Page 91 of Cluelessly Yours

“But for how long? I need to see her eyes. I can’t have this baby without her. I need… God, Chase, I needher.”

Soft sobs echo around me, and my head swims with a throbbing vibration.

“The impact she took was significant, and honestly, she’s lucky herinjuries aren’t worse than they are. We have to be patient.”A third voice sounds familiar, but I can’t seem to place it right now. I can’t make sense of anything, really.

“But what about him?”

There’s a pause of some sort. It’s weighted, but my thoughts are too sloppy to understand why or how.

“As you know…his injuries are a little more severe. Now, we’re just watching and waiting.”

“Can’t you at least put them in a room together? I feel like they need to be in a room together.”

“Let me see what I can do.”

The voices fade. Time skips a beat and drifts to blackness. I don’t even see the water anymore. The world is a concept rather than a reality.

Roaring pain in my side seems like it should make me jump, but I can’t feel myself doing anything.

“You shouldn’t be here!”

“Ineedto be here.”

“Are you kidding? Look at my sister. Look at him!”

“Brooke, baby, let’s step out of the room for a minute, okay?”

Everything fades away, and I fall back into nothingness. It’s such a peaceful contrast to how I normally feel. And yet still, it doesn’t feel quite right.

Everything is…missing.

Beep-beep-beepdrifts into my subconscious, and I fight the pull of fatigue as hard as I can. My brain feels fuzzy, and I can’t remember what day of the week it is.

Were the kids supposed to be dressed up as something today? Or wear a special color?

I have the most nagging feeling that I’ve already forgotten something, and I’m not even awake yet.

Ugh. It’s getting harder and harder to make mornings happen, but I’m a mom. I don’t have the option.It’s time to get up for work. Time to get the boys to school. Time to start the day.

But damn, I’m struggling to open my eyes.

Did I finally try to use that new lash serum I bought off Amazon months ago? Surely I did it wrong if I’ve lost the function of my eyelids.

It feels like ripping a stuck Band-Aid off a fresh scab, and my vision could easily be described as legally blind, but I’ve done it—I’ve forced the hard start and woken up. Everything is muddled and mashed together, and light forms glowing orbs that distort my surroundings.

I blink what feels like one thousand times to clear the warped fog so I can get my ass moving, only to find that I’m not in my bed…or my bedroom, for that matter.

I’m not anywhere that I recognize at all.

Okay, scary.

I take inventory.

Stark white walls reflect unforgiving fluorescent light, and a scratchy white sheet rubs like sandpaper on my body. There’s an incessant beeping from somewhere to my right, but when I go to slap it like I do my alarm clock, a painful cord tugs at my arm.

Ow.

Shit. Is that…an IV?

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