Page 21 of Doctor Enemy

That’s the first thing that I’m aware of when I wake up.

Groaning, I shift a little. A thin mattress creaks beneath me. The lights are so bright that they’re blinding. It takes a moment for me to even mentally register that I’m awake, and not just stuck in the world’s most uncomfortable dream.

Another groan slips out between my teeth, louder this time. My throat is dry as the Sahara Desert, and the sound comes out like sandpaper. There’s the creak of a chair, the thump of it hitting the wall as someone stands up too fast. Footsteps on the tile floor.

“Lori?” The voice is familiar. For a moment, I can’t place it. My brain has turned into a computer from the early nineties and appears to be working on the world’s longest lag.

Then it clicks with me.

I try to tilt my head to the side, but a large neck brace prevents me from doing that. “Olivia? What… What happened?”

My tongue is heavy. I lick at my teeth and my lips. There’s a split in my lower lip. It’s scabbed over, but it still tastes like blood.

“Oh my gosh, I’m so glad that you’re awake!” Olivia is suddenly in my line of sight. She clutches at one of my hands. There’s an IV in the back of it and another one in the crook of my right elbow. “Hang on, I’m going to tell Maddie.’

She vanishes from sight.

The moment she’s gone from view, the panic that had been sitting just under the surface of my skin rockets up to the highest levels. I try to prop myself up on my elbows, but the pain is too much, and I slide right back down, head pressing hard against the thin, starched pillow behind me.

My brain feels like it's been tossed into the washer and left on rinse. I try to figure out how I ended up in the hospital. There was… There was an emergency. I was driving to work. And…

The screech of metal. The squeal of tires. My face crumples, eyes slamming shut as it comes back to me. The accident almost replays itself in slow motion. The way that the car spun out of control, and how it felt to have the vehicle roll over on me. The seatbelt had snapped tight, and then the airbag had deployed.

Even my fingernails feel like they’ve been bruised.

I can’t keep the tears in. It’s like someone’s just opened up the floodgates.

“Alright,” says Olivia. “The doctor will be here ASAP. They’re all really glad that you’re up so quickly.” She spots the hot tears running down my cheeks. “Hey, hey, come on! Don’t do that! There’s no reason for you to be crying right now!”

“It feels like I should be crying,” I tell her, upset. I scrub my face, each motion more awkward and painful than the last. The swelling in my cheek is tight enough that it hurts.

Olivia grabs a tissue and comes back to the side of my bed, batting my hand away and dabbing at the corners of my eyes herself. It hurts less when she does it. “I know, you've got to be terrified. But—” She struggles to come up with something. “The surgery went great. You’re going to be okay.”

“Surgery?” My voice cracks halfway through the word. That makes sense. My head is killing me, and when I lift my hand past my teary eyes, it’s to prod lightly at a large gauze pad that has been taped there.

“The doctor will explain it,” says Olivia, dismissing the question. She’s smart. But if this is how her bedside manneralwaysgoes, then she needs to take a few more classes on it. “I’m more concerned about you right now. Listen, what—” She pauses to throw the tissue away. “How are you feeling?”

“Like shit,” I tell her, honestly. The tears are sitting there, just a wrong word away from falling again. I blink rapidly to try and keep them contained. “And confused. And thirsty.”

Thirsty seems like the easiest one to solve. The first thing that I do when a patient wakes up is offer them a sip of water or an ice chip to suck on, depending on their condition.

Olivia doesn’t offer me either of those things.

“What’s the last thing you remember?” She perches on the very edge of the bed. The mattress creaks in protest and the sound makes me wince.

It sounds like car brakes, refusing to catch.

“Being called in… And then… I don’t know. A crash.” I close my eyes again. My breath comes out in a noisy shudder. “Hanging upside down. I remember that.”

“Jason says that they had to cut the seatbelt to get you down,” admits Olivia. “And that your legs were pretty stuck. I can’t believe it. I was a little late getting here. I picked you up some chow mein on the way, and then my coffee, and then they put me right to work, you know? I was here for almost an hour before Cara hunted me down and told me what happened.”

“Cara knows?” That’s a stupid question.

Olivia must agree with me because she makes a face.

Then she says, “At this point, I’m pretty sure that the whole hospital knows. Maddie was on-call for the surgery, which means that Glenda was told within, I don’t know, seconds of you being sent to trauma recovery. And if she knows—”

“Everyone knows,” I finish. For some reason, that embarrasses me. The fact that everyone knows that I’ve ended up in the hospital myself. Even worse, I’m in here because of acaraccident. “I didn’t do it.”

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