Nine Ways How

Chapter 1| accident

E L A R A

The music stopped with a huge shock wave.

I was shouting for help. I was feeling out of breath, I needed to get out of there, I felt my body trembling, everything was blurry and cloudy. My scream parroted inside the car, but my view didn't become clear. I heard siren sounds and people's wails. Everything happened so fast.

Never in my worst dreams had I ever thought our trip to Los Angeles would end up snatching everything away from me.

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"N-No" I mumble, I slowly try to open my eyes, but everything is blurred.

My whole body is tearing apart, it hurts. I'm experiencing a wide range of feelings---anger, shock, and grief.

"Doctor! The patient is getting conscious, room number nineteen!" I hear a lady's voice shouting loudly. A bright light struck right into my eyes, where am I?

The warm sunlight passing in through the window of this room, stroking my arms, makes me realize that my left hand is fractured. "How are you feeling?" a male doctor asks me, checking on me with his stethoscope. My eyes are widened as I recognized I'm in a hospital, why I'm here?

How I ended up being here?

"I- Where's my family?!" I question, trembling with dread. Why does my body sense so much helplessness? Why does it feel so numb? All of the strange screams and blurry visions come into my mind. It's horrifying. Why I'm recalling such strange things?

"Calm down," the doctor requests, caressing my shoulder. "You need to rest".

"Please tell me where's my family..." I say and choke into tears. I can't help but have a bad feeling, all I remember is my family, I don't even know where I am right now, and which place it is.

"You don't remember anything?" the doctor asks, I shake my head and my heart aches as if I'm skipping something very important.

The look on the doctor's face is devastating. There's only gloom in his voice when he proclaims---"Your whole family died on the spot in the accident you had three days ago."

My breath snagged in my throat hearing him. Everything around me gets faded, I'm just getting buried in the darkness. "W-What accident?" I mumble. I squeeze my eyes shut tightly, I don't remember anything like that. "What accident?!" I snap, sitting on the bed and burying my face in my hands.

"Calm down" the doctor says to me and starts to talk with the nurses. I can hear their talk while I can't stop my tears from streaming down my cheeks, "She seems to have memory loss due to that car accident, prepare to run the tests..."

"Amnesia?" I murmur in so low voice. "Car accident?". I feel my chest tightening more and more when I realize what's going on with me. 

I shake my head in disbelief. "No. You're lying!" I shout, having all of the doctor and nurse's attention on me again. Thinking if I heard him correctly or not. I can't lose them. But the sympathetic look on the doctor's face is clearly saying that was all the truth that he said.

"We managed to save you somehow. They had severe injuries so they couldn't make it. You have been admitted here for the past three days, you were unconscious since then. You'll be fine and retort back to your normal--" the doctor says and holds my shoulders, trying to console me.

"No please-" I untangle myself from the bedsheet and slide my feet onto the floor, making my wounds cause unbearable pain, "Cut this crap! This is all a lie! Let me go and see my family" I rasp at him, holding his white coat tightly near his belly.

He doesn't move, instead, he just looks at me with sympathy.

"They can't be gone....my brother was just a five-year-old kid, he has all of his life to live ahead" I lower my voice. "You don't understand, doctor.... they're all I have..." my voice is so low and broken, but I can't help it

The nurse makes me sit on the bed again. "Your brother was of fourteen years. I'm really sorry you have to go through all of this. I see you haven't forgotten everything, do you remember any way to contact any of your relatives? We could contact them for you so that you"

I try to think of anybody, but my mind couldn't function. I shake my head at her desperately, my throat hurts so badly while talking that I can't say anything anymore.

They took my blood samples to run some tests and left me alone, giving me some space to figure all things out.

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After an hour, the nurse comes into the room again to check on me. I cried out until there was no tear left. "How old are you?" she asks politely while changing my bandages from my neck.

"I'm... nineteen?" I say in a questioning tone if my answer is correct or not. I don't remember clearly.

"Yeah, you're right. And do you remember your name?" she asks again, softly smiling at me, preparing her medical stuff.

"I- I'm... b-" I mumble, as an unfamiliar voice suddenly startles in my mind, calling me 'butterfly'. This will sound stupid, no.

"Elara Russell" she tells softly, "This is your name, we searched for your identity."
Elara Russell? I don't remember any of that either.

She gives me an injection in my arm, I gasp slightly in pain. "That's a pretty name. Don't stress too much, we've called your friend and told him that you've regained consciousness" she says, "He'll be here soon and we'll give you discharge from here".

I don't remember any friends. Who she's talking about?
"Who are you talking about?" I mumble confusedly.

"Your friend? The same guy who took you here to the hospital within the correct time, the guy who paid all of your hospital bills until now? We thought of him as your friend. You wouldn't have been alive if he didn't get you medical attention" she says. "His name was something like Novelli...no...Nalo...no no" she mumbles to herself, trying to remember something. 

"Neville Hendrix!" she exclaims and her face brightens up.

I feel my head more aching as I try to remember such a guy. But I don't recall anything, he's just some random guy who helped me out of pity.

"Which place is this?" I ask, looking at her busy, working near my bed.

"LA" she replies. I sigh, so this is the place where I lost everything.

My body hurts. It hurts so much that I want to crawl out of it.

Suddenly, the doctor enters the room followed by a guy who stops at the door, glimpsing at me.

I look at the boy who looks at my fractured hand and softens his eyes. I've never seen him. He's dressed in a white t-shirt, black leather jacket, ripped black jeans, and leather boots. He has tattoos on his left arm, I can see them as he has folded up his jacket until his elbow. It seems like he just got back from his performance at some bar or pub.

His hair is dark brown, covering a small area of his forehead, forming a shadow on his eyes and cheek from the sunlight laying straight on his face through the window.

And in the next second; our eyes met, making my heart skip a beat.

What's happening to me suddenly?

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