Brand New Eyes

3. Interrogation

3. INTERROGATION

I opened my eyes faintly to white. I blinked abruptly to a name tag. It read Dr. Roberts’, a name I knew all too well. A name that brought back flooding memories. I blinked rapidly again, taking in my surroundings. I was in a hospital room. I tried to sit up and winced.

“Here” the soft voice said, putting his hand and aiding me up.

I coughed, still looking around to see IV’s connected up my left arm and beeping monitors. David saw my reaction and pulled in closer.

“Scarlett,” I met his apprehensive eyes, “how are you feeling sweetie?” It was that same, sweet, calming voice that broke the news to me a couple of days ago. Or was it a week. How long had I been here? I had lost all sense of time.

I opened my mouth to speak, but my voice was barely a whisper. “Okay”, I tried again. “My right hand side” I started, pulling my right arm up to point at the right of my rib cage, “it hurts” I finished. It felt as though I had a hole on my right side, it hurt to breathe.

“Yeah, you’ve bruised your ribcage severely, but it should be healed in good time” he said, pulling out the clipboard from above my head.

“How long… how long have I been here?” I asked,.

H

e didn’t look up from the clipboard. “Just over a week. We thought you’d gone into a coma” he looked up with a small smile, “-you gave us quite a bit of a scare there.” he finished, before squiggling something on the board and looking at me.

“Aside from the pain on your right side, are you in pain elsewhere?” he asked. Now that he mentioned it, my entire body was sore, and it felt as though it was alight. But my head, it was more intense there, as if it was sourcing from there.

“My head, it’s… burning” I finished and his eyes narrowed.

Dr. David Roberts was a tall man, in his early thirties or so with deep brown hair and a welcoming face. I’d known him ever since I was a kid and I’d rarely needed to see him but he was a close friend of Dad’s and stopped by now and then. Until of course, dad’s death where his face was a constant. Even though he was ever so sweet and wanted to help me, he kept reminding me of it. Of that day. And I really didn’t want to be reminded right now when my head felt like it was about to combust.

“Okay”, he noted down a few things before flipping the pages. “You hit your head pretty hard, are you…” he looked up at me, concern on his face, “do you remember what happened Scarlett?” he asked, his forehead furrowing.

And that’s when I relived it all.

“I was in a car accident. The car skidded off the dirt path – I think we hit something or slid on something but there was this huge, explosion and…” I was speechless, overwhelmed with it all.

David nodded, scanning through his notes and inspecting me.

“Okay” he paused, and then abruptly looked up; “when you say ‘we’” he pressed.

I met his concerned eyes. “Myself and Michael. He was driving”. I could see the confused expression plastered on his face as he flipped through the pages. Something wasn’t right.

“Where is Michael?” I asked, sitting up further. He finally looked up, speechless.

“I don’t know how to tell you Scarlett but, Michael wasn’t brought here. He wasn’t involved in the accident”, his eyes pierced into mine as I tried to get my head around what he just said.