Page 52 of A Man of Power

I try to speak but my throat is so dry. “Water?” I manage to croak.

He presses a button on the side of my bed and a nurse comes in.

“Well, hello there, Alexis. My name is Kelly Hasber. I’m your nurse. Do you know where you are?”

I nod, and then frown and manage to shake my head.

“You’re in the hospital, but you are going to be fine.”

“She needs water,” Sebastian cuts the nurse off with a stern voice.

“Of course. I’m just going to grab the doctor and we’ll get you some water,” she says as she leaves the room.

Sebastian looks at me. “It’s OK, little dove. It’s going to be OK.”

He squeezes my hand in his. I can’t tell if his hands are hot or mine are cold but his grip feels good and I don’t want him to leave me.

“Hello, Alexis. I’m Dr. Farley. How are you feeling?” a woman in a white coat and scrubs asks as she walks in the room.

“She wants water,” Sebastian says.

Dr. Farley nods and looks back to me as if she’s exasperated by Sebastian, which knowing him, he’s probably been driving her crazy. “You want water?”

“Yes,” I whisper.

“Great. We’ll get you some. I just want to give a quick listen to your heart if that’s OK?”

I nod slowly and she helps me sit up, pressing the cold end of the stethoscope to my chest. She then tests my eye dilation and asks me to track her finger moving back and forth. Then she checks my reflexes.

“Do you remember what happened?” she asks after a few seconds of listening to my heart.

“No,” I manage as the nurse hands me a glass of water.

I take long sips of the cool liquid. Water has never tasted so good in my life.

“Easy,” the nurse whose name I already have forgotten says.

I slow down a bit, and when it’s all gone, Sebastian takes the cup and hands it back to the nurse.

“Alexis?” Dr. Farley asks.

I look back at her.

“What’s the last thing you remember?”

I frown and purse my lips as I try to remember. “I went for a run.”

“OK, good. And then what?”

“I went off the trail…and I went to my favorite boulder by the stream.” I pause, trying to remember. “I turned to head back and…that’s all I remember.”

I freeze as the worst-case scenario plays out in my still foggy mind. “Oh God…I wasn’t…” I trail off, unable to complete my thought.

The doctor shakes her head. “No, you weren’t assaulted in any way. It does appear someone hit you on the back of the head with an object. That likely caused you to lose consciousness. You have a concussion from that. We are running blood work to look for any sort of drugs in your system as your body’s responses were unusual when you were found. Your respiration was low. Your blood pressure was very low.”

I close my eyes and take a deep breath. A fuzzy memory starts to appear in the recesses of my mind. A man’s voice. Everything is black. He is saying something but not to me and then…nothing again.

I open my eyes again. “I…thought I might remember…but no.”

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