Touch came first. If I’d thought things were painful before, I was in a whole world of hurt now. Every movement, every brush against my skin, all of it combined into an amalgamation of torture.
Then came the taste. Bile and something metallic that I hoped wasn’t blood coated my cotton-like tongue. With the way it throbbed, I had a feeling I’d bitten it.
My hearing came next, and that was what finally provided me with enough strength to peel my heavy eyelids open. The sweet sound of a woman’s voice humming a lullaby nearby was like a balm to my soul. I couldn’t quite pick out the words, nor couldI determine the owner of the voice, but it helped to relax me enough that the pain began to ebb. My vision, however, was just as fuzzy as my hearing. I could see blurred colours, lots of greens and browns and a large blob of blue that I assumed was the sky, but it was the slice of white that stood out starkly against the darker colours of the world around us that truly drew my attention. I stared, focused hard on that sliver of white nearby, until it finally came into focus.
No, not it,she.The source of the beautifully haunting singing.
She must have noticed me coming to because her lovely song suddenly cut out, and then she was kneeling in front of me, twin orbs of icy blue studying me with concern and a level of care I wasn’t sure I had earned.
‘Rhodes, can you hear me?’ she asked, her speaking voice just as pretty as her singing voice, though a little huskier.
I mumbled unintelligibly, but she seemed to get the message.
‘Okay, that’s good. Do you think you can sit up? I’d let you lean on me, but… I can’t touch you.’
I wondered what she meant by that, but another wave of pain had my body locking up when I tried to move, so I assumed she meant she didn’t want to make it worse by touching me.
After a while of lying there, waiting for the pain to subside, Kali’s sweet voice humming soothingly in my ear, I was finally able to open my eyes without feeling like I was being stabbed in the skull. Still, I groaned as the light attacked my sensitive eyeballs and raised a shaky hand to shield them from the sun. It was higher in the sky than I remembered, but I couldn’t trust my memory right now. I didn’t know if it was lower when I went down, or if my memories had tangled and converged.
I was pretty sure I’d just had another seizure, but without anyone to help keep track of me and my illness, I was going to struggle until my body eventually gave out and I passed through to the next life.
When I felt my pulse throb inside my skull, I knew I needed to get to my medication before it got any worse. I patted my pockets, only to find them empty of everything except my wallet and my keys. ‘Fuck, where are they?’
‘Where are what?’ a feminine voice spoke unexpectedly from beside me, and I startled, swivelling to see who was there. It took me a moment to push through the foggy confusion, but recognition hit quickly enough.
‘Kali?’
Something flashed in her icy blue eyes too quickly for me to catch before she schooled her features into something patient and kind. ‘That’s me.’
‘What… how did I get here?’
‘We were going to talk, then you collapsed and started seizing,’ she explained, confirming my suspicions. ‘You seem to be struggling to remember. Are you finding it a bit easier now, or are things still a little fuzzy?’
I frowned and mulled over the question. Were things fuzzy? Yes. Yes, they were. Another hard pulse rocketed through my head, and I felt a little dizzy, but it reminded me of what I was looking for, and I began patting the floor around me as I searched for the little orange tube.
‘Where are they? Where are they? Where are they?’ I chanted beneath my breath, dread and panic twisting my stomach into knots.
‘Where are what, Rhodes?’
‘Meds. Where are my meds?’
‘You said they were in your truck,’ she reminded me lightly.
‘My truck… My Bessie. Yes, they’re in Bessie.’
‘You named your truck Bessie?’ she asked, her amusement lifting the tone of the moment, and my eyes were suddenly glued to the way her full, pale pink lips tilted up into a smile. The skin crinkled around the corners, adding a depth to her otherwiseflawless features that only endeared me to her more. I wanted to lick them to see if they tasted as frosty and sweet as the rest of her looked.
‘Rhodes? Did you zone out again?’
I blinked rapidly, cursing my brain for failing me in more ways than one. I was behaving like such a creep. ‘Sorry.’
‘Can you stand up?’ she asked.
I tested my achy limbs, finding they felt stronger than before, even if they still throbbed painfully. ‘I think so.’
When I didn’t immediately stand, she sat beside me for a while longer before eventually releasing a small chuckle. ‘Are you going to stand or sit here all day?’
‘Oh, right. Standing. I can do that.’