My eyelids hurt. I feel them throb as I lift them. Light sears at my eyeballs. Every hair on my skin quivers with a rustle of blankets. Dull ache covers my toenails to my forehead, droning on and on in my head and ears. Each breath turns up the volume of the drone so the aching is a rhythm.
And now Doug. He's forcing the straw into my mouth. A plastic spear, shoved between my lips. By reflex I surrender, trying to obey. The freezing water drowns me, I splutter. I lift my droning arm but he's on top of me too, wiping the spittle from my chin. His hand clumsily pummels the quivering hairs of my arm.
My hand. One finger is imprisoned in a heavy metal circle. It's cold. It drags the warmth from my skin. Doug is smiling. His white teeth are blinding me. We got married, see. His voice is so loud. It is frantic, excited, happy. I cannot understand the words he's speaking, not with the background droning in my ears. I don't remember. What nothing, he demands. No, not from that day. Not that frantic, excited joy he is shouting. It is alien, like the metal circle sucking heat from me. I close my throbbing eyelids and shut out the burning light.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
I blink awake. Each movement of the eyelids, up and down, is exhausting. The drone is quieter now. The light is not as hot. Doug is still there, his chin resting on the bedclothes. He is watching me blink. Waiting.
"How did I end up in here? What happened?"
Every word gets stuck in the stiffness of my tongue. They emerge blurry and thick from my mouth.
"There was an accident," he says. My mind tries to process it. Doug is still talking. "I thought I'd lost you."
Now Cheryl is here. They're talking, she and Doug, but I don't follow it all completely. Cheryl. Something vague flutters in my chest. I'm expectant. There's some joke, she's smiling at me and winking. And suddenly Doug is looming on top of me again, but his lips only lightly graze my forehead. They leave no mark. He's evaporated and Cheryl is there. My expectation grows.
"Doug says I've been out of it for days," I say. It feels like lines from a cue card. I cannot put in words what my brain is really full of, the droning and the vague expectation.
"You had us all worried there for a bit kiddo," she says. The flutters in my chest grow clearer. Those words, they mean something. They whisper about my expectations.
"Us?" I breathe. That is the clue, I'm almost sure. The fluttering is growing so strong now that I almost can't hear the droning anymore.
"Me and Brendan."
Suddenly, I know. The expectation is gone and now trembling hope is there. Brendan. Where is he?
"Did he come to see me?"
Yes, Brendan. Where is he? Why are his fingers not wrapped around my wrists, holding me above the water in this alien ocean? I am confused, but the fluttering trembling hope has started to leak out through my chest and fill the icy room with warmth and light.
"Yeah, when you were first admitted."
"Well he should know that I'm better now," I told her. My voice is not as thick anymore. The hope has bubbled from my chest to my mouth and softened my rigid tongue. "Can you tell him to come back?"
She isn't looking at me. Her eyes are on the bed, on the wall. The warm light that has spilled around me flickers for a second.
"Please," I say. "Can you do that?"
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
The droning has faded away now, just a dim whisper in the background. Without it, my mind can work, while I wait for him.
Leah, I remember her. In the middle of the road, a van hurtling at her head. The image fades in for a second and then recedes, leaving the blank canvas that I am desperately trying to fill. I need to think harder, to remember.
Doug is talking though. A honeymoon. He tells me we were going to go to America. It feels like he's reading me a story about someone else's life. Briefly, I see him sliding the metal ring on my finger. A stroke on the canvas.
"When did it happen?" I ask, struggling to link the isolated images into a sequence. "Weren't we together?"
He's not helping. He's telling me not to think about it. Like he doesn't understand. I feel myself slip a little deeper into the alien sea. I need to know.
"The wedding… I remember… We got married," I say. It feels like catching wisps of clouds in my hands. "And then there was… Leah was outside… And there was a van."
"Yeah, it was a bad accident, okay?"
He's shushing me. Why? Is he protecting me? I feel a ripple of fear float through me.
"Did anyone else get hurt?"
"Yeah not everyone was as lucky as you were."
I feel the icy seawater lapping at my chin now, ready to swallow me up soon. Where is Brendan?
XXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Doug's arms are wrapped around me, trying his best to keep me afloat in the foreign waters. I hug him back, wanting his warmth, his gentle breath on the back of my neck, but knowing that he can't pull me out of here. My eyes are searching for my rescuer. He should be here by now. He should be pulling me by the wrists into safety, onto the solid ground that he controls. But every vision of him is a phantom. The freezing sea is filling my mouth and nose and I am sinking into unknown terror.