Meant for Me | ✔️

3) Finding a friend

Sunday, August 3rd.

A D D I E

I've never been much of a drinker. I've been drunk before, but it didn't hold a lot of appeal after I woke up with a hangover from hell. I couldn't see how it was worth the nausea, the headache, the overall feeling of death that crawled beneath the skin. It wasn't something that I wanted to experience ever again.

Yet, here I was, feeling much the same right now even though I had no recollection of touching alcohol last night.

I rolled over, not having opened my eyes and felt my hand thud against cold steel. The smell of hand sanitiser stung my nose, plastic tubing tugged on the inside of my elbow. When I did manage to peer through one half lidded eye, I saw an IV bag hanging above me, taupe walls and a worn leather armchair beside the bed. Hospital. How on earth had I ended up in hospital?

There was no one else in the room so I sat up and was careful not to lean on the tube which stemmed from a vein in my arm. A small remote dangled over the bed rail so I picked it up and pressed the button which I assumed was a nurse calling signal from the little stick figure and exclamation mark on it. The other button read emergency and I didn't think it would be wise to cause that sort of panic.

A few moments later, the door opened, and two women appeared. One wearing pale blue scrubs and the other in a police uniform.

"Honey," the nurse rested her hand on my shoulder. "Are you feeling alright?"

"What happened?"

"Oh, officer Raine brought you in last night dear. She said you were wandering alone and collapsed right in front of her. You were very dehydrated but there were no injuries apart from some surface abrasions on your arms and legs."

"You're officer Raine, I assume?"

The woman stood at the foot of the bed with a kind smile. She was lean, muscular and tall with tight ringlets in a bun at the bottom of her neck and golden-brown skin. "I am," she looped her thumbs through her belt loops and rocked back on her heels. "You had me worried, honey. Can I ask what you were doing walking alone at night?"

I swallowed and tried to recall what it was that I had been doing or planning on doing. As far as I could remember, it wasn't much. "Just walking," I said. "My train arrived at nine in the morning and I was just. . . walking."

"Where did that train arrive?"

Peering up from the stiff white bedding, I met her expectant stare. She wasn't demanding answers though, not in the same tone that a cop might question someone suspected of a crime. It was more like she wanted to find out what had happened that put me in such a vulnerable position.

"Uh in Austin somewhere," I grasped for the station name, but it had evaded me. "I can't remember the name of the train station."

"You walked from Austin?! Walked?"

I nodded; brows furrowed at her disbelief.

"You were on the outskirts of Georgetown, Miss. that's almost nine hours on foot."

"Like I said, I was just walking."

The nurse stepped in at that point. Her aged white hands were covered in bright blue veins and she held up the chart, reading it over. "The Doctor has cleared you to be discharged. So, is there someone that we can call, sugar?"

Sugar? Honey? These people were fond of their sweet nicknames. Inhaling a deep breath, I shook my head. "No. I'm here alone."

"Where are you from?" Raine asked, hands resting on her belt.