Unforgettable (OLD COPY DISCONTINUED)

Chapter 22

I wake up to the sound of my phone buzzing from its place on the nightstand later on in the night. I blink awake to my room cloaked in darkness as I roll over and check the time on the clock next to my phone.

Who's calling me at eleven o'clock at night? I wonder silently as I hear Tessa shift restlessly on the bunk above me.

I reach out and grab my phone and flip it over to see that Diana's number is flashing across the screen as I answer it.

"Hello?" I whisper into the phone as I squint against the brightness of the screen.

"Kara, it's Garret, Diana was attacked or something-," Garret begins to say, but I quickly cut him off as I am now fully awake.

"What happened?" I demand as I throw back the covers and start to grab the clothes I had worn earlier this evening.

"I don't know, I just know that her arm is cut up and she hit her head pretty hard, she called me so I could drive her to the hospital, we're at the ER that's just past the high school-."

"I'll be there in ten minutes," I tell him as I hang up and quickly slip on my shoes.

"Where are you going?" Tessa asks as she peers down over the side of her bunk bed.

"Diana's hurt, she's at the ER, I'm going to go figure out what happened, you don't have to come."

"We're all going to figure out what happened," Astrid speaks up from her place behind me and I turn my head to see that she's already dressed, "and we're all going with you." 

"We're in this together," Tessa confirms as she clambers down from her bunk bed.

I can't help but smile at the determined look on her face as I nod, "Okay, but hurry up and get dressed, we need to go."

****

A quick taxi ride takes us to the ER on the east side of Salem, which is nearly abandoned at this time of night as the taxi pulls into the deserted parking lot. We exit the taxi and duck inside where I quickly spot Garret as he nearly meets us at the door.

The young man's usually cheerful face is shadowed with fear as his dark eyes flash with worry. His tan skin is also paler than what I've seen before as he nods to me.

"They're finishing patching up her arm, they think that she may have a concussion or something because she's having issues with remembering what happened to her," he explains as he keeps pace with me.

"How bad is she?" I ask as he leads me through the swinging doors past the check-in desk.

"There was a lot of blood, her arm was ripped up, they're thinking that she may have been attacked by a dog and was knocked down," he sighs at this and shakes his head as we turn the corner, "I told her she shouldn't be walking around by herself at night, but she had insisted that she only had to pick up a couple of things from the store before it closed."

I feel guilty about having her along for the Ouija board session this evening, as she would have been able to go shopping earlier and would have probably been safer.

Garret pauses in front of a door for one of the rooms before he opens it and steps inside. The bed has been wheeled out and the room is empty and dark, the wires for a couple of different monitors strewn across the machines as they show flat-lined readings. I shiver at the sight of them even though I know that the nurses had merely unhooked her so they could take her into surgery.

The rhythmic, heavy thudding of a hospital bed on wheels approaches the room as we stand just inside and I look up to see that a nurse is pushing a bed down the hallway. Diana sits in the center of it, her eyes hazy as they focus on me before her brows furrow. She looks from me to Tessa and Astrid before her gaze settles on Garret as they wheel her into the room.

"I called Kara," Garret confesses as Diana gives him a puzzled look.

"I'm fine," she mumbles as the nurse pushes her bed back over to the machines and starts to hook her back up. "I'm fine," she repeats to the nurse, but the nurse shakes her head.

"We need to monitor you overnight, the dog that bit you could have had rabies, that and you have a mild concussion," the nurse explains.

"I get rabies vaccinations at my workplace, I've already been given a shot," Diana explains as she starts to lift her hand, but Garret quickly grabs her by the wrist.

"Diana, sweetheart, just listen to the nurse," he tells her as the nurse gives him a strange look, "I'll stay with her and try to calm her down, she's confused," he replies quickly, dismissing the nurse as she turns to leave.

"If you need anything, just use the clicker remote, she's going to be a little disorientated, it took a pretty heavy dose of painkillers to get her stitched up," the nurse says before she walks off and we're left alone.

"Diana what were you thinking? Were you trying to cast a spell on her?" Garret hisses as he sits on the edge of the bed and holds her hand in his.

"I want to get out of here, I need to get out of here," she pleads as she sits up and I notice that the monitor for her pulse is high.

"I know, but they just want to make sure that you're okay, you lost a lot of blood," Garret soothes, "can you remember anything?"

She blinks at this and it's almost like he's said something that she can't understand. She shakes her head after a moment as she looks down at her left forearm, which is bandaged from the wrist all the way up to her elbow. Spots of red have already begun to leak through as she dazedly inspects her arm.

"I can't remember, I left the apartment and was walking down the street for Crosby's marketplace and...and everything just went black," she whispers and my heart twists at the utter confusion and loss in her gaze.

"You called me, do you remember any of that?" Garret pries and she shakes her head.

"What did I say?" she asks as she clutches his hand more tightly in hers.

"You just told me that you were hurt and what street you were on, it was Saint Paul's street," he elaborates and she frowns.

"I usually take Canal."

"But Saint Paul's leads off from it, you might have gotten hurt on Canal or saw something and went to investigate," Garret explains and she nods after a moment.

"Maybe," she mumbles as she reaches up to rub at her forehead.

"Look, you need to rest," Garret says as he looks to me and I nod as I silently gesture for the others to follow me. 

"We'll leave you two be, have a goodnight, Diana," I say as I inch toward the door.

"Bye girls," Diana calls after us and I wave over my shoulder as I step out of her room and into the quiet ER.

A couple of nurses are huddled at their station as they briefly glance over at us before I head back down the hallway. I mentally prepare myself for what I'm going to have to tell them on the way back to the academy, as Finn's warning seems to be more accurate than ever.

First we almost get into an accident, and then Diana is bitten by a dog?

It's just too much for me to write off as a coincidence.

"We need to talk," I tell the others once we've stepped outside of the ER, "I know it's going to sound crazy, but you need to hear what I have to say.

Astrid looks up at me as I say this and she and Tessa share a look before they nod.

"We're listening," Astrid promises.