Page 82 of Splitting Secrets
“Clearly, the past few months have caught up to her and she needs to face it—” One of the men from before argues back, but he’s cut off by a vicious growl.
“We’re in the middle of a war and she’s our best bet at winning. Do you really think it’s been beneficial to force her into this coma for...How long has it been? A week?”
I balk at that. I’ve been like this for a whole week? No way.
“She should be strengthening her body, not withering away to nothing,” the angry man continues.
“Of course, we don’t want this. We’ve tried everything to get her to wake up.”
Everything but bringing in this man who is serving as a beacon of light in my angry abyss. He sounds hot, but in the possessive, manly-man sense. If I were awake right now, he’d definitely be getting it.
Why can’t I put a face to any of these voices? Surely, they’re people I know if they care so deeply about my well-being.
“We need a healer,” hot-guy says, then his hand shifts from my arm to my forehead. “She’s burning up.”
Burning up for you, I think lamely.
The response from the others is too muffled for me to hear, and I realize that I’m falling back into the void. My arms reach out to grasp onto something and pull myself out, but there’s nothing there.
I’m falling, falling, falling until I hit the bottom and fatigue takes over.
This is fine. I’ll just take a little rest for a while and sit here with all my broken pieces.
“Sonny,” a new voice sings into the inky darkness.
This one is different from the others. I can hear it, but not in a physical sense, where the noise is filteringthrough my ears. Instead, it echoes throughout my mind, overtaking my thoughts.
“Sonny, are you there?” she implores in her ethereal tone.
I recognize this one. I know it better than the others, but I can’t assign a name to it.
My body responds to her cheery tone, filling me with joy and love for the first time in...God, I don’t even know how long.
They aren’t my emotions to claim, though. They’re hers. A symbol of everything she represents and everything I’ve lost.
“She won’t answer,” a second person calls out in reply. This one has a deeper, more masculine timbre with an odd accent skewing the words.
“Why not?” the woman asks.
“Because she can’t hear you,” he answers simply.
I want to scream that he’s wrong. I can hear everything they’re saying. I can feel them around me, even though I can’t see a thing. But when I open my mouth to speak, no sound comes out.
“Sonny, it’s me,” she tries again, ignoring the guy’s warning.
I like this one. She’s persistent, just like the man who came and put his hand on me before.
“Something broke her,” the guy speculates.
But the woman is quick to shoot that down.
“She’s not broken,” she insists, her tone leaving no room for argument. Feisty and sweet.
“Fine, but you can’t deny that she’s stuck,” he relents.
The woman doesn’t bother responding to his insensitive words.
“Sonny, can you hear me? I’m here with you.” I imagine someone spinning around in the darkness of my mind, a blur of red searching for me in the abyss.
