Page 90 of Cuts Like An Angel: Part 3

Chapter Thirty-Six

William

William opened his eyes and immediately wished he hadn’t. A blast of bright white light slammed into the backs of his eyes and sent pain bouncing around his head like he was a pinball machine. He made a sound, neither words nor a real groan, but something unfathomable even to him. Was there a part of his body that didn’t hurt?

He tried lifting his head, but all that did was send a tight band of pain around the lower half of his body and he huffed out a sound.

“William.” His name, Rosie’s voice. Yet both of them seemed near impossible to grasp onto right then. Like he was sinking somewhere.

He blinked slowly, trying to force his eyes open so he could see more than the blurred silhouette of Rosie. Five long blinks and he managed it.

“Hey,” Rosie said. Her eyes were red and puffy, and it made him want to close his eyes again. She pressed a hand to his face, the warmth of her palm feeling so good against his cheek that he could have turned into it and gone back to sleep or wherever he was. “You gave us some scare there.”

“Sorry,” he said. He raised his hand to his face to try and take the annoying thing that was there—an oxygen mask, but Rosie caught his hand.

“You need to leave that on,” she said. “Oh, God, William.” She paused, rubbed her thumb against his cheek. “I thought I was going to lose you.”

“I’m not that easy to get rid of,” he said, his words strained, long and feeling like thorns coming out of his throat. “My bike?” he said, the words barely a whisper, but that was what he remembered. His bike, the dark.

Someone laughed from the other side. A deep male laugh. William tried to move his head so he could see who was there, but his head was too heavy. Maybe later.

“All this and the first thing you ask about is your bike?” It was Mark’s voice, Mark’s face coming into focus on the other side of him. “Good to see you awake. How are you feeling?” Mark smiled down at him, the same look of relief in his eyes that Rosie had.

“Like shit.” He licked at his lips, went to say something, but then his mouth wasn’t working properly, and his head drifted away somewhere. He was going to ask Rosie something and he couldn’t remember what it was. “I’m thirsty.”

If they brought him something to drink, he didn’t know. The moment the words left his mouth, he gave in and let his mind fall into the well of darkness inside him. When he did open his eyes again, he wasn’t sure if it had been a couple of minutes, an hour, or longer. “Rosie?”

“I’m here.” He felt her hand on his.

“What time is it?”

“Just after 3,” she said.

Just after 3? He tried to reconcile that in his fuzzy head, but it was a fight inside his head. Part of his mind tugged at him to take him down again, send him back to sleep, to dreams of swirling darkness. “Maria …”

“Mark went to see to her. She’s okay. I spoke to her on the phone a couple of hours ago. She’s gone to bed,” Rosie paused then and even though he had his eyes closed, he could feel her gaze on him.

“What?”

“You know you’ve been in an accident, right?”

He went to nod. What a mistake. Who knew nodding could make his stomach feel like it was being ripped in two? He let out a sound with it.

“Don’t try moving. Do you know what happened?”

He did, or he thought he did. Every time he tried to put it into his head to see it, something went dark. “I came off my bike.” That was as much as he really recalled, or maybe he was making that up and some part of his brain was managing to put two and two together.

“It looks like you went through a red light,” he heard Rosie say, and he tried to picture that too, but nothing would come to his mind about it. “They found the flowers,” Rosie said, “They’re a little crushed, but with your things.”

“I was getting them for you,” William said, “I wanted to do something special.”

He felt Rosie’s face next to his, felt her cheek against his and wished he could at least turn so he could hold her. Something. It was like being tied to the bed with needles going through every part of his body.

“I’m sorry.” It was all he could think to say, like he’d done something wrong and he wasn’t sure what it was exactly, but some part of him needed to apologise to her.

Maybe it was from his mother. He’d come off his bike once when he was nine or ten. He wasn’t exactly sure of the age. He’d fractured his wrist and she’d had to take him to the hospital. That was fine, but the second time he had done it, she’d dropped him at the doors of the hospital and told him to make his own way home. She had clients and didn’t have time for his shit. Someone had to work while he pissed about.

“I didn’t mean to.”

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