Prologue: Well. This sucks.
Everything hurts, fuckfuckfuck, something's wrong.
My mind is frantic. I'm scared. I don't know where I am, but everything is bright white and I hurt everywhere, the pain is all I can think about. The rational part of my mind knows I need to stop panicking, because panic won't help me here. Where is 'here'?
But why am I so sticky and warm? What.. is this blood? I'm bleeding? Where's my mom? I try to open my mouth to ask for help, for my mom, for water because I am so, so thirsty, my lips don't cooperate. They tremble open, but no sound comes out. I try again, and manage a hoarse whisper. I feel the hot tears sliding down my cheeks, the salt stinging the cuts there, too. I don't remember when I started crying. I feel the tears, but I can't see past the fuzzy whiteness. The antiseptic smell of my surroundings tells me I'm somewhere really clean. Clean?
Hospital, a voice in the back of my brain whispers, I'm in a hospital.
Oh, okay, that makes sense. Hospital.
Think, Addie, think. How did I end up here? Wha-
Somebody (a nurse?) touches my hand, but I do not want to be touched. (Later I'll register that she was very gentle with me.) I wince away, opening my eyes as wide as they go, and scream,
"Don't touch me!"
I stop, coughing, hearing how rough my voice is, feeling the blood at the back of my throat, my throat raw, and now they're shushing me, these doctors, telling me that Its okay, it'll be alright, and I notice that I'm attached to several machines, I have an IV and she's putting a needle into it and I've seen that in movies, but surely she's not knocking me out, right? My vision clears, the pain slightly subsiding as each second passes, and I can see shapes and those shapes are turning into people and those people are wearing white scrubs, and oh, okay, they're doctors and nurses, but surely I don't need so many in one room, right? As I'm trying not to panic, telling myself that I'm not being rational, I realize that they look afraid of me.
Afraid of me? No, no, not fear; pity. They're looking at me with pitiful expressions on their faces, like they feel sorry for me. Why would they feel sorry for me? Oh, right. I'm at the hospital, covered in my own blood, and as I think that, I start to remember how I ended up here in the first place, and I start to cry again, but when did the tears ever stop? As soon as this horrible epiphany hits me, my panic fades, the morphine kicking in, and I can't think past the numbing in my brain, the feeling of, oh it's time to sleep now, okay. As I start to drift off, the nurses swarm, and I vaguely feel them cutting my clothes gently pulling them away from my ruined body, wiping the drying blood off, and cleaning me. My eyelids droop even more and I can't think of a reason not to sleep, because it just feels so good, to sleep. The last thing I think of is the reason I'm lying on this bumpy, uncomfortable, shit excuse for a bed, hooked up to machines and an IV drip and tubes going every which way:
I was jumped.