’t pretty. I would have turned away from him if I could have. “I should have been there with you,” he whispered. “If I’d gone with you like we planned, then none of this—”
“Stop.” I pinned him with a hard stare. “We aren’t going down that road, Josh. This wasn’t your fault. Do you hear me?”
Josh dropped his gaze, giving a stiff nod. “Your mom is pissed that you asked for me first,” he finally said, blessedly changing the subject. Though I had a feeling this wasn’t the end of the conversation. The man needed someone to blame. I just hated that he blamed himself.
Beep. Beep. Beep.
“Good,” I grumbled. Though I knew I couldn’t avoid her forever, as much as I would’ve liked to. “Cody?”
Josh’s jaw ticked. “I texted him this morning to tell him they were waking you. He’ll be here soon.” There was something in the tone of his voice that made red flags shoot up in my brain.
As if his ears were burning, Cody appeared in the doorway.
“Holy shit, Fido…” Pain flashed across Cody’s face as he looked me over. He couldn’t seem to pull his eyes away from me.
That was until Josh stepped in front of him.
“Where were you?” Josh growled.
“Sorry, dude. I hit traffic getting here, but I came as fast as I could.”
Josh put a hand on Cody’s chest as Cody tried to step around him. Cody tried to get to me once more and Josh once again pushed him back. What the hell was going on?
“What the hell, man?”
“What the hell is right,” Josh snapped, coming damn near nose to nose with our friend. “Where the fuck were you the other night?”
Beep. Beep. Beep.
“Josh,” I groaned, starting to see where this was going. “This isn’t Cody’s fault either.”
“The hell it isn’t,” Josh retorted. He jabbed a finger into Cody’s sternum. “You were supposed to look out for her, asshole. And instead you let her walk to her car in the dark alone?”
His voice echoed off the stark white walls and I cringed.
Cody shoved Josh out of his face, to which Josh responded by rearing back his fist.
Next thing I knew, the two of them were grappling with one another on the floor, grunting and throwing punches. My nurse came in to see what all the commotion was and called for hospital security. By the time security showed up and pulled the two apart, Cody’s eye was starting to swell and Josh’s lip was split.
“Remove them from the building,” my nurse ordered.
“No!” I shouted, tears streaming down my face. “Please, no. They’re just having a hard time dealing with this. Look, they’ll behave. I promise. Just, please don’t make them leave. They’re family.”
Cody shook off the guard’s grip and held his hands up to show he was done while Josh wiped the blood from his lip with the back of his hand.
The nurse scowled at them. “If you so much as look at each other wrong, I’ll have you both out of here so fast your heads will spin. Got it?”
Both men gave her a stiff nod, eyes glued to the linoleum floor like scolded children.
Beep. Beep. Beep.
Josh looked from Cody to me and stormed out of the room.
“Zoe…” Cody hung his head, his straggly blond hair falling over his eyes. I thought I saw tears streaking his cheeks.
“Cody,” I said, stopping him, “I know it wasn’t your fault. I told you I didn’t need anyone to walk me to my car.”
“I should have walked you anyway!” he snapped, his brown eyes locking onto mine. I thought I saw flecks of yellow in them. “I was supposed to protect you and I didn’t.”
I opened my hand to him and he took it. “This isn’t your fault,” I told him again. “It isn’t either of your faults. I made my own decisions. This is on me. Besides, if one of you were there, he probably would have just killed you and I still would have been…” I trailed off and had to take a moment to catch my breath. “Just—don’t apologize to me. And don’t worry about Josh. He’s just upset. He’ll get over it.”
“He heard, Zo.”
My stomach turned sour. “Heard what?” I hesitated to ask.
“He called me after everything went down. He was a damn mess. He never hung up after you called him. He heard everything.”
Beep. Beep. Beep.
That night, Josh crawled into the hospital bed with me and held me while sleep evaded me. And so became the routine—Cody staying with me throughout the days and Josh with me throughout each night.
“How could you let this happen, Zoe?” my mother raged as if I had gone out hoping someone would attack me. It was the third time she’d come to visit in the past week. Each time she went into some sort of woe-is-her speech about how much trouble I was causing them. Right, how could I be so insensitive to their pain and blatant discomfort?
Unfortunately, I was used to it.
Beep. Beep. Beep.
“I don’t know how we’re going to afford all of this,” she went on, ticking off her usual boxes like the predictable broken record she was. “I can’t keep taking days off like this all because you went out and were irresponsible. Plus, your brothers need me at home.”
“Of course,” I mumbled. God forbid the two precious angels had to make their own sandwiches and pour their own cereal—they were only in high school.
“You better hope you don’t end up pregnant,” she continued. “I won’t be helping you raise some heathen child.”
A middle-aged man appeared in the doorway. “We need to go,” he said with a gravelly voice that made my skin crawl. If I could kill anyone with my mind, it would be my mother’s husband, Todd. He glowered at me from the door as if he knew exactly what I was thinking.
A figure shifted behind him. Josh. He stood a good six inches taller than Todd and was muscular in all the places that that creep was not. Josh pushed past him and walked into my room, coming to stand defensively at my side. The strong set of his jaw dared Todd to say anything else.
My mother rolled her eyes and adjusted her purse over her shoulder. Of course, she never bothered to take it off because she never stayed long enough to need to. “I’ll be back in a day or two. Hopefully by then you’re ready to leave so we can put this whole unfortunate event behind us.”
Beep. Beep. Beep.
As the door slowly creaked closed, I heard Todd’s not-so-hushed voice. “I don’t know why you even bother, Sandra. You know girls like her are just asking for it. Face it, she’s a slut—got a man in her hospital room at all hours.”
“Josh, no!”
But he was already out the door.
A body slammed against the wall outside of my hospital room and Todd groaned.
“You piece of shit,” Josh roared, followed by the sound of flesh hitting flesh.
Someone shouted for security.
“I told you, no more fighting,” I heard my nurse scold. “Escort him from the building.”
“He was protecting me!” I shouted from my hospital bed.
The nurse popped her head in, looking at me with those hard eyes. “What was that?”
“Josh was protecting me,” I said again. “That man threatened to hit me and Josh reacted.”
>
“How dare you,” my mother shrieked, charging back into my room and stomping over to my bedside. “He did no such thing!”
“In fact,” I continued, “he’s been hitting me for years. I want them removed—both of them,” I said, pointing at my mother and her husband with my good arm. “They aren’t family and I don’t want them here anymore.”
“You can’t do that!”
“I’m eighteen,” I told my mother. “I’m an adult. I don’t need a guardian.”
“You ungrateful little bitch,” the woman who birthed me hissed, her face turning five shades of red.
“Get them out of here,” my nurse finally said.
A large security guard with muscles growing on top of his muscles released Josh and took my mother by her arm and “escorted” her from the building along with her husband. I could hear her screaming the whole way out.
God, that felt good.
“I still think you should go home for the night, Mr. Addams,” my nurse said to Josh. “Miss Brooks will be fine alone for one night. We’ll take good care of her. Go home,” she said again, a little more forcefully. “Cool off.”
Beep. Beep. Beep.
That night I lay in the bed alone for the first time in five nights with nothing to do but listen to the incessant sound of my heart monitor beeping and the occasional shuffling of feet outside my door.
I didn’t feel safe going to sleep without Josh or Cody here with me. I wasn’t ready to face the nightmares alone. And nightmares there were plenty. They were there in the dark corners of my mind, ready to remind me what was done to me—what I had done. And to remind me that I was still alive.
Beep. Beep. Beep.
“Will someone please stop that fucking beeping?” I groaned. If it didn’t hurt so much to move, I would have put a pillow over my head.
My door silently opened and closed. I didn’t even hear whoever it was as they went to my monitor.
With a muffled smash, the beeping suddenly stopped, and I got my first real dose of silence.
“Thank you,” I said with all the appreciation I could muster. “You’re a saint.”
And then the towel fell over the lower half of my face and a sweet chemical scent filled my nostrils.
