30 Nights

19

LILY

I hear voices but I can't understand what they are saying. I try to open my eyes but I can't. I want to speak but my throat is so dry, it burns and I can barely swallow.

There is pain everywhere. I can't pinpoint exactly where. But I hurt all over, maybe I have the flu, this feels like that but it's worse. I need painkillers, why won't somebody give them to me. But I can't ask for them. I feel a cool hand running across my forehead, stroking my face, whispering to me. Edric. He is here with me but I can't reach him.

I drift in the blackness, sometimes awake and sometimes not, until I feel a weight lifting off my eyelids. I flicked them, yes, I can move them and I slowly open them as things slowly come into view.

I am back in the cells, in the big soft bed in Edric's office.

"My sleeping girl wakes," Edric whispers and I feel him next to me. He shifts and leans over me, brushing the wisps of hair away from my face.

"Hi," I croak but at least I can get the words out. His face slowly comes into focus and he looks at me intently, he looks worried, a frown wrinkling his otherwise smooth brow.

"How do you feel?"

"Like death," I croak, feeling how every part of me is weak and aching. He frowns even more at this.

"Sam," he says raising his voice over a little but the door opens immediately. Sam walks over and smiles at me.

"You're awake, Lily," he says. "You've given Edric quite the fright here. He's barely left your side for, er, the best part of 48 hours."

"Get the doctor," Edric snaps and Sam reaches forward and squeezes my face then leaves.

"48 hours, I've been out of it that long," I retch and start to cough. Edric immediately puts his arms around me, helping me get into a more upright position and leaning me against his side.

In a few moments, Sam returns with another man. He comes around to the side of the bed nearest to me and sits close.

"Hello Lily, I am Joshua. I'm a doctor," he says and I stare at him. He looks older than Edric in human years anyway. I can see he is a vampire. His skin, his eyes, I could never mistake the signs now.

He sees my hesitation and my stare.

"I have trained in medicine all my life. Even when I became what I am, I have never stopped training and practising medicine. I am well versed in many specialisms now, and I understand the human and vampire body. And even though, science cannot explain the creation of vampires, I will dedicate my immortal life to understanding mortal death and this living death we endure," he says and his dark black eyes meet mine with a sad sympathy.

"We?" I whisper and that horrible sense that something is wrong, that I feel different creeps over me.

"You died, Lily," Edric says, stroking my head again.

"But, but I'm not dead now," I say. "Am I human?" I tense myself for hearing the worse.

Joshua leans down and I see he has a black metal briefcase by his side. He opens it and I see a screen, lots of dials and wires. He clicks something onto the tip of my finger. I hear nothing at first, then I hear something. A heartbeat. Just one slow beat. Then nothing. I hold my breath until I hear it again. Another slow beat.

"See your heart beats, you are breathing," says Joshua.

"But it's beating so slowly. That's not right, is it? I must be sick or dying, why aren't you doing anything," and I feel myself gasping for air and I try to push away Edric as he pulls me tighter to him.