Chapter Two~

He couldn't get her out of his mind. Her face, her eyes, the very depths of her soul that were in pieces. Or, at least, that's what Shay assumed a day later when her mind decided to wake up from whatever drug-induced haze that she was forced into. He couldn't muster the strength to take his eyes off of her, so curious to what thoughts were rushing through her head. And he knew that there were a million different things overflowing in there, too many, if you were to ask him.

 

Julia was in the same position, too. Whether she knew it or not, she was cast into the state that Shay was thinking of. She was drowning, tying to process tiny thoughts and details to clue her into where she was, how she got there, and even who she was. All the thoughts overflowed and clashed with each other, like waves coming from two different ends and colliding, forcing her down without any oxygen into an endless ocean. She felt like a weight was crushing her brain and chest, falling harder and harder with every question or unsure thought.

 

He leaned over her, hearing the shallowness of her breath. His own exhale rebounded against the light cotton blanket on top of her body, rippling the fabric. He could see the panic clear in her eyes, but it seemed to be in a place far deeper than where he was. He knew it was a battle of conscious versus subconscious, and it was the outcome that mattered, not how she got there.

 

Julia was aware of the person sitting beside her, breathing on her, but that was the least of her problems. Her body refused to function under her own terms. It spun in countless directions without any authorization whatsoever from any part of her. Her brain was running wild with the thought of being stuck in a place that she never even remembered getting to in the first place. She couldn't recall anything past the last few minutes, except the memory of a mask being put over her face. Her skin was crawling, crawling with millions of tiny, invisible bugs. And her senses were hazy and dull, almost delayed. It was an unnatural sensation, an even more odd sensation than the prickling on her arms as a result of the person's breathing.

 

Shay adjusted in his seat. He folded his hands in his lap and leaned his back against the deflated cushion. He couldn't help but wonder how many people had ever sat in the same exact chair, faced with some terrible situation. He guessed at least a thousand, but, sadly, even that number seemed too little. His mind could only conjure the immense pain that they must have been feeling, the weighted gamble of whether or not the person they loved would come out alive, the breathlessness of having something go terribly wrong, leaving both in a state of distress, except only the person outside the bed holding all of it in their mind. Hospitals weren't places of healing, they were places of torture.

 

He snapped his attention over to her as she slowly moved around. Her face popped above and below the railing, her eyes half open and mouth formed into a small 'o'. She didn't seem to be focused in the real world, still stuck in the foreign land of her own mind. There was something mystical about the idea of existing half-in and half-out of two entirely different worlds. Especially when it was her.

 

"Where am I?" She asked, abruptly entering the room. Her head turned toward Shay, panicked eyes wide and bright.

 

"A hospital." He answered with uncertainty of whether or not he should be the one answering her questions.

 

Her lips turned downward into a frown. "I figured that. Where am I, though?"

 

Shay cleared his throat and glanced nervously over he shoulder to the window. "Bridgeport."

 

"Bridgeport where?" She demanded again with such force that it made him wonder how she could have just come out of a medicine-induced coma of sorts.

 

"Connecticut." He grimaced, rubbing the back of his neck. His palms were sweating and the hair on his body was standing on end, charged with electricity. "I'm going to go get a nurse..."

 

"No. First, you're going to tell me why I'm in here in the first place, then   "

 

He stood up and then half under his breath mumbled, "I'm going to get a nurse." and then proceeded to march out of the room with a determined, but sluggish, pace. He made it down the hall to where it opened up into a nurse's station, and he searched behind the counter for Wendy. It took him a minute, but he finally spotted the top of her mop of curly red hair standing behind a computer near the middle. Shay approached her.

 

"I assume that she's awake?" Wendy glanced up at him when he landed in front of her. When he nodded, she stood up and gestured for him to lead the way.

 

The two walked back to Julia's room, Shay's pace slightly quicker than Wendy's. When the two entered, he noticed that she had gone from laying flat to sitting up and hunched over.

 

"No, no." Wendy scolded when she noticed her, speeding over to the side of the bed to gently force her body back into the mattress. "You've got to lay back down, Julia."

 

"Listen to her, Julia." Shay reinforced, jumping a little when her name rolled off of his tongue.

 

She resisted for a  couple of seconds before allowing herself to fall back onto the plastic bedding, deflating it instantly. She closed her eyes and moved to touch her face with her hands, but the tubes coming out of them forced her to fling them back down in frustration.

 

"Do you remember why you are here?" Wendy picked up a clipboard and unclipped a pen from her pocket before beginning to scribble down some words on the baby blue paper.

 

"No." She stated bluntly, itching to cross her arms, but couldn't because of the tubes. "Do you know why I am?"

 

"Yes." Wendy smirked and circled something on the paper. "You were involved in a car crash a couple of days ago."

 

"Days? Are you sure that it was that long?"

 

The nurse confirmed it.

 

"Who's he?" Julia asked next, pointing a finger over at Shay. He squirmed under her attention, falling sideways so that he leaned against the frame of the door.

 

"That's Mr. Tucker. He's the one who found you and brought you here."

 

Her eyes flickered back and forth between the two. "What do you mean he found me?"

 

 Wendy turned to Shay, willing him to explain. He gulped down a wad of saliva that had been forming under his tongue before nodding slowly. His explanation took a couple of seconds to transmit to his vocal chords, though.

 

"I was driving about a quarter mile behind your car on the highway. You were heading north when the car in front of you spun out, hitting the front and side of your car. You then proceeded to spin across the road until your car somehow flipped over before you landed in the ditch. When I pulled alongside the ditch, I got out and walked over to the rear windows, looking for any children inside. You were the only one, so I pulled out my phone to call the police. You were bleeding heavily from a cut in your head and various other places. After seeing your injuries, I made the decision to pull you out and take you to the hospital myself. It was a risk, not knowing if you had a neck or spine injury, but I knew if you didn't get help soon, you would bleed out. I drove you to the emergency room, and then you ended up here."

 

Hearing his words made images flash through her mind. They were familiar, a memory maybe, but she could picture the car. She could feel the glass pierce her skin, sending flames across her body. The crunching of metal and the screeching of tires echoed in her ear, acting as details to only encase the accident. She could recall the quick snap of her neck that she experienced when the impact came to the side of her car, and the smashing of her nose into her skull that came from the airbags being deployed and hitting her face. The seatbelt slamming against her chest, like a boa-constrictor wrapping around her, knocking all the air from her body, making her insides cold. She could piece it together and play it back like a horror film, only the ending being cut short by the blackness of the credits rolling.

 

"And I've been out for two days?" Julia double checked, trying to process all the new information and refreshed memories.

 

"Yep." Wendy confirmed with a nod of her head. "Julia   "

 

She felt weird hearing the name, like it was wrong. "Call me..." She thought hard for a moment, searching for the name that was on the tip of her tongue. "Julie...no. Jay? No, no. Um...Jule   Jules!" She felt a rush of relief when the name fell off of her tongue and into the air. It felt right and good. "Call me Jules."

 

Wendy smiled. "Jules, tell me, do you remember where you were going the evening when you crashed?"

 

"Were hit." Shay imputed, making sure that both of them knew that she wasn't at fault for the accident.

 

Jules stared at her hands, tying to remember. There was a void spot in her memory. Well, spot was a not-so-slight understatement. There was nothing to be known about her existence prior to the accident. That of which she did know, came from a complete stranger and after the information was handed to her on a silver platter.

 

"No," She finally answered, admitting defeat. "I don't remember anything. I didn't even remember what happened before Mr. Tucker told me."

 

Wendy frowned slightly and jogged some more notes down onto the sheet. "I'm no doctor, but from working here for five years, I think I know a case of amnesia when I see one."

 

"Amnesia?" Jules repeated, a bit stunned. "You've got to be kidding me."

 

"Jules, do you happen to know what your brother's name might be?"

 

"Michael." She answered immediately, not stopping to think for even a second. 

 

The nurse shook her head. "Ryan."

 

Shay watched as Jules' face crumbled, slacking into a remorseful expression. He could only imagine the confusion and difficulty that she faced, forgetting her whole life in the matter of minutes. Wendy declared something about the doctor and resting, but he wasn't paying enough attention, only catching her brushing his shoulder on his way out of the room. His concern was only for the girl sitting in the bed, rummaging for any memory at all.

 

"She was right about getting rest." He commented, crossing his arms. 

 

Jules glared at him, clearly irritated. "You should really mind your own business."

 

"I usually do. Quite well, actually."

 

She pursed her lips. "What makes this time any different?"

 

He shrugged and moved over to the chair, collapsing into it with a sigh.

 

"Aren't family only supposed to be in here?" She fired off after not getting an answer to her previous question.

 

He smirked. "Who says I'm not your family? I could be your cousin or something."

 

"I imagine my family isn't as annoying as you are."

 

His hand wove through the mop of curly black hair littering his head. "No, I imagine they aren't." He paused. "So, I'm not your family. What's wrong with that?"

 

"How can you be in here?"

 

He bit his lip and stared into her dark hazel eyes with sincerity. "I couldn't be at first. Since I wasn't family, you were off limits to everyone except the staff. Even Wendy, the nurse that helped my when I brought your half-dead body to the counter, wouldn't let me in. You were alone, though, and I was concerned. When Wendy went home after her shift was done, a new nurse took over. It was her that I convinced that I was a member of the family. Wendy never said anything when she came back in the morning. All she did was smile when she walked into the room and saw me."

 

"So, the nurse just let you in. No questions. Nothing."

 

"Well, of course there were questions. None of which that were too difficult, considering that the only person that could confirm them was laying unconscious in a hospital bed."

 

She thought about that. It was scary to think that lies and charisma were the only two things standing in the way of being completely alone in a room with a body.

 

"Do you know when my brother is going to be here?"

 

"No," He answered, folding his hands together on his lap. "and I can't find out."

 

"Why not?"

 

"I already tried to ask." Shay confessed, smiling guiltily at her from under his lashes. "Nobody knows. They've only recently contacted him, and they haven't gotten a call back."

 

"Well, you don't have to worry about me anymore." Jules stated dryly. "God knows why you already did."

 

"That's good to know." He replied sarcastically, standing up and straightening his leather jacket. "But something that you should know about me: I never rest until something is for certain. That being said, you won't have me stop worrying until you're out of this place, and by the looks of it, that might not be for a while."

 

"You know I can just tell them that you aren't family." Jules scrunched up her nose, glaring at his back as he retreated to the door. "Then you won't be able to come in here anymore."

 

Shay smirked, even though he knew she couldn't see it. "Then I'll make myself at home in the lobby." He didn't care to become one of those rotating groups again, but if it meant knowing if she was going to be okay or not, it somehow made the experience a little more bearable. So, he sauntered out of the room and into the hallway, only glancing sideways to see the stunned expression on her face before continuing to the elevator to go to the lobby, the place where he would be spending the next couple of days waiting.  

Reviews

[Mikayla_Stagg]

It reads a little confusing through it but not terrible. I liked it. Looking forward to reading more!

[Jennie Baron]

I agree, very good work. Your descriptions are vivid and you make good use of metaphor. I have to confess I didn't notice the mixed-up pronouns in the first paragraph, but of course Casper is correct. It truly does leave the reader wanting more. Outstanding!

[Casper Cross]

This is your starting paragraph... but you want to be careful not to mix up your pronouns. I think Shay is male, but you refer to the character as both male and female here... Actually you don't but that's the way it reads. I had to read this over a couple of times before I realized what you were attempting to describe here.
"He couldn't get her out of his mind. Her face, her eyes, the very depths of her soul that were in pieces. Or, at least, that's what Shay assumed a day later when her mind decided to wake up from whatever drug-induced haze that she was forced into. He couldn't muster the strength to take his eyes off of her, so curious to what thoughts were rushing through her head. And he knew that there were a million different things overflowing in there, too many, if you were to ask him."

Try and not end a sentence with a preposition:
"Julia was in the same position, too. Whether she knew it or not, she was cast into the state that Shay was thinking of. "
Let's rewrite this as: "Cast into the state that Shay was thinking of, Julia was in the same position. Whether she knew it or not"

"Hospitals weren't places of healing, they were places of torture." Lol.. I loved this line. I work at hospitals so I would whole-heartedly agree.

You saved the best line for last. You definitely make the reader want to turn the page here. Nice job