Don't tell me bye bye (mystery/ thriller)

Chapter 3

Music to the side>

A humming light forces its way into my sodden brain cells, and I turn my head away from the brightness, unscrewing each of my eyes. I blink away the blur and squint at my surroundings, my chest tightening as I feel overwhelmingly disoriented.

Where the hell am I?

I try to pull myself up, but my skull weighs a tonne and I fall back onto a scratchy pillow. My skin crackles with heat and I feel like I'm glowing. Something moves in the corner of my eye and I jerk round, lifting my hopelessly weapon free hands and groan as pain rips through my head.

"Hey. Don't freak out. You're okay. Let me call the nurse," says a male voice.

Don't freak out? What else am I supposed to do, exactly? I blink a few times and go to rub my hands against my eyes. A chair screeches against the floor, and hands clasp my wrists, pulling them away from my face.

"I don't think you should do that," he says, he says nodding at my hands which are swaddled up like to bandaged crab claws.

His voice is gentle, and not an I'm-not-going-to-kill-you kind of voice, which is a relief. My eyes seem to be tuning themselves into normal vision so I can see that the male voice does in fact belong to a male, and his brown eyes and extra-long boy lashes add to the wooziness floating around in my head.

I open my mouth to speak, but a dry rasp escapes instead. He grabs a plastic cup and jug and as he pours me some water I glance down; there's remote control under my arm. I slide it down with my elbow then put my bandaged thumb over the big orange button. He may have a gentle voice, but you never know. He's really tall, like, MBA player tall, and I wouldn't stand a chance if he decided to hold a pillow over my face. He plops a straw into the cup and holds it up to my lips.

I'm too thirsty to worry whether he's trying to poison me or not, and take a deep drink from the straw but start hacking against the water as it goes down the wrong way. MBA Player's eyes widen and he puts the cup down, then gently pulls me forward until I stop coughing.

I look at the cup of water; I'm still parched. "You sure?" he asks.
I nod, and he brings it to my lips again. "Slowly."

I glare at him, then take a drink and feel the water wash away the frog in my throat. "Nurse?" I whisper.

"What? No, I'm not the nurse." He scratches his head, leaving little tufts of light brown hair sticking up. "Did you hit your head as well as almost drown?"

"No," I sigh. God, talking is hard. "You said you'd get the nurse. Am I in hospital?"
"Oh, right. Yeah, nothing gets past you, hey?" I'm so pleased to find that I have the energy to roll my eyes at him.

"Sorry. Yes, this is the hospital. Don't you remember what happened?"

I frown, the skin on my forehead screaming at me as I do. "I went for a run. And then..." My brain throbs and I can't string my last memories together. "I can't really remember."

"Okay, where to start?" MBA Player clasps his hands together and rests his elbows on his legs. "Well, you saved someone's life. Do you remember doing that?"

A memory explodes over me like a water balloon. "T-Tae?" MBA Player smiles and nods. "Is he okay?"

His smile fades, and he looks at the floor. "He's in a worse state than you, I'm afraid. He got quite badly burned, and he's still unconscious. My dad is with him at the moment."

"Burned?" I look at my hands. "Am I? Is my face...?"

He shakes his head. "No – your face is lovely." I frown and goes as red as my skin feels. "I mean, your face is fine. You got the worst of it on your hands. You were drenched in rain water when you grabbed Tae, then you were in the river before the fire could do you any real damage."