Is This Our Second Chance

Chapter 17

The smell wakes me up. Its foul and metallic, but then the sounds are next. Like an ambulance's siren. Its looping around and around. Its so loud its hurting my ears. I try to cover my ears, I can't.

It hurt. I wish the ambulance to go past me, but it doesn't. It keeps coming. It keeps getting louder and louder, shrieking incessantly, and then I start to register the voices.

A male and a female.

I feel two fingers pressing into my wrist. That hurts too. I try to tell them to stop, but I can't.

I try to open my eyes, to wake up, but I can't. The feeling of being trapped starts to sink in and register.

"BP is..."

More beeps and alarms sound off. I can't hear what the female is saying.

"Pulse?"

She says something again that I can't hear.

With a jerk, I open my eyes. I look up, all I can see is white. I shake. No, I'm in a vehicle, and the vehicle shakes over the bumps in the road.

I still can't move. My neck feels like it's on fire and constricted. It dawns on me.

I'm strapped to a stretcher.

I'm the one in the ambulance.

"Miss." The female bends over me. "Miss, we called your grandparents. Your sister is meeting us at the hospital."

Hospital?

I try to speak. My lips aren't moving. My eyelids start to grow heavy. I give up fighting and let the darkness take over.

****

A low and steady beeping wakes me first. The pain really wakes me next. I gingerly open my eyes, and see a white bare ceiling.

This time I can open my mouth. I can turn my head.

I'm not strapped down anymore.

I slowly look over to my side and see Carly. Shes asleep. Her arms folded on each other to form a pillow for her head on the side of the bed near my waist.

Her shoulders rise and fall as a deep breath comes out. I decide not to say anything. She doesn't look okay. I can see the purple smudges under her eyes and tear stains still on her face.

"You're awake?"

I slowly look the other way. It hurts to move.

A nurse approaches the bed, a clipboard in hand, whispering, "There's been quite some activity around here because of you."

I glance to see if Carly woke, she didn't.

The nurse touches the inside of my wrist, watching her clock.

"I'm in a hospital?" I ask, my voice so hoarse and my throat on fire.

She nods, counting under her breath,

"ten... nine...eight..." I watch as she finishes and writes a number on her clipboard. "Yes, do you remember what happened?"

There's pain. Cloudy. A mixture of images. I wince as I try to remember. "No."

"Are you in pain?"

"Yes." I breath out.

She gives me a nod and begins to reach for the IV that's stuck in the back of my hand. She presses a few buttons on the machine next to the bed.

"Your morphine must be low. I just started another dose." She grabs a black arm cuff. "I need to take your blood pressure. Are you able to lift your arm a bit?"

I lift my arm as much as I can, and she wraps the cuff around. With the press of a button above me, the cuff tightens until it feels as if its going cut off my whole arm.

After a minute of silence, I watch as she decompresses the cuff and unwraps it from my arm.

"You've got some good friends." She murmurs to me. "We've had to kick them out every night at curfew." She gives a chuckle.

I lean my head back on my pillow and smile to myself. Not at all surprised.

The jostling of the bed finally wakes Carly up. She surges upright so fast its amazing she didn't fall over.

"You're okay?" She clutches at my hand and searches my face.

"Yeah." I croak.

"Her vitals are all normal." The nurse gives us both a grin. "You're doing great. I'm going to let the doctor know you're awake. He'll want to talk to you."

She closes the door behind her. I readjust my arm and wince as some pain shoots down to my wrist.

"You're in pain?" Carly asks.

"She started some more morphine or something." I frown as I notice how pale she is.

"Carly, what happened?"

I watch her take a deep breath.

"What do you remember?" She shakily asks.

I tell her about the brief flashes of a struggle. She doesn't say anything.

She just stares at me before squeezing her eyes shut. She lets out a breath I didn't know she was holding. She sits back down.

"Okay. They told me it would be easier for you to hear it all from me."

"Hear what?"

She reaches for my hand and looks at me. "Stella, mom attacked you again. It got really bad."

The flashes start to come back with some substance to them. Yelling and screaming.

"I got a tip that she was on her way home and had been drinking."

A fist. Flying through the air.

"You sent me away before she got home."

A kick. Blackness.

I begin reliving the whole thing in my mind. A few droplets land on our entwined hands. Carly wipes the wetness from my face. I'm crying. She's crying.

"If I sent you away, how did I end up here?"

"I called Zach. He's the one that found you and called 911."

I lay back against the pillows. Everything starting to sink in. I wade through my emotions to pick out which one I'm feeling. Fear. Fear of the unknown.

"Stella?"

I startle out of my thoughts and see Carly's intense gaze on me. She tilts her head to the side before reaching up and tapping me on the forehead.

"What's going on up there?"

I swallow the lump in my throat. I don't want to be scared. I can handle pretty much anything but that.

I shake me head. "I'm fine. Just tired."

"You should get some more rest. Zach's going to be here soon for his shift."

I narrow my eyes at her. "His shift?"

"We've been trading off every few hours so we can take turns getting food and stuff." She pauses and looks at me. "Which reminds me. There's more I need to tell you."

"Oh no... what else is there?" I can feel a headache coming on.

"Well, when the police and the paramedics got to the house. They didn't just find you in need of medical attention. They also found mom."

"What do you mean? I don't remember fighting back?" I strain my memory for my details.

She shakes her head. "You didn't."

I don't register her words before she bursts into tears and throws herself on me sobbing.

I wince in pain but hold onto her.

"Carly?"

"They found her overdosed in her bedroom."

Shock overtakes me. I hold onto her as she falls apart in my arms.