Page 4 of The Beta: Part Two
He scoffs,“sure, that's going to happen. When can you leave? I miss you.”
My eyes fill with tears that I refuse to allow to escape. They won't help anything. “I miss you, too. I don't know when I'll be cleared to leave. But try not to worry, really. I'm alright, and the doctors here are amazing. Try to get some real rest and make sure you're eating right.”
That's all I can say.
My throat closes and I shake my head at the doctor when she gives me a questioning glance. I turn over on my side and wrap my hands around the security rails, letting their cold, unyielding structure comfort me.
I can hear the doctor still speaking to Jasper, telling him that I'm just very tired and that she will call with another update as soon as she has one, then she ends the call and addresses me. “Miss Graves, I understand why you lied to him, my alphas have lied to me before to keep me from pain, but when he realizes you aren't coming back to him he will have a breakdown.”
I sigh and press my forehead into the cool metal bar, “I can't go back. Devon won't let him keep me. It's too dangerous. If I can get well enough to relocate then he can be mad at me for leaving and let his pack help him through it. He will have to be fine.”
She purses her lips yet again, “and what about you? Who will help you through it?”
I sigh again, and my answer sounds weak and watery, “I'll be fine.”
Then I pull the awful sheet over my ear and hope she takes the hint and leaves me alone.
Thankfully, she does and I don't move again until the next set of medical professionals come in to try to force me into a therapeutic activity. This pair of nurses apparently specialize in the omega reproductive system and every possible thing in my body that is affected by it. They draw some blood samples and ask me to think very hard about reaching out to any unattached alpha that I think highly of to help me. They think if such an alpha exists he could come here and comfort me until they say I can leave. They say that omegas don't heal well or function well on their own after experiencing something like what I have.
My mind briefly touches on Corso, but I dismiss the thought almost immediately. When I saw him at the auction the thought of him touching me wasn’t a pleasant one; I realize it must have been because of the growing connection Jasper and I have. And no matter how I might feel about being with Corso that intimately again, I can’t contact him. After the way I left things, and why I left them, it would be cruel. I can't ask him to comfort me through something like this and put him through all that knowing I can't be his. I can't give Corso my heart and myself, and I refuse to hurt him more than I already have.
“There isn't anyone,” I whisper, feeling the intensity of truth of that statement like the tightening of a noose.
They're talking quietly in the hall now, with the physiatrist who made the phone calls, and I can make out snippets about a declining emotional state and how that will ruin my progress.
I tune them out. I need to rest for just a while. The conversations with my father and Jasper were exhausting and I don't have the stamina to suffer any more help.
I wake up again to a muddle of offensive scents destroying the safe bubble of nothing I've pulled around myself. I open my eyes to search out the source of the smell and find a nurse sorting through what looks like a lost and found box.
Wrinkling my nose, I cough and she glances over at me, “hello, Miss Graves. Sorry to wake you, but your therapy team asked that I show you these things, maybe one of them will appeal to you.”
She brings the box over and actually puts the thing on the foot of my bed. I draw my legs up so it doesn't touch me. She pulls out a red shirt that smells like charcoal. I cannot stop my head from jerking back away from it and she takes it away. The next garment is a jacket that smells so much like hot dog water that I have to fight to swallow down bile, she moves it out of sight quickly. Next comes a white tee shirt that smells like the overwhelming powdery perfume very old women enjoy so much, and I pinch my nose closed.
“Please. Please stop. I think I'm going to be sick. Please take them out.”
I've pulled myself as far away from the box as I can without falling off the bed and I do think I might vomit if I have to smell the stench of another anonymous alpha. The only scent I crave is Jasper's dreamsicle and his scent wouldn't help me in the way the doctors need it to.
Intellectually I know what is happening to me, and it is happening fast. Newly awakened omegas are almost always thrown very quickly into estrous once they begin having heat spikes. I've been having them for weeks and weeks, and I've been taking suppressants for a little less than half of those weeks, which is probably why I haven’t gone into estrous.
I understand that the medical team is trying to help me find an alpha to help me through the inevitable heat that is bearing down on me. I have an outsider's understanding that I truly am an omega in distress, and the doctors and nurses here are grasping at straws to try to keep me from the edge before I jump off.
I reach out and touch the nurse's arm before she steps away from the bed and say something that will probably just make them more concerned, but I don't know how else to say it. “It's okay, I don't want any more strange alpha scents. I don’t want anything. I want nothing. I can't have Jasper, so please let me keep this nothing. Just for a while. Then I promise I'll go and you all won't have to worry about me. I'll be fine. Just let me rest here. Just a bit longer.”
She tuts at me and presses her hand to my cheek.
I try to offer her a smile, but I can't bring myself to do it properly. Then she goes and I return to my place by the bed rail. I don't know why it comforts me to hold onto it, but it does.
I can’t tell how many long days pass into longer nights that only bring me dreams of Jasper calling for me with no way to get to him. I only know that I allow myself to drink the thick nutritional drinks, because I can't stand to physically eat actual food from the trays they keep bringing in. I have had two heat spikes and begged to be sedated through both of them. I have never been more grateful for pharmaceutical advances than in those moments when I was taken from the fiery torment of need and thrust into the sweet oblivion of unconsciousness.
I told the omega psychiatrist that I'd like to check myself out in the next few days, and she shook her head at me before she put another itchy blanket on top of the scratchy sheet covering me. As soon as she left my room I shoved the thing into the floor. I can only tolerate one unacceptable thing crowding me at a time.
Gripping tightly to the metal bar attached to my bed, I try to sleep as much as I can knowing the exhausting hell that waits for me once I finally do drag myself out of this bed and back into the world. The nurses come in and out, but I don't speak to them anymore. There's nothing to say. As soon as they leave, I do my best to reclaim the peace of my nothingness that their presence interrupts.
~
This morning I couldn't drink the drink. I just couldn't do it. I couldn't stand to smell it. I couldn't stand to look at it. I may as well have set the room on fire based on the reaction from the medical team. I told them I was fine, I just didn't want the drink, but they still started running every test in the hospital.
The psychiatrist came in to very seriously tell me that I can't go on this way and that something would have to be done. I nodded at her to get her out of the room and closed my eyes through all the remaining pricks and prods. My mind keeps bringing up images of Jasper, memories of holding him and being held, the creamy orange scent of him, his voice gasping my name, telling me I'm a good girl for letting him do whatever he wants to my body, and it is destroying me. I miss him so much.
