❝ You know, I have the feeling I'm gonna marry you someday, Oak.❞
- What would you do if you found out murder ran through your own blood?
And that, that blood was going to be the reason for the island's biggest case in the history of its existenc...
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OAKLEY WAS ONLY 6 WHEN SHE fainted for the first time. It had been at a doctor's visit along with her siblings, the three were in need of a blood test because of a virus that was spreading through the island. The room smelled of chemicals and a fresh breeze of latex aroma that haunts her to this day. Her mother had tempted her to go first, claiming how it'd be faster and she'd be done with it quicker. And so after many complaints, the girl had finally agreed and sat her scrawny body on the chair.
The nurse wrapped the strap around her upper arm and turned it palm up. Oakley still remembers clearly picturing the way the thin needle was gonna break her vein and stab into it, and how that was gonna be the way her blood would start leaving her body and filling the tubes that rested next to her hand. Her visualization turned into a thought blinded by dread and the mere thought of blood coming out of her body turned into the concept of bleeding out.
Her thoughts had been so jumbled and terrorizing that she was too late when she focused back on her arm and noticed the thin transparent tube coming out of her arm now had dark red blood traveling through it and filling the containers like water fills a cup. The sight had made her panic so much that her breathing had picked up drastically and her hands had begun to sweat.
When Beatrice noticed, she quickly asked her child if she felt alright. The nurse raised his gaze to check on the young girl and noticed as she began to grow pale and disoriented. Quickly, he'd pulled the needle out and placed a colorful bandaid on top of it before coming to her aid.
Oakley wanted to escape, though, and her first instinct once the needle was out was to jump to her feet and seek the comfort of her mother. However, just as her body lifted itself from the chair, she felt her vision sway and black spots blind the corneas of her eyes, making her head spin and pound before she was falling sideways to the ground.
Her body hitting the floor was the last thing she remembered.
Her body hitting the floor is always the last thing she remembers.
Her senses take a while to come back, first her hearing. It's like a broken machine in her dreams, it beeps, beeps, beeps. She tries to find it, it frustrates her. It smells familiar, latex and chemicals. It's like the scent of a distant dream, but she can't quite place a location to it and the damn beeping won't let her think straight!
Eventually, when her reasoning comes back, she realizes it's just the heart monitor. Beep, beep, beep. But whose? She looks around, but her surroundings make no sense because her eyes aren't open. Her fingers twitch as a translation of her struggle, and slowly, her eyelids pry open and her eyes take on the burning white light of the morning and the hospital.
With a weak groan, Oakley tries to open her eyes fully, but her eyelids are puffy and her eye bags feel too heavy to allow her the privilege of sight. Beatrice, who happens to be sitting next to her bed, perks up at the movement, and her eyes snap up.
