Obscurity

Chapter 3: Medical

Alma

I slowly open my eyes. My head is pounding like someone dropped a cinder block on it. I reach to press my fingers to my temples and find my arms are restrained to the hospital bed. Panic envelopes me and my eyes dart wildly from one side of the room to the other. Calm down, I tell myself. Just breathe. I take in a couple of breaths and exhale slowly. I do this several times until I can feel my heart rate slowing down.

I assess the room. It's simple. Just a bed, which I am in and a side table with a pitcher of water. A sea foam green pull curtain with small pale purple triangles surrounds my entire left side. My knee begins to itch and I try to reach towards it but I can't. What a terrible reminder that my arms are restrained. I try to pull my leg up towards me and discover my feet are also fixed to the bed with restraints. This is uncalled for.

The hammering in my head is relentless. It's taking everything in me not to scream out in pain. What the hell was in that shot they gave me? And what the hell did I do to deserve it? My mind races. My thoughts scramble. I feel almost like I'm drunk but with an accompanying premature hangover headache. Unreal. I close my eyes and will the pain to subside.

"Ah, you're awake." An unfamiliar female voice says as the curtain to the left of me opens. I open my eyes to see a woman I've never met standing at the foot of the bed with a clipboard in hand. I try to read her name tag, but my vision is slightly off and I can't make it out. She's wearing normal clothing, not the all-white the nurses who shot me wear.

I watch her wearily. I'm really tired, but I want out of this bed. She circles around the bed to the side table and picks up the pitcher of water and a plastic cup. She looks at me, "Thirsty?" as she begins to pour a cup of water.

"No, I have a splitting headache." I inform her. Now that she's mentioned it, I am pretty thirsty.

"We'll get you something for that. Give me a second." She turns and vanishes through the curtain. A few moments later she returns with pills in her hand. "Are you feeling better?" She asks as she walks back to the side table where she set my cup of water.

I look at her quizzically. I don't know what she means. My head is still throbbing.

She must understand the look I gave her because she responds, "When you were all worked up before the sedative..."

"Yeah, I'm fine. I'm a little irritated that I'm strapped to a bed but otherwise fine."

"All right. I'm going to remove your restraints. I don't think we'll be needing them." She says, loosening and unfastening my right hand. Once it's free, she reaches over and hands me the pills. I toss them back, and she hands me the water.

"Thanks."

She works her way around the bed, unfastening the straps and releases me. I rub my ankles where the restraints rubbed against them. She comes back around to the right side of my bed and pulls up a stool I hadn't realize was there before.

"Okay. We need to go over a few things." She says as she looks at her clipboard.

I wait without saying anything. I'm hesitant to say much seeing as how I don't know how things work around here and I don't want to burn bridges or say the wrong thing.

"I've been going over your information, and I'm finding a lot of blank areas on your intake forms." She begins. I just listen. "When is your birthday?" she inquires.

"May 23rd, 1993. I'm 26." I say.

She marks something on the paper and continues, "who is your emergency contact?"

"I don't have anyone to call in case of emergency."

"There must be someone?"

"There's no one."