Ryder

twenty six

For the next few hours or so, I was on the brink of unconsciousness--painful, extreme exhaustion that I could feel pulling at me. Consistently, continuously, and with a promise of relief.

It was relief, but something small, and maybe even the only conscious part of me, kept nagging at me. Fear, because what if I never woke up from this? What if I couldn't find my way out of the darkness once it pulled me in?

There was an ambulance at some point, the loud sirens echoing against my skull, the stark white walls of a hospital, whispers whispers whispers around me in scrubs and white coats. But I didn't panic because I couldn't really, and because Ryder had been holding onto me.

He'd been there on that bridge with me. I couldn't see him but he would be here with me too, wouldn't he? I'll be okay.

Even though I didn't know what time it was right then or what was happening or where I was anymore, I knew it would all be fine. He'd said it. He'd told me. He would hold on to me even if I let go.

And then I wanted to laugh at that thought alone, at that absurd thought. When had anyone ever held on to me?

It was a blur. A steady blur and then a dizzying one. I was there and then I wasn't. I thought I heard my mother's voice at some point and I wanted to laugh at that too. There were so many people here but was my mother here as well? Why would she be here? Was she here to tell me what a fool I was?

Was she here to tell me that I'd never done anything right with my life, not once?

There were long terrifying moments caught between consciousness and unconsciousness, one stranger or another pulling me out of it when I even thought as much as giving into the exhaustion. Painkillers, someone said. Was I in pain? They kept telling me to keep my eyes open. So I blinked and I blinked and tried my best even though everything kept spinning.

It felt like days, even though I think they were just mere hours before I gained any real semblance of my surroundings.

I was so bone-weary tired by then that I couldn't open my eyes anymore. I tried to open them one last time, wondering how long I'd really had my eyes closed, wondering how much time had passed, wondering if I was still in danger, but everything around me was dead silent so I didn't.

I was on a bed. Not the softest, not the one like back at home. Maybe I was back in my dorm. Maybe maybe maybe. I tried to move my hands when I felt cool air on my skin, rising goosebumps, and it must've just been a twitch since nothing happened.

There was the beep. Beep beep beep. A machine. I tried moving my hand again, a little more this time because I was starting to feel the nagging doubts within my hazy brain, but there was still nothing.

Except for a soft scraping noise like a chair being pushed against the floor. I twitched again, blinking open my eyes, heavy and sluggish, and tried to make out my surroundings. It felt like my head was filled with too many cotton balls.

I parted my lips to say something. Help me. But I couldn't voice it out.

And then there was something warm over my hand, over my fingers, shielding me from the cold air. A hand encircled my wrist and my cold palm and my own cold fingers, and I tried to flinch away but I couldn't. They were going to drug me. They are going to drug me. There was another series of beeps and I thought they sounded louder now and more terrifying.

The fingers around my wrist tightened just the tiniest of fractions before there was a warm brush of air near my ear, my hair, the side of my face.

"I'm here." The reassuring whisper said.