Found

Chapter 13

CHAPTER THIRTEEN: IRIS

When I woke up, I had no idea where I was. I couldn't remember anything, and everything around me was blurred around the edges. I thought I heard voices, but now everything was quiet. It takes me maybe five minutes, or it could have been one (my sense of time, like all my other senses was a little unfocused at the moment), before I was finally able to open my eyes. The room I was in was so bright, I had to close them again. It took me several tries before I got my bearings enough to look around me and understand what was happening...

I feel a hand rubbing my shoulder, and I look up. It takes my mind a few seconds to make the connection between his face and who he is.

"Sebastian..."

He smiles down at me, and squeezes my arm gently. When I feel a second hand patting my knee, I look over and see Alexander sitting on the bed beside me. He seems relieved. I smile at him and he smiles back.

"How do you feel?"

"I'm not sure... What happened to me? Why am I so dizzy?"

I look around for the first time and realize with a start that I'm not in my apartment, nor am I at the penthouse. I don't recognize this room at all.

"Where am I?"

"You're at the hospital, little one."

"I'm... what?"

For some reason, my brain seems to be working in slow motion, like it was dunked in a bowl of gelatin, and thinking was taking an absurdly long time. It takes a few seconds for Sebastian's words to be made clear to me, and then it takes a few more seconds for me to understand his words.

I'm in the hospital? No, that can't be right. I've been so careful... I even stopped renewing the prescription on my inhaler so that I wouldn't have to see my doctor anymore. How could I have slipped up? What's going on?

"W-What am I doing here?"

I look up at Sebastian, and he has the saddest smile on his face; it makes my heart hurt seeing him like that...

"Little one, does your stomach still hurt?"

My what? What does he mean?

Slowly, the events of last night come trickling back to me. It was the pain I remembered first; that twisting of a knife in my side, the fuzziness as my lungs stopped bringing in oxygen and I started to lose consciousness, the feeling of falling into complete darkness...

Panicked, I look from Sebastian to Alexander, then down at myself. I'm in a hospital bed, wearing a hospital gown, as hospital machines beep and whir around me in the hospital room I was put in.

No! Please, no..!

"Little one, what is it? What's wrong?"

"Does something hurt? Do you want us to call the doctor?"

"No!"

I guess I spoke louder than was necessary. Now they'll know I'm worried, and I know they're going to start in on me saying I have to tell them what was wrong... But I'm not ready to tell them this. I need more time.

I don't have any more time. They're going to find out by the end of the day... I take a deep breath and get ready to tell them the one secret I was hoping I wouldn't have to give away, not yet anyway... but I can't. I'm too scared. So, I stall:

"What's wrong with me? Why am I here?"

Sebastian moves to sit down next to me, draping his arm across my shoulders. I think he knows how scared I am because he starts playing with my hair the way I like it with his other hand, trying to soothe my nerves...