Page 230 of Did They Break You

My eyelids feel heavy, and I’m not ready to get up yet so I turn on my side. But blinding pain lights through me and I hiss, staying on my back. My eyes fly open, white, sterile light harsh around me.

This is not my dorm room.

I lift my hand over my eyes to shield them from the fluorescent light of wherever I’m at, my pulse pounding heavy and hard in my chest.Where the fuck am I?

What happened last night?

And for one moment, I think about the razor blades in my room. I’ve been staying away from them, dumped into the trash. But maybe I relapsed. Because the grief hits me again like a train wreck. Cortland telling me to leave his porch. The past three weeks, partying every chance I get to try andenjoymy college experience.

To distract myself. Keep my head above…feeling numb.

As I dart my eyes around the white room, taking in the closed door, open blinds, and the machines around me, everything slowly comes back into my brain as I panic.

My heartbeat is erratic, and I scramble upright, glancing down at my wrist.

A bandaid, and a spot of blood beneath it.

What the fuck?

I remember the guy’s hand on me in the room with Lyza and the Ouija board. Going into the bathroom and…

Chase.

Oh my God.

I clamp a hand over my mouth, and feel something rough against my face. Pulling my hand away, I see a cut. Cleaned up, but diagonal across my palm all the same.

The baseball bat.

The glass.

Cortland swinging that?—

“Remi?”

I snap my head up, dropping my hand as the door to my room opens.I’m in the hospital.

“Van,” I say, my voice rough as he comes in with two iced coffees in hand, nudging the door closed behind him.

He looks disheveled, circles under his eyes like he didn’t get any sleep last night. He’s in fitted joggers and a white sweatshirt, and he crosses the room to set down our drinks on the tray beside my bed. I notice my phone there, facedown.

Van plops down into the little chair a few feet from the bed and he runs his hands over his shaved head.

“Van, why am I here?” I ask, the words reluctant to come out.

He rests his elbows on his knees, clasping his hands together as he looks up at me with tired blue eyes.

“You got stabbed.”

My stomach drops. That pain in my side… My hand drifts there now, over my hospital gown—I’m wearing a fucking hospital gown.

I drop my hand, clenching it into a fist on my thigh, scared to see the damage. To know.

“By Chase McGowan.”

The breath leaves my lungs.

“You saved Cortland Adler’s life by taking a knife to your ribs.”

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