EDGE OF DAY

CHAPTER 32

A QUICK MESSAGE TO ANYONE READING THIS: I CAN'T BELIEVE WHAT A STATE I MUST HAVE BEEN IN TO STOP POSTING THIS BOOK ONLY 2 CHAPTERS BEFORE THE END!! I'M REALLY SORRY ABOUT THAT. IF SOMEHOW YOU HAVE FOUND YOUR WAY BACK HERE, I HOPE I DIDN'T ANNOY YOU TOO BADLY. SO HERE IS THE PENULTIMATE CHAPTER. ONE MORE AFTER THIS. PROMISE TO POST IT. XXX CLAIRE

A nurse fiddled with the tube of her catheter, then rolled her back over. A moment later, she was around the other side of the bed, changing the bag of liquid on a pole that fed something into Daisy's arm.

"Where am I?" Daisy murmured.

The nurse leaned over the bed, smiling and tucking in the sheets. "Hello there," she said. She had a round, pretty face. "Welcome back. How are you doing? Now you stay there, and I'll let the doctor know you're awake."

Daisy tried to sit up but couldn't move. "Stay there".... Ha, ha. Hilarious. She wanted to question the nurse about how she'd got there, but the woman was already out the door before she could muster the gargantuan effort it took her to speak.

Her brain was cotton wool, jumping from a plane and falling through fluffy clouds can't-think type thing. The houses and roads and fields below the clouds, the general landscape of her life, she could only glimpse at in fragments, and she was too far away for those fragments to tell her anything. Her name was Daisy Hollis. She was eighteen years old. Everything else was a blur; even the pain. It was in her body somewhere but hidden beneath giant, candy-floss mountains of morphine.

She must have fallen asleep because the next thing she knew, a man in a white coat and the nurse stood at the foot of her bed talking in low voices. She opened her eyes and stared at the open door leading to a small bathroom. She couldn't move her head.

The nurse bent over Daisy, smiled again, and said,

"She's awake."

"Why don't you sit her up a little," the doctor suggested. A mechanical whirring sound buzzed beneath Daisy's ear, and the top half of the bed began tilting upwards.

The doctor came and stood by the armchair. He fiddled with his stethoscope as Daisy's head rose to look at him.

"Hello, Daisy. It's good to see you awake."

"Thanks," she mumbled.

The doctor with young, dark, and swarthy features, smiled.

"You were in a car accident. You received a deceleration trauma called a myocardial contusion. It bruised your heart, so we're going to be monitoring you closely for the next forty-eight hours. Your leg also had a couple of breaks and fractures, but that's all fixed up."

"I—" Daisy hesitated as an idea grew clear in her mind. "I want my mom."

The corner of the doctor's eye twitched. "Your parents were both in the accident with you," he said gently.

"Where are they?" She felt a Titanic blow rip apart the seams of her world. She knew where they were. Or weren't, to be more accurate.

Tears rolled down her cheeks. She stared at the doctor, waiting for him to say it. She felt it, but she wouldn't believe it until it came from his mouth.

He swallowed and nodded. "We're trying to get hold of other members of your family. Maybe you could help us. An aunt, or a grandmother?"

"Please," she said, the vitriolic hurt crumbling into grief. "Where are my parents?"