Matters of the Heart

Chapter 30: Reality Bites

Chapter 30

Reality Bites

Emily heard the familiar sound of a heart monitor beeping. The pulse oximeter measuring her oxygen level bleated in a slower lower tone. She couldn't move at first. Her body felt heavy. Everything was aching. Her chest was throbbing. There was a dull pain radiating from her collarbone all the way down to her bellybutton.

She took a deep breath and tensed up in discomfort. The air felt like frigid ice water in her lungs. It irritated her throat. She felt a tight tension in her sternum when she inhaled and exhaled. The muscles between her ribs felt like they were being stretched and pulled apart. She let out a grunt of pain and opened her eyes.

She felt something cool tickling her wrist and when she looked down she saw an IV catheter pumping fluids into her vein. Her senses were so heightened and she was so sensitive to everything that she could feel the liquid trickling into her vein and up her arm.

She ran her tongue over her chapped lips and then closed her mouth. She heard a noise and it took her a minute to realize that it was blood rushing to her head. It was making a horrible pulsing noise and made her ears twitch and burn from the inside.

There was a brief moment of confusion as she tried to remember how she'd ended up in the hospital. Then the images flooded her mind; a flash of twisted metal, broken glass, and the feeling of not being able to breathe. The memories were coming to her so fast that she felt like she was twirling around on an out of control merry-go-round.

She remembered seeing the truck coming right for them. She remembered thinking she was going to die. She remembered the force of the impact...the pain in her chest. She remembered A. She remembered being yanked out of the car, being strangled, being hit. She remembered Toby screaming her name.

The memories came to her quicker. Flashes of the ambulance. Not being able to catch her breath. That feeling of terror she felt when she felt her lungs stop working. The thought of never seeing Ali again. The last thing she remembered was Toby squeezing her hand.

She started shaking, making her aching body throb worse. She slid her hand up from the bed and on to her stomach. She stretched her side and rolled slightly to try and get into a more comfortable position, but she quickly found out that it didn't matter how she was laying...her body just hurt.

She looked around the room, feeling woozy. She saw a small end-table and a worn chair sitting in one corner and a slightly larger less worn chair in the other. There was a colorful abstract picture framed and hanging on the wall.

A shadow fell over her bed as a nurse walked into the room. She was dressed in blue scrubs with a matching surgical cap on her head. She was wearing a surgical mask on her face. She didn't say a word as she reached for Emily's IV line.

"What's happening?" Emily asked, her throat burning, her voice husky. Her vision was fading in and out, a weird pulsing haziness that distorted what she was seeing. She saw the nurse putting a syringe with a needle into her IV line. "What are you doing? What's that?"

"Just lie still, Emily." The voice made her skin crawl. She gasped. She recognized that voice. "It'll all be over soon."

Emily trembled. It couldn't be. She looked at the masked nurse with wide eyes, her arm starting to burn where the injection was slowly making its way into her vein.

"No." Emily huffed.

The nurse laughed and pulled down her mask.

Sara.