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Author's Note
When a man claims he has been balancing on the thin line between life and death, any random woman can tell you that said man has gone down with the flu ;) I've been sick for a while now and slowly recovering, so my apologies for not having posted Chapter 11.
It has been the most appropriate moment though, since Chapter 10 kind of ends the arc of introducing Vincent, Jenny and Talitha. From Chapter 11 onwards, one may consider this 'Part II: Aftermath', where they try to deal with the events from the warehouse.
So, hoping you'll enjoy the rest of the story as well!
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Chapter 11.1 – 12 December – Waking up
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He had read multiple times about people who'd claimed they felt like they were overrun by a truck. He always thought they were exaggerating. That is, until now.
The first thing he felt was that he was sore all over. He could hardly move his fingers, let alone his arms or legs. Wiggling a toe was just managable, he realized. Opening his eyes wasn't, though. His eyelids seemed to be stuck with a superglue or something. And when he tried to open them, futile as it were, he also realized he had a splitting headache. One which didn't leave after he stopped trying to get his eyes open – and he groaned.
Well, at least my voice still works,
he thought bitterly.
"At least you're alive",
somebody else replied.
He didn't see anyone and he had such a headache that he didn't recognize the voice. He would've asked who the other was – but that seemed too much effort.
"Alive. Wonderful. If it hurts this bad to be alive, I don't look much forward to be in hell."
Laughter. He had expected his head to burst due to the booming laugh, but the pain didn't intensify. There was merely laughter.
"As long as you can joke around like that, I don't have much fear for you to die on me. But I'll leave you alone for the time being and leave your recovery up to your visitors."
"Visitors? You're not?"
"Not me",
the voice said.
"I'm merely checking on you to see if you need an actual visit."
A pause. A hesitation. Then the voice continued.
"I suppose you haven't realized that I'm merely having a conversation with you in your head. I'll talk to you later when you've had time to wrap your head around the fact that you're in a hospital bed."
Hospital bed?
This time he struggled to see – cringed of pain – but managed to get his eyes unstuck.
"He's awake!" someone yelled – and this
did
intensify his headache. He groaned and deduced that closing his eyes was preferable to the lights at the ceiling – too bright for his taste at the moment.
"I'm awake, don't yell at me," he planned to say, only to realize that there wasn't coming out more than a gurgling, groaning sound. He swallowed – and realized his throat hurt as much as the rest of his body.
Someone put a hand behind his head and pulled him up, just enough for him to feel a cool glass hitting his lips. He hadn't realized how thirsty he was until he felt the glass – and he made movements to drink. Movements which were so awkward and haphazard that he didn't manage anything at all except gasping for air and trying to not drown in a glass of water.
"Relax. I'll help you drink," a female voice told him. He relaxed and the woman helped him drink.
He felt the water hitting his tongue and the inside of his mouth, then he swallowed. It hurt, but the coolness of the water helped stop the burning he had felt ever since he swallowed the first time. His tongue was thick and lumpy, as if he hadn't have full control over it. His mouth felt hot and sore – and his throat was barren and rough. The liquid wafting across it made it hurt less and seemed to sooth it, but it didn't cure it.
He opened his eyes and squinted towards the ceiling. Someone had dimmed the lights for him without him asking and he was grateful for it. He looked around with his eyes when the woman put down his head and took away the glass. His vision hadn't returned completely yet; things were still blurry and he couldn't fix his gaze on anyone specific.
He blinked a few times, each time it was getting easier to open his eyes after shutting them, and after a few seconds he could actually distinguish people in the room with him. The woman giving him water was Nicole – who else would be nurturing him when he was on the brink of dying but his tough-yet-sweet sister? On the other side of the bed was Jenny – his girlfriend since only a short while, but his best friend longer than he can remember. She was fidgeting, unsure what to do, the complete opposite of the girl who had always dragged him by the hand towards whatever she thought interesting or amusing.
There was another girl in the room. He noticed her before he could see her. A feeling, a guess – he didn't know exactly – but he felt her sitting in a chair just outside his view. He opened his mouth to speak, but his throat hadn't recovered enough to speak yet.
Great. I can't even ask her to come into vision. How can I even make clear what I want, what I need?
He closed his eyes for a bit, frustrated. But when he opened them, he saw a familiar face getting into his view.
"Don't worry",
she said.
"We can communicate like this despite your incapability to speak."
She hadn't opened her mouth to say that. And that wasn't because his vision was still too foggy.
At first he was gaping, stunned to hear her without seeing her lips move. Then it hit him – and with that everything came rushing back at him, everything he had experienced in the past few weeks and why he was here in the hospital.
He gasped, coughed, writhed and immediately he had two pairs of hands trying to hold him down before he would do something he shouldn't be doing – like getting up – and it took not even twenty seconds before he eased and lay down gasping for air. Nicole was already bringing the glass to his lips again and this time he was drinking with a little more dignity than the first time.
"Talitha!"
he exclaimed wordlessly.
"You're Talitha!"
She nodded.
"Glad to see you recognize me. Everything's come back by now?"
He tried to nod, but only managed to dip his nose into the water from the glass. Nicole took the glass away before he drowned himself unwillingly. He sputtered and gasped for air and felt the muffy air fill his beaten lungs – and coughed – which caused even more pain in about every part of his body he had. His chest felt as if someone had broken it apart and puzzled it back together imperfectly.
"Relax, Vin",
Talitha said.
"You're battered and bruised and I have no idea how bad it is. That's the bad news. But you live. And they claim you will recover fully with mere rest. I guess that's the good news."
"Jenny?"
he asked anxiously.
"Alive and kicking as you can see. I made sure she doesn't remember being kidnapped. All for the better, since it probably wasn't a nice experience. It's been a rough job though; I might need to straighten some wrinkels at some point."
He blinked. And he realized that although that was a solution for now, it wouldn't be permanently. Traumas tended to flare up and wreck your life if you didn't deal with them. But he supposed they'd get to that later, after everything was evened out and things were calmer.
"Our ... attacker?"
he asked.
"Will he be back?"
She physically looked away for a few moments before she returned to face him. He immediately knew she was holding back something even before she replied.
"He won't be back."
"Dead?"
