Death by Chocolate

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fourteen

I was having a terrible dream about being dragged all over my high school gymnasium while Rick and Fred shouted at me and tortured me with needles to make me tell Trent my secret recipes. They beat me with iron skillets and pans of Chocolate Pudding Cake while hundreds of people in the stands booed me when I tried to tell them there was no secret. Finally Trent handcuffed me and carted me off to a dark, dank dungeon where he put me on the rack and tortured me some more.

I was happy to wake from that dream even though my throat hurt, my mouth tasted like I'd been eating Henry's cat food, and my body ached all over. On second thought, I didn't really want to wake up. The dreams were over and the alarm wasn't screaming at me. Surely I could go back to sleep for a little while and maybe have a pleasant dream.

"She's coming around!" someone shouted.

There shouldn't be anybody in my bedroom. Damn! Surely I hadn't let Rick smooth talk me into spending the night again. The voice didn't sound like Rick's. It was familiar, but I couldn't quite place it.

"Lindsay? Can you hear me?" A female voice too? In my bedroom? Omigawd! Did we have an orgy? That certainly wasn't on my list of things to do, but, judging from the way I felt, I could have been drugged and done about anything. The question of what had made my throat sore bothered me a lot. I didn't want to go there. The only place I wanted to go was back to sleep.

I was drifting downward, hoping this supposed awakening was just another bad dream, when somebody else shouted at me. Did these people think I was deaf?

"Ms. Powell, can you open your eyes?"

Oh, God, please tell me I didn't orgy with somebody who calls me Ms. Powell!

"No!" I tried to shout, but it came out a whisper. In fact, I wasn't a hundred percent certain it came out at all.

Someone took my hand. "Lindsay, you need to wake up now." Fred. That was a good sign. I was positive Fastidious Fred would never be involved in anything as unorganized and messy as an orgy.

I opened one eye a crack but the painful glare slammed it shut again. "Bright," I whispered. "Hurts."

"Close the curtain," the owner of the Ms. Powell voice said. An open curtain was another good sign. I was pretty sure people didn't orgy with open curtains on a sunny day. "You're going to be fine," the man assured me.

I opened the other eye a crack, blinked a couple of times then managed to keep it open. The man leaning over me was dressed in white. A doctor. Now I understood. I was in the hospital. I'd finally had that car wreck all my friends kept predicting would happen if I kept driving so fast.

"Go away," I whispered.

"Lindsay, I need you to tell me what happened." It was the first voice again, and this time I recognized it. Trent.

My eyelids flew wide open, blinked closed a couple of times, but finally adapted to the light, remained open and focused.

Trent and the guy in white leaned over me on one side with Paula and Fred on the other.

"Anybody else hurt?" My voice cracked as the words rasped up the tender surface of my throat.

"Someone was with you when this happened?" Trent asked, his notebook in one hand and pen in the other. "Who?"

"I don't know," I croaked.

"Lindsay, do you remember what happened?" Trent prompted.

I had absolutely no memory of the accident, but I wasn't going to admit that to him. However, his nagging did bring back the memory of him coming to my house and grilling me, asking me a million questions, wanting to know everything about everybody but refusing to answer my questions. Now he was harassing me again while I lay at death's door. "Don't wanna talk about me. Tell me about your ex." That should shut him up.