I wasn't a stranger to pain, but I certainly wasn't immune to it. If I had remained in that basement, there was no telling how much longer I would've lasted.
The soft blankets crumbled under my body reminded me that I was no longer there. That damn founder girl had come for me.
Sun.
I rolled over onto my side, grimacing at the pain that still radiated through my body. While I wasn't sure exactly what all of my injuries entailed, I could still feel them—not as intensely as when I was in the basement, but enough.
The worst pain came from my ribs on the left side. I could still picture the steel pipe they had swung at me and feel the explosion of agony that followed, wisps of memories congealing into something almost as painful as the moment itself. My shoulder, too, had been causing me incredible pain since I assumed it had been dislocated, but now, as I stared at the wall, I realized that the pain was gone. When I tried to move it, there was a definite stiffness and soreness, but the acute pain had left. Even my head, which had been pounding so hard that I had lost consciousness repeatedly over the past few days, felt a bit better. I reached up to touch the spot at my hairline where the wound had been, only to feel a patch of gauze taped over my skin. Even the blood that had matted in my hair had been cleaned out.
Smaller cuts and bruises still remained on almost every square inch of my body, but the worst of the pain had ebbed. I glanced down at my forearm, where the long slit that had been carved into my skin had been neatly stitched up.
I felt... better than someone who had been tortured should've.
Squinting against the brightness of the white walls, I peered around the room I found myself alone in. It was hard to tell how big the room was with curtains cordoning me off from the rest of the space, but it felt small. At my bedside was a large machine that beeped quietly to itself. Wires connected it to either of my arms—one for an IV, and one for what I assumed was for pain medication. The pinch of the needles moving under my skin brought back flashes of my rescue from the Patel estate.
They were just hints, really. I remembered being carried through a huge building on a stretcher, staring at the ceiling as I wondered how many halls exactly we were going to pass through. Then, there was a flash of dark skin and a woman's voice, although I couldn't recall what she had said. I remembered a pressure on my arm, and glancing down to see a needle dipping deftly in and out of my skin as the deep wound was stitched closed. There was a soft voice, too, and a halo of warmth that appeared a few times as I slipped in and out of consciousness.
Nothing was concrete enough. Even though I had been treated for my injuries, I still had no idea what was beyond my hospital bed. The danger could still be right outside the room, waiting for me. My body tensed against the realization, my fight or flight response blocking out everything else as I shifted toward the edge of the bed.
Before I could struggle to my feet, though, there were footsteps against the cold tile floor beyond what I could see. I scrambled to swing my legs back onto the bed, a shot of pain pulsing through my back where I had somehow forgotten about the spider web of lashing wounds marring my skin. Hissing against the pain, I fell back against the bed, one leg on the mattress while the other still hung down the side.
The curtain rod hissed as the curtains were pulled to the side. A woman appeared from behind the barrier, a clipboard balanced against one arm as she scribbled something into it. Recognition fizzled at the edges of my consciousness. Her wash of deep, chocolatey skin was familiar.
Although her eyes flicked toward my leg dangling over the side of the bed and then to my chest, heaving with the exertion of trying to stand, she didn't look completely surprised. Maybe I hadn't hidden the pinched expression on my face as well as I had thought. Still, she gently lifted my leg back onto the bed and spoke to me as if it wasn't obvious that I had been trying to flee.
