paramour

chapter 5

I awoke to the sound of a steady beeping noise, coming from who knows where. And my brain was immediately put into over drive, trying to remember what had happened. Where was I? And what was that annoying beeping sound?

Finding my eyes, I cracked them open slightly, and was almost blinded by whiteness. It took me a second to adjust my eyes before I saw everything very clearly. This room was all too familiar to me.

The sun shining brightly through a crack in the blinds that covered the windows, the pure and boring white colour of the room, the curtain that separated my bed from someone else's view, all the monitors... it was easily recognized as a hospital room. I sighed as I realized that, and cringed only slightly. Almost all my pain had vanished.

I glanced around my not-so-new surroundings for a moment longer, and then closed my eyes. It seemed like they always had this room on reserve for me or something, because every time I had to make a trip to the hospital, I would be put in this room.

Now it was time to piece together events that I'd forgotten... because I didn't exactly remember how I'd gotten here. It was all one big blur. I recalled everything up to a certain point. I remembered being ticked off with Damian, and walking away from him. After that, I'd no idea what had happened.

I made a frustrated sound as I tried to pull more out of my memory, but I couldn't.

Suddenly there was a sharp knocking on the door, which scared me half to death and made the heat monitor beep like crazy.

The someone who had been knocking flew in through the door, without my consent, and appeared in front of my bed. My jaw fell slack for a short second before it tightened. I just could not believe my eyes. It was Damian. Why on earth would he be coming to visit me in the hospital? My cheeks flushed tomato red, and my heart beat sped up. I had no idea why, but I just felt extremely embarrassed and awkward, and many other emotions that I'd never experienced all at the same time before... It was almost overwhelming for a second or two.

For some reason he smiled a genuine smile with only a hint of relief. Finally, he wore an almost non-worried and or serious expression. It was a relief to me to see that.

"Hello. I'm sorry for barging in on you like that –I thought something happened."

I almost smiled at that. It was actually something different than, 'are you okay?' I'd definitely had enough of that to last a lifetime. And he knew it now.

"That's okay –no worries. So what are you doing here exactly...?"

His smile fell, but didn't disappear off his face. It looked more or less like a content smile.

"Well, I volunteered to bring you your homework over the next little bit, while you heal..."

I grimaced at that. Once he saw my expression, he opened his mouth to talk, and I knew what was coming so I had to hold up a hand to stop him.

"Never mind, don't tell me yet. I don't particularly want to be in a bad mood right now, so wait until you leave or something, all right?"

He laughed lightly, and his grin widened. I guess we were both in good spirits for the moment, despite the fact that I was still broken and would probably need more morphine soon. It was unusually hard for me to resist that smile, even though it came so rarely. I could definitely see why all the other girls –and maybe even a few adult females– would swoon at almost the mere sight of him.

"So did you just wake up?"

I nodded.

"Yes, pretty much. I was up maybe a minute before you got here." His lips tightened a bit as I said that, and he smiled with dark humour.