how to make a mixtape :: mgc (fin.)

30. overdose & hypersomnia

I wake up in a cold room. It's all white, and it smells of hand sanitizer and wet wipes. There are only a couple people in here with me, and for a splitting second, I wondered why I wasn't in the stadium. I'm lying on a bed, the sheets pristine and soft between my fingertips. My breathing is thick in my ears, and I notice my arm is strapped up with tubes and bandages. Looking around, I see Calum talking to a woman in a lab coat which hangs off her slight frame loosely. Ashton is pacing around the room impatiently, while Scout waits at the corner of the room.

"'The hell is this?" I ask, propping myself up with my forearm on the bed. It squeaks as it shifts on its wheels; I grip the headboard instinctively. "Why am I here?"

"You lost consciousness during the baseball game," the woman says. She turns so I can see her, pushing her curly black hair behind her ears. She has a stethoscope circled around her neck, although she doesn't look much older than my brother. "I'm not certain exactly what happened, but I know you didn't receive a ball to the head, or anything." She checks her clipboard. "There were no signs of damage to the skull, even minor."

Calum peers over her shoulder at the clipboard, and she shoos him away.

"What do you recall of what happened?" she says in a gentle voice, pulling up one of the wheeled chairs next to the bed. Her skin is bronze underneath the washed light. "How did you feel before you were out?"

"I—Oh, frickin' hell." I try to cover my face with my hands, before remembering my arm being trapped with the machine. I stare up at it in bewilderment. It's a glass tub, filled with something that looks like water. Tubes twist out of it like spider legs. "I... it's embarrassing."

"I've heard it all."

I sigh. "I kissed my ex-boyfriend on kiss cam and we were just holding each other and then I looked at him and then I couldn't breathe and then—ugh." I say it all in a mouthful, not taking a moment to pause.

Everyone is silent, and Ashton stops pacing.

The doctor takes off her glasses and shakes her head. "So, maybe I haven't heard it all before."

"But the cut on her hand," Ashton interjects. "There's a cut—on her left palm. It's gone a bit pink and invisible, now, but there's a cut on her hand. It goes right through her fate line."

The doctor leans over, taking my left hand in hers and examining it. Her fingers are freezing against my all-too-hot knuckles.

She makes a calculative sound. "I see. Are you implying she might have fainted because of the blood loss, Mr. Irwin?"

"I'm implying her ex-boyfriend needs to go jump off a cliff."

"Ashton." Calum, Scout, and I all say together in the same scolding tone.

"What?" He throws his hands up in exasperation. "He probably cut her."

"He did not cut me." I draw my eyebrows together. "I did it to myself."

A silence passes us again, and the doctor – who, according to her stitched name tag, is called Dr. Moore, brings the stethoscope up to her ears.

"Lift up your shirt," she tells me.

I give the boys a sidelong glance uncomfortably, playing with the hem of my sweater. They all look away.

Her lips curve down as she rests the cold half-sphere of the stethoscope onto my chest, moving it around to listen to it better. I swallow as she stares at me skeptically, drawing back onto her chair, pulling off her gear and typing something onto the PC. I tug down my shirt hastily, but don't try and look at what Dr. Moore is doing. There's a rushed feeling at the back of my throat, and I want to vomit again. I hold it back, despite there being a perfectly clean bin just beside me.