Chapter 300
*2 years previously*
An incessant, loud beeping noise began violently slamming against the silence that had previously been enveloping the dark bedroom inside of the quiet manor house out in the countryside, even before the golden sun had properly risen yet. It was a cold, bleak winter morning and outside a frost had settled, making everything look white and sparkly, the leaves of the plants turning solid and crispy, almost as though everything had been frozen in time. That’s almost how Cheryl felt as she lay in her huge bed by herself, staring up at the ceiling; it was almost like her whole life had suddenly stopped, and not in a particularly nice place either. She felt completely trapped and alone, not being able to see or imagine any way out of how she was currently feeling and could sense herself starting to give up as the dark, sinking knot of emotion that had at one point only been in the pit of her stomach, gradually had began to expand and tangle up throughout her whole body, making her now feel like there was only a tiny bit left of herself that hadn’t been consumed and constricted yet by the pressing darkness; but it was only a matter of time her depressed thoughts were telling her constantly, dragging her mood down even further and further. Her brain was starting to physically hurt from the amount of thinking she was doing and number of questions she was asking herself constantly; she was genuinely convinced that she could feel an actual pain in her head relentlessly that was her brain screaming at her just to shut off for 5 minutes...but she couldn’t, not even for a second...and she absolutely hated it with a passion.
She’d only been out of hospital for a few weeks after having to return yet again after her initial horrific experience of being there with Malaria, this time for a blood transfusion as her red blood cells had been failing to repair themselves after her life threatening illness, leaving her with the most awful, sickly feeling whenever she thought about it too much, that she had somebody else’s warm blood flowing through her veins; yet another thing that she felt wasn’t her own anymore...”you don’t even have your own blood for God’s sake!” her mind would keep shouting at her every now and then, often leading to her sitting on the floor in the bathroom feeling like she was going to throw up or pass out. She’d become absolutely petrified of any nauseous feeling she felt or any random pain, just in case it was something serious again and she’d be took back to hospital which had actually become a real phobia for her, just the thought of having to stay there again with needles in her and strange doctors and nurses pulling at her this way and that while she lay motionless, not being able to ask them to stop, terrifying her to the point where she’d physically start shaking just from the thought of it. She’d stopped even telling anybody when she wasn’t feeling too good, just in case they took her just to be checked out, especially when Derek was around as he’d been the one in the first place who’d forced her to let him ring for a doctor when he’d noticed her getting weaker by the hour, now making him ferociously protective over her and had took on the mentality that it was better to be safe than to be sorry...a notion that Cheryl didn’t really want to go along with right now, she just wanted to be left alone in a dark room.
Despite the alarm continuing to beep repeatedly, getting increasingly louder as it wasn’t being switched off, Cheryl wasn’t actually asleep; she couldn’t actually remember the last time she’d properly been to sleep, but last night she hadn’t got a wink at all and had simply lay on her back looking up at the dark ceiling, a constant dampness around her eyes which seemed to be a regular occurrence on a morning these days as she’d naturally just cry without even really noticing. This went on for a good 5 minutes before Cheryl suddenly seemed to snap out of the trance she’d been in and slammed her hand down onto the alarm clock, spotting that it was after 7am on the LED screen, meaning she was now starting to run late. She still didn’t make any other move to get up though. She just lay back against the pillow and softly wiped her eyes, the twinkle that had once been in them and had led to her getting constant compliments about how stunning they were throughout her whole life, having completely been distinguished, leaving them cold and empty. She would have said that she was feeling numb had it not been for the excruciating stabbing sensation in her chest that didn’t seem to be getting any better even though it had started near enough at the beginning of the year...when her whole world had suddenly come shattering down on top of her...leaving her completely heartbroken and the worst she’d ever felt in her whole life.
