Page 28 of Dream Girl

My throat hurts; a scratchiness lingers in the back as I focus on my limbs to find where I can muster the most strength. Everywhere is numb, but one part of me hurts more than the others despite the damn needle sticking into the back of my hand.

This is a hospital room.

I groan, trying to take my hand off the bed but finding it to be stuck under a weight. Glaring down at the obstacle, my heart nearly collapses into my stomach at the sleeping figure of Amelia. Her small body is hunched over the hospital bed, hair everywhere with her hands holding onto mine with a hint of desperation in the tight grip.

She looks uncomfortable when she moves, moaning and breathing deeply into the hand that she has trapped under her. I move my hand away, and her head snaps up; the beauty on her face stays with anguish reflecting in those lovely brown eyes.

The pain medication is making me think of things that are already true by taking a more affectionate tone.

“Milo!” she whimpers, tears rolling around in her eyes. The redness rims her eyes, and she sniffs, lips struggling to not make a sound and hold back her crying.

Her head peeks at me from where I’m resting, and her hair falls over us, a trickle of the tips caressing my face as those inevitable tears drop from her eyes. She plops her head on my neck, sobbing and heaving while I try to remember what had happened.

I remember Christmas morning, the long line of that café, and getting a cup of coffee in my hand. After that, I can barely dig through my memories to find out what had happened.

“What happened?” I curl a weak arm around her waist, running a hand up and down her shaking spine to calm her down.

She has trouble telling me, but she still tries her best to sound somewhat clear. The room is dark, but my hearing works fine. Light is illuminating from my side, and I find the heart monitor to be too bright for a dark room with the curtains open to let my eyes feast on the snow falling down.

“You fainted,” she murmurs. “I was so scared!”

The hand with a needle feeding me pain medication smacks against the side of the bed, aiming for the buttons that let the top of the bed rise. I find it, and it takes a brain cell or two to get the right button without having the bed launching me out from the covers.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” she asks, upset and justifiably so since she did see me faint.

“Tell you what?” I turn my head, taking in her appearance.

She’s a mess; blonde hair tangled, brown eyes tired with redness rimming them, and clothes different from what she was wearing from before.

“That you weren’t feeling good!” Amelia chokes on her tears. “Doctors said that you have metal poisoning!”

My brows curl in skepticism. I would know if I had come in contact with metal in my bloodstream, but I haven’t had any injuries that would let me be connected to metals that can poison me to this degree where I lost consciousness.

Amelia sniffles, glaring with wet eyes and trembling lips. “They had to take the tip from a broken knife from your scar.”

She doesn’t dare to touch my right side while her hand hovers over my stomach, eyeing it with pain and wariness.

That would explain why my right side hurts. I press a hand on that tender spot, hissing when the stitches under the hospital gown move with my skin.

What bothers me more is the pain medication in my body that makes me sluggish and out of my comfort zone. I’m not in control of most parts of my body, and it’s treating my paranoia as a joke.

“They said that the knife hadn’t been fully wrapped in with your bones, but the bad metals bled into your blood,” she explains, and I comprehend it, but she doesn’t seem to.

“It’s fine. I’m alright.”

“No,” she exclaims, shouting at me with insulted indignant. “You almost died! I was so scared when you fainted, and they said that you stopped breathing twice in surgery!”

Her crying becomes more apparent that I am not taking this situation more seriously. I’m feeling too lightheaded from the drugs and with a swipe of my hand, the needle comes out with the tape sticking to it.

“Come here,” I command her with a voice that is reserved for the last resort if nothing works against her.

She’s usually a good girl, always listens and never focuses on anything other than me when I need her to be. The jerk of her shoulders is from her startled reaction, and she slowly climbs over the divider while I lift the cover.

It’s pink. The blanket over me is pink, and that is not the color of any hospital that I know of. I look at the pillow that we share, and it’s the same color. Bright, fluorescent, and extremely obnoxious.

That isn’t the concern I need to address right now as she gently fit herself to my side and glances up, shy and meek as if she is afraid to move too much in hopes that she doesn’t trigger a nerve on the sutured wound.

Amelia is very considerate.

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