Shift OR Drift

Amberly

Black. Pitch black. I can hear everything around me but my eyes were snapped shut. My smell is gone. My body feels as if every nerve is on fire. The pain crawls up my arms. To my shoulders. To my neck. It spreads through my whole body like wildfire in a dry wheat field. I try to scream, but nothing comes out. No one can hear me. It is just me in the darkness. No one is here to rescue me. Why would they? Other than Lexy and the occasions with Killian, I have been nice to only a handful of people in my life. The fiery tingles continue to spread through my body until, a split second later, it is gone. Completely gone. Halted. Unfinished. It never got the chance to reach my toes. The dreadful sensation only made it down half of my abdomen until it lifted from my skin. My body feels drunk and high at the same time. Whatever happened to me had to have been hardcore. The not-so-Saint Amberly who has never done drugs does not like this. My arms feel like they weigh as much as the fifteen-pound bowling balls. Despite my best efforts, the only thing open is my ear. My eyes feel glued shut. Exhaustion clings to my soul. This time, I do not let it sink in its deep claws that tug on me. Every fiber in my existence screams, WAKE UP! STAY UP!

My brain decides to focus on one of the few things my ears can hear. The heart monitor. The slow steady beats make a rhythm. I focus on it.

Beep!

Beep!

Beep!

I feel a hand grab my arm where it burned moments ago. A loud sigh enters the air and surrounds me, an all too familiar voice booms through the room, louder than it ever has been, "you can't die on me, Princess," Killian sounds sad, tired, worn out even, maybe a tad defeated and scared, "there is so much I need to say and do. I have to make this right. I want you...need you with me. You calm all of my storms and don't even know it," my heart swells at his words. Is this Killian's way of telling me he has feelings for me? Does he feel something toward me? Electricity runs across my arm as his callused hands smoothly glide up them. The cords attached to me feel as if they are being moved. A few seconds later, I feel a familiar body laying next to me. The rapid heartbeat in his chest pressed against my ear is what my brain focuses on. His heavy breathing consumes me. A few seconds go by, and the exhaustion which clawed its way to my soul pulls me under and back into the darkness, I briefly crawled out of.

Hours. Days. Weeks. Who knows what has passed? Finally, the sounds of the heart monitor float through the room again. My eyes continue to feel heavy; however, with many attempts, I can feel myself opening them. Prying my eyelids apart. The light in the room causes me to squint for a few seconds and blink rapidly. My eyes scan the pale white room. A counter with gray granite tops it to my right. A small box of needles and alcohol wipes sits in the far-right corner against the wall. Two small tan cabinets hang above the counter. A little further down, a black rolling chair sits with a laptop on the counter. The door which is essentially two teal-colored curtains that hang in front of me. I see a pair of black and white vans with a set of white tennis shoes facing them outside. I inhale through my nose and continue my slow scan of the room. I look at my hand which has a needle-size catheter in it. I follow the tube connected to it. A bag about a quarter full of clear fluid on a slow drip stares back at me. I look at the monitor and realize it also calculates my blood pressure with a blue bicep cuff wrapped around the same arm with the needle. I continue to watch the heart monitor and oxygen numbers flick up and down for a few more moments.

I lay my head back on the hospital bed. It has been a long time since I have found myself in one of these. A hospital that is. Carson being a licensed doctor made my life easy. He patched up all of my scrapes when I was a kid. The last time I found myself in here, I had a broken arm from crashing on a motorbike. Safe to say, it was the last time I ever willingly crawled on one.