The Ignored Princess Meets the Tortured Prince

Chapter 30

Lucas

I was in and out of it for awhile, vaguely aware of all the doctors and police wondering around me all night. But I was very aware of the fact that Kirsten wasn’t by me anymore. I remembered hearing her at the park.  She kept shaking me and hugging me and making pain shoot through my body, but I still would do anything to have her by me again.

Remembering the pain made me suddenly aware of the fact that I didn’t feel much of anything at the moment. I would of thought I’d died and gone to heaven, except that I knew Kirsten wasn’t anywhere around, and she was definitely in my heaven. That and the fact that I could still feel a dull ache all over my body. Pretty sure there’s no pain in heaven.

I opened my eyes and saw a doctor standing nearby, looking over a chart. I tried to sit up but pain shot through my chest and arms and I fell back down with a groan.

“Ow,” I mumbled.

The doctor looked over and smiled. “You have no idea how glad I am that you woke up. You had me worried for a minute.”

I turned my head to get a better look at him then quickly closed my eyes, feeling incredibly dizzy.

“Take it easy boy, you sustained some really bad injuries and your head is still pretty jumbled up.”

I lifted a hand, despite the pain it caused, and laid it over my face. “Cuz Roger’s bat.” Wow that came out sounding weird. Not only was I pretty sure that wasn’t a complete sentence, but the jumbled way it came out, I’m not sure anyone could understand what I said.

“How . . .” I closed my eyes then opened them back, trying to focus on talking clearly. “How bad?”

The doctor looked me over then looked at the chart. “You’re stable right now, and awake, obviously, which is a good sign. But we won’t know for sure until tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow?” I kept trying to make different parts of my body move, but everything hurt. One little move and it’d send pain shooting through me.

“You’re doing good right now, but-“ he stopped, looking up at me then looking back down.

“What?” I mumbled when it didn’t seem like he’d finish.

“Honestly, you’re not doing great and you’re not out of the woods yet. Something could happen tonight and you could still go downhill. So do us all a favor and just don’t stop fighting.” Wow, that was really comforting. Not. I closed my eyes back, trying to ignore the pain. “And stop moving, your body needs to rest and there’s only so much pain medicine we can give you, so quit it.”

The dull aches emphasized his words and convinced me to stop moving. I laid still, trying not to think, but the thing about trying not to think is that it makes you think more. After a minute, a thought popped into my head. My necklace. I realized that I was in a hospital gown so it followed that they would have taken that too.

I reached up and felt for it, just in case, and was surprised to actually find my necklace around my neck. I lifted it up and looked at the charm.

“You refused to let them take it when they admitted you, said you needed it.” Doctor smiled to me then came to stand by the bed, looking at the necklace. “Must be important.”

I nodded once then immediately stopped since it made my head hurt. “My girlfriend gave it to me.” My voice was barely above a whisper, all I could manage, but he still understood me.

He took a close look at it. “Hey, I know that one. She’s the patron saint of child abuse victims, right?”  

“Something like that.”