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Blood

My head throbs. Like I-partied-til-dawn-last-night throbs. I groan and refuse to open my eyes. What did I do? I try to move my hand to rub my head, but something bites into my wrist. I open my eyes and attempt to ignore the pounding in my skull. The room spins, but only for a moment. Wait. Room? Shouldn't I be in my casket? I look at my wrist, but it's strapped to the table with belts. So are my ankles. I'm in a hospital bed. What? This can't be right! I move my left fingers, and they bump into something plastic. I run my fingertips over it and feel raised buttons. A remote. I fumble with them for a moment before I find the right button that raises the bed into a seated position, then I look around.

The room is lit, but just barely. The only light comes from a flourescent bulb above my bed, and even it seems to have been dimmed. "Cal?" I whisper. My voice is scratchy and not my own. I don't get a response. I wiggle my right hand, and a shock of pain shoots up my arm. I look at it, and my eyes widen in horror.

Two IV drips, one with fluids, and one forcing blood back into my body.

The events from the night before shatter into my memory, and I scream. I kick my legs, but it's futile. I'm bound to this bed. A nurse comes in, followed by a man in baby blue scrubs. Both of them wear surgical masks, so I can't tell who they are. The nurse carries a syringe, and I scream louder when she injects its contents into my saline drip. "Please. No."

The masked man steps closer to me. I stop screaming and blink a few times. Was there one man, or three? Everything looks hazy. "Please, help me." I move my fingers toward the man. He has kind eyes. Eyes I've seen before. But where?

I fight to keep my eyelids open. They're heavy, so heavy. The man and the nurse are speaking, but I can't make out the words, or if they're talking to me or each other. I whimper, and the nurse places the back of her hand against my forehead, just like my mother used to. "Mama," I say, and close my eyes. I don't open them again.

**********

My eyes fly open this time around. Once again, my room is empty, and the nurse must have reclined my bed, because I'm stuck looking at the ceiling again. There's more light in the room this time, thanks to the sunlight that peeks through the curtains. Wait. Sunlight. I look at my arms, but they're still the same light tan color they've always been. I'm not rotting away by the light of day. The fact pisses me off a little. I've spent months avoiding the sunlight like it's, well, like it's the plague, and turns out I wouldn't have died if I was a few minutes late to the cemetery. Guess I did watch too many horror movies.

I'm still strapped to the bed, but only the saline drip IV remains in me. I wiggle my fingers for the remote, but they must have moved it out of reach. Damn. Guess I've lost sitting up privileges. The door opens, as if they can read my mind, and the light from the hallway throws off my vision. I blink to clear it, and once my eyes adjuyst, I see the man from earlier is standing at the foot of my bed. He's still masked up, but I gasp as I recognize him.

"Daddy?"

"Hey, baby girl." The same voice from the house last night. The voice I heard before someone hit me.

No. This has to be a dream. There is no way I'm in a hospital room with my father standing with me. Hell, I might have even dreamed the last few months. Who's to say that I really even died?

"How much do you remember?"

His question chills me. Don't tell him, my mind screams. "Um, well Cal and I were walking back to the house and I guess I must have tripped." I avoid meeting his blue eyes, even though I can feel them piercing into me. I change the subject. "Where is Cal? Why hasn't he came to see me?"

"Callum has, erm, other matters to attend to."

Oh God. What are they doing to Cal? Keeping my face neutral is a struggle; keeping my tone expressionless is even harder. "Can you tell him to come here, please?"

Daddy looks everywhere but my face. "I can see about that, sugar. I don't know when he'll be, um, finished."

Strike one.

"Well, can you tell me where he is?" I put on my best princess-pout. "Or at least sit me up?"

Daddy looks over his shoulder. Behind him, I can see a big whiteboard with my first and last name scrawled in purple marker, along with this morning's blood pressure reading and breakfast menu. "He's, um, you..." He trails off. Instead of an answer, he walks over to the side of the bed and picks up the remote. Within moments, I'm sitting up, which is much more comfortable on my neck.

Strike two.

This isn't baseball. My father is out of strikes. I lay the final blow. "Why am I here?" Before he has time to think of a lie, I continue, "And why do I have a blood pressure reading?"