♡ ɴᴇᴠᴇʀ ꜱᴀʏ ɴᴇᴠᴇʀ ♡

3 1

(Cary's POV)

It was about an hour after Katherine left that she came back. "I'm gonna ask you a question, and I need you to be completely honest with me."

I gave her a puzzled look. "Yeah, sure."

"Is the medicine I'm giving you helping at all?"

I nodded. "Yeah." She gave me a scolding look, and I continued. "I mean, it doesn't completely get rid of the pain..."

She creased her eyebrows and kind of pouted, as if disappointed. Suddenly, she walked over to me.

"What?" I asked.

She looked me up and down, then suddenly put her hands on my head. "Where does it hurt?"

I looked at her weirdly. "What's wrong?"

"Answer the question."

I sighed quietly. "All over, but mostly in the back."

She pressed on the back of my head with her thumb, sending a shock of pain through my body. It was the exact spot I hit my head when Jonathan attacked me, and images of his boots walking past my face as it was pressed across the concrete flashed across my mind. I grimaced, a grunt escaping from my lips.

She pulled her hands away and looked at me, her eyes quickly scanning around my face. She picked her clipboard up from the side table, her eyes lost in thought. After a few seconds of silence, I spoke up. "What's wrong?"

"Tell me, do the lights hurt your head at all?"

I shrugged. "A little...why?"

"Listen," she started, "if your headaches were just the result of malnourishment, this medicine should've knocked it out with no problem. But you're still hurting."

I nodded shortly as she looked at me, chewing her cheek. Again she approached me and looked me dead in the eyes as if she was searching for something.

She pulled away and thought for a minute, then pulled her clipboard off of the chair by the window. She bit on the end of her pencil, then looked from it to me, from me to it. Then she scoffed while slowly nodding. "You have a concussion."

"I—" I was at a loss for words. A concussion? "How?"

She hugged the clipboard to her chest, folding her arms. "I should ask you the same thing."

I drew back as if she'd slapped me. "What do you mean?" I asked, slightly offended. Was she blaming me for something I didn't even know existed?

She sighed and shook her head, then turned her eyes towards me. They were full of a strangely comforting sternness, like that whatever she was upset about, it was because she was worried for my well-being. 

Like a mother. My mother.

"Did something happen recently that would've caused this?"

I thought back a few days, instantly remembering my encounter with Jonathan.

"Maybe you hit your head or...something?" She continued.

I swallowed. It all came back: my head clanging against the rough brick wall, Jonathan's fingers tight against my throat, his searing gray eyes fiery with rage...

I hope he gets you pregnant, you dumb broad.

I found myself tracing my necklace with my finger, feeling the pattern between emeralds and chain on my skin. It comforted me in an odd way.

"Cary?" Katherine said gently, and I looked up to see my vision was blurred with tears. I blinked them away and felt one fall down my face. I looked down again at my lap in a foolish attempt to hide it from her, but she was already at my side.