One Tortured Soul

Chapter Nine

The steady beeping woke me up. It was the first and only sound I heard when finally came to.

I was in another room this time. This room was similar to a room in a hospital. Not very large, but it had several machines and monitors beside the hospital type bed that I was lying in. Surprisingly, there was even a door that didn't look like a prison door. It was just plain wood.

The scent of antiseptic and alcohol wafted from the sheets that I was covered in and emanated around the room. That also was another reason it felt like a hospital room.

I tried to recall what happened earlier, but everything was fuzzy. I could recall several details such as smells and certain sounds, but beyond that nothing was solid. Every time I reached for a memory, it dissipated into dust.

Unconsciously, I reached up to scratch my head, and was startled to realize that my hands weren't handcuffed or strapped to the bed. I raised both hands in front of me and turned them slightly, my eyes almost not believing that these were my hands. Why would they leave me free?

Shrugging, I threw back the white sheet and swung my legs off the side of the bed.

But things didn't quite go as planned. One leg went willingly, but the other didn't move and I ended up doing an awkward bend over the side of the bed, having lost my balance.

Once I managed to scoot back on the bed, I pushed the sheets the rest of the way off my left leg to see a band of metal wrapped around my ankle. So, they hadn't just left me free. Figured.

I jiggled my foot once, testing the strength of the metal looped from my ankle to the end of the bed. It wasn't going to give.

Suddenly, the door creaked open and a woman walked in. She stopped short upon seeing me, tangled in the sheets, one leg off the bed while the other was still attached. I'm sure I looked ridiculous.

Then, just as swiftly as she had frozen, she snapped out of it and moved farther towards me. "Not as easy as you thought it would be, is it, sugar?" She smirked, throwing a hand on her hips. Her dark, smudged eyes had a mischievous look to them.

I quite ungracefully managed to get back into the bed, but I left the sheets back, not needing them anyway. I was dressed in a comfortable pair of sweats and a white t-shirt which was plenty in this room.

She came right up to the bedside and promptly pulled the sheets up to my stomach. I raised an eyebrow.

"Honey, you just had surgery. You need to stay still and at least pretend to rest," she scolded.

"Um, look. I know how this looks--"

She waved me off. "Chill, I'm not an idiot. It's obvious you thought you could just skedaddle on out of here while I was taking a pee. But it's okay, I would've done the same."

My jaw must've dropped, because her grin widened.

"Better close that before you catch bugs."

I slowly closed my mouth and scooted farther up against the back of the bed, all the while staring at her.

"So, you're allowed to talk to me then, I assume?" I asked.

She bit her lip, "Well, not really. But I don't always follow the book on this kinda thing. I mean, it gets kinda boring if I have to act like an Avox all the time."

"An Avox? What the heck is that?"

"You know, the red-haired mutes from the Hunger Games?"

I shook my head.

"Wow. That's sad."

There was a lull in the conversation for several minutes while she messed with the monitors on the left side of the bed. Finally, I thought of something to say.