Blood & Lust [Book Two of The City of Eternity Series] [✔]

2.24: Cumbersome

I think it was the silence that caused me to stir. The complete and utter lack of life in the room. It created this dismal atmosphere that lingered over my unconscious body and seeped into my mind like a virus that had chosen its prey. My eyelids were heavy from the deep sleep Violet had left me in, but I forced myself to open them, much to my eyes' dismay. I'd squeezed them shut immediately as the warm sunlight filtered into the room from the window opposite and cast a luminescent glow onto the white sheets of the bed. It was bright. Too bright.

My natural reaction to this was to shove my head into the pillow beside me - something I'd done almost daily at home, wrapped up tightly in my own bed after a night away in Ruby. But I wasn't home. I was in a hospital, healing. Which is why as soon as my head hit the pillow, and my body followed the movement, an unreasonably jarring groan left my mouth that came from deep inside my gut.

It wasn't the same kind of pain that had been plaguing me the past few days, and it certainly didn't radiate directly from my thigh. It was this tired, all-consuming pain that made my limbs ache. I lay grimacing for a few moments, forcing my head deeper into the pillow until the pain subsided. The patter of footsteps on the ward floor gave me the strength to flop back to my back and stare up at the ceiling.

The footsteps had stopped after a few moments and the silk white curtain around my bed had been drawn, and a face had peaked around the gap. I had expected to see Violet, eager to see me after another extended period of waiting by my bedside. However, I met the blue eyes of a nurse, who in the short period I'd been awake, I'd seen floating up and down the ward wordlessly, handing off medication and placing hot water bottles under duvets. The woman moved again, pulling the curtain right around to the side of my bed and tying it to the golden hook on the white concrete pillar that separated the next patient and me.

"You're awake!" She said in an instant, a flashy smile appearing on her face, "You really shouldn't be moving. You're mostly healed but you aren't back to full health yet," I said nothing in response, simply regarding her with a blank expression as I pushed myself into a seated position with a considerable groan. My body was already used to being stuck here, which meant my muscles were putting up an intense protest of my desire to move.

My first thought, despite waking up with a hefty fog clouding my mind, and a hazy gaze that refused to clear was to cast my eyes around the room when I'd seen the armchair was empty. I couldn't help but pout, as the noticeable absence lay heavy on my heart. There was no trace of Violet anywhere, from sweatshirt to book, it was all gone.

While I'd taken a long look around, the nurse had walked away from the bed and into the kitchenette area by the plant wall. She'd spent a few minutes there, humming a song to herself with hearty enthusiasm. It was only interrupted by the clanging sound of metal banging against metal, and ceramics being placed down on a hard surface.

Eventually, the woman, 'Grace' who wore a name tag I could barely read from the worn-down ink, and a pretty pink lipstick shade, reappeared by my side with a roll-over table that went across my bed. The bright smile she was wearing faded to a smaller version when she'd met my eyes and realised what was worrying me - putting two and two together when my eyes went back to the chair.