TWO
Adalind
You know that time resting softly somewhere between sleep and wake where everything has smooth edges and light colors? The in-between time my mother would call it. That place you cling to in the morning when you wake up twenty minutes before your alarm, knowing you can comfortably drift into the slow sweetness of that state.
I must have been in that.
Except, possibly, a little more asleep than awake.
Seeing as I was obviously dreaming.
It was certainly not my real life where I was being carefully shuffled out of a warm car, then nestled against the smooth material of an expensive suit, the side of my face resting in a neck that smelled of man and a smooth, crisp aftershave, with arms under my knees and around my back, strong, but somehow holding me ever-so-gently.
My eyes opened.
Or, at least, it felt that way in the dream, angling my head up to look at my prince charming.
Except he didn't exactly look like a prince charming.
True, he was beautiful. In an extremely perfect, Roman way with his amazing jaw, great nose, strong brows, and thin, but not ungenerous lips. His hair was dark, as was the abundance of lashes he had framing his almost black eyes.
He certainly had the raw materials to be a prince charming.
Except, in those lovingly framed eyes, there was something that made a shiver course through my insides, made me feel just slightly less like I was dreaming.
Then, like that thought triggered it, sleep pulled backward like a fog lifting, making the quiet numbness seem to wear off.
The sudden onslaught of pain made my whole body jerk in his arms as he looked down at me. My chin was an aching thing. My neck had a strange shooting pain akin to sleeping weird and getting a crick when you turned it the wrong way. Except this was constant. There was a burning at the back of my skull, a sensation I couldn't quite place.
Then, finally, maybe worst of all, there was a jackhammering in my temples and behind my eyes, something that must have been akin to the migraines I had - thus far - never been afflicted with.
Feeling it, overwhelmed, and completely not understanding what was going on, I heard my own voice say in a very small, very raw way, "My head hurts."
My dark prince seemed taken aback at either my words or my tone, his brows drawing together as he watched me for a long moment.
"I figured. That's why we're at the hospital."
"What happened to me?" I asked as I felt him start moving again, his dark eyes flicking between me and - I assumed - the hospital.
"I don't know."
There was finality in his tone, like the matter was closed. But the matter couldn't be closed. I had obviously been unconscious. He had been alert. He clearly knew more than I did.
"Who are you?"
"The man who is dropping you at the hospital."
Why was he being so clipped?
I just wanted some information, any information.
Why was I hurting?
Where had I been?
Was I hurt anywhere else?
Was I... oh, God.
No.
Okay.
I couldn't go there.
It was no good getting myself worked up when I had no reason to think that. Though, really, what story did you ever read about or see on the news where a girl was unconscious, woke up in pain, and wasn't assaulted?
Ugly times my mother called it whenever she watched the news, often switching off after a story or two, her gentle heart not able to handle the dark.
Indeed, ugly.
How else did I wind up hurt in a stranger's arms, on my way in through the revolving emergency room doors?
The scents hit me first, ones that reminded me of endless, soul-aching days at my grandmother's bedside just a year before. Fresh plastic and disinfectant. Clean, sure, but you knew that it only smelled that way to hide the putrid odors of death, decay, blood, and waste underneath.
"I found her passed out," my dark prince declared as I forced my head to turn to find a young woman with a mass of red hair just barely contained by her braid, freckles, a very round face, and kind, yet keen eyes. "She hit the back of her head. She's bleeding."
I was?
Even as I thought that, my hand was moving to tentatively touch the area of the stinging on the back of my skull, realizing that a cut made a lot of sense. When my hand came back streaked in red, the whole limb - actually, my whole body - started shaking.
This seemed to take the attention of my dark savior away from the nice, but professional, woman who had been asking him questions I was only half paying attention to.
"It's clotting up," he told me in that same distant, unaffected tone again. As if the fact that it was not currently bleeding as badly as it had once been was somehow of any comfort to someone who had no idea how she came to be bleeding in the first place.
"What's your name, honey?" the nurse asked, something very firm in her sweet voice - steel rod wrapped in wool - a combination that seemed to pull me out of my swirling thoughts for a precious moment.
"Adalind," I supplied automatically.
"Last name?"
"Hollis."
"Adalind, do you know what happened to you tonight?"
"I, ah--" I was coming up blank. Even the earlier part of the day seemed shrouded in a heavy blanket of confusion I couldn't seem to think past. How did I fall? How did it get to be nighttime? In fact, how did I come to be in this light pink skater dress? Was it mine? I didn't remember it being mine. But maybe it was. Maybe my memory was on the fritz - a broken machine brought on by too hard a pounding.
"Okay. That's fine. We are going to take you in the back and check you out, okay? Make sure you stop bleeding. Check for a concussion. The usual stuff." I swear she silently added Run a tox screen. Do a rape kit.
But, hell, I wanted those things too, didn't I?
It was the only way to get some answers.
"Here, just go with Michael," she instructed as a man came by with a wheelchair.
There was a small pause, the man holding me seeming to look between me and the chair, hesitating, before he finally lowered me down. With the same delicacy as an oversized man handling fine China, like he was afraid I might splinter apart at any moment.
Somehow, starved from the contact, the small bit of comfort I was finding in it, it all seemed to start feeling far too real, far too fast.
Then, just like that, the man turned on his heel, and went to walk away.
"Wait!" I called, hearing the desperation in my tone, something he must have heard as well since he paused mid-stride to turn fully back, brow lifted. "What's your name?"
Somehow, I felt like I urgently needed to know that fact.
He looked taken aback for a moment, before shaking his head. "Can't imagine why that would matter."
Then, with that, and not a thing more, he was gone.
I didn't know who he was, where he found me, or if he had any idea what happened to me.
I guess now I never would know.
"Miss Hollis?" Michael asked, making me realize I had been craning my head over my shoulder watching the mysterious stranger walk out into the darkness. I could see him slip inside a car - black, sleek, and though I didn't know much about such things, seemingly expensive. It drove off with barely a purr.
I turned my head back, having to slam my hands down on the armrests of the wheelchair because the motion blurred my vision, making my stomach lurch, and giving me the sensation of falling forward.
"Whoa, you alright?"
Michael was young, black, tall, slim, and - if voices and mannerisms could be believed - gay.
His light blue scrubs, I imagined, were supposed to be calming - as the color blue often is - but I found them too rough, too crisp, too something to feel that way looking at them.
"Yeah. Just a little lightheaded."
"Your head got knocked around a little, girl. It will do that from time to time while it works on righting itself. No worries. And we will get you something for that headache I see in your eyes too. Fix you right up. Here, let me help you up onto the bed," he offered after wheeling me into a small curtain-draped 'room,' and parking me beside the bed. His hands went under my arm from the side, helping me onto my feet. I didn't think I needed help until I swayed.
"Thank you," I said as my butt got onto the side of the bed, my hands gripping the edge, holding on in case I toppled.
"Let me just help you get hooked up," he offered, moving the chair so he could slide in, and clip a heart rate monitor to my finger. "And I will go find a doctor right now to check you over and get you some meds. Any allergies?" he asked, shuffling around.
"Ah, not that I know of, but I haven't really taken many medications."
"Alrighty. So I can assume you're not currently taking any medications?"
"No."
"Daily aspirin, supplements..."
"Ah, just a multi-vitamin."
"Alright, great. I am just going to take a look at your head real quick," he said as he put the chart down, and slipped on gloves. "Just so I can tell the doctor what he is coming into. Oh, not as bad as I thought," he offered, carefully pulling apart my hair, then touching the sides of what had to be a decent cut. "Alrighty," he said, pulling off, and tossing the gloves. "I am going to see who I can find for you, honey," he said as he shuffled off. Like the lady at the admissions desk - sweet, but professional.
Alone, I looked over myself, seeking bruises, scratches, anything. I found a scrape on the back of one calf, but that was it. A mental body scan came back with the pains from before - the migraine, the chin, the back of my head, and a soreness in my neck. My back hurt a bit as well, likely from the fall with nothing to break it. I didn't, thankfully, feel any kind of pain between my thighs, my panties were still on, and I hoped to God that was proof enough that that horror hadn't happened to me while I was unconscious. Or before, seeing as I couldn't remember hardly any of the day.
There was the distinct memory of padding into my kitchen with the first beams of sun casting the room in a warm glow, standing beside the coffee pot, waiting for it to drip. I walked to my closet.
Then nothing.
The whole day was gone.
Had I been drugged?
Could a blow to the head really muddle up your brain that much?
I guess I would find out.
Two hours later, I had been cleaned up and had a CT scan to check for a likely - as it turned out, a definite - concussion. I was stitched. I was given pain medicine that only barely took the edge off.
Then, out of nowhere, there was a cop in my room.
Asking questions I had absolutely no answers to. About what happened to me. About the man who brought me in. Aside from a description of him and a lame recounting of a black sports car, I had nothing to offer.
He gave me his card in case I remembered, and left without another word.
"Honey," Michael said a few minutes after the doctor left, talking about discharge papers and dissolving stitches, and prescriptions to fill, then left. "You okay?"
"I, ah, thought I would maybe be staying here," I admitted. How could they expect me to just... move on when I had no idea what had happened over the course of almost twenty-one hours of my life?
"Normally, you might, sweets," he said, looking over a folder, flipping pages. "But we are out of beds, and sticking you in a hallway would be cruel and unusual with your migraine. You don't have anyone to stay with?"
Not close by.
"I don't even know where my car is," I admitted.
"The doc would prefer you don't drive tonight or maybe for the next few days anyway. We can call you a cab."
Right. Because my phone was also missing.
Along with my purse.
My IDs.
My keys.
My cash.
My credit cards.
You know, all the things that make up most of your life.
I did have cash at home though, so I could pay the cab.
And I had the internet there to pause my credit cards, and maybe see about having the car company track my car through the GPS or something. I wasn't sure I could do that, but it was worth a shot.
"Ah, yeah, please call me a cab."
So then, I was on my way home, head throbbing still despite the pain medicine, maybe because the stress of life was adding to the actual pain.
But, I reminded myself, clinging to the good like I was raised, I only had the head and chin injury, and the sore neck from whatever caused it. The concussion went along with that. I wasn't beaten. I wasn't raped.
There were small miracles in every bad situation.
I asked the cab driver to wait, trying to make my way up to my apartment without getting too lightheaded, having to go dig my spare key out from where it was hidden in a planter at the end of the hall since my keys were missing, then paying him, and dropping myself into bed with my laptop.
An hour later, my cards were paused, my bank account was checked (no withdrawals, thank goodness!), and my car company said they could send me a location. Which I was pretty sure I scribbled down before I passed out.
The last thought before doing so was wondering if the doctor had said I did or didn't need to be kept awake after a concussion like you always saw in the movies.
But by then, it was too late to change it anyway.