for the evening anyway. Then everything receded completely, sucking away any knowledge of what was going on around me as I lay there, totally unconscious, while the rest of the world continued on its merry way.
Now I’m in a sterile, stark-white room. Not the ER anymore, so they must have transported me at some point. I glance to the end table next to the bed, hoping to find my cell phone, but it’s not on it. There’s a large pink cup with a bendy straw in it and I’m tempted to take a drink, but who knows if it’s even mine. They reuse these stupid gowns. I wouldn’t put it past them to reuse their beverage cups, too.
“Miss Carson?” A slight woman with salt and pepper gray hair peeks through the crack in the door. “Are you awake?”
“Yeah,” I murmur. I think I am at least.
She skirts around the bed and comes up to my side, fastening a blood pressure cuff around my bicep. She squeezes several times and the device hisses as she watches the hands spin on the wall nearby. “And how are you feeling today?”
“Today?” I glance toward the window and see the rays of light slicing through the metal blinds. They create horizontal lines across the parallel wall, like some type of striped, illuminated wallpaper. “As in, I was admitted yesterday and you want to know how I’m feeling today.”
She gives me a sideways glance. “Yes, Miss Carson. How are you today?”
I huff a gust of air that lifts my hair from my face. “I’m fine today.”
“And your leg,” she continues, recording something in the binder that’s hooked over the foot of my bed. “Is it causing you any problems?”
I lift the crisp sheet off my lap and glance toward my thigh, but it’s bandaged in several coils of flesh-colored medical dressings. “It’s fine, too. Err—I think it is. I can’t really feel it.”
“Miss Carson, you were in a serious car accident yesterday. How is your pain level on a scale of one to ten?”
I shake my head. “One to ten?”
“Yes—one being a paper cut, ten being your leg cut off.”
“Holy crap! Talk about your extremes,” I blurt, drawing my chin back into my neck. The nurse doesn’t blink. “It appears like I still have all of my limbs, so I’d say a five. What’s that compared to?”
“To a deep laceration. And since that’s what you have on your leg, I’d say that’s appropriate.”
“Well good then. I’m glad I match up.”
She shoots me a quick, humoring smile as she continues writing in my records. “Is there anything I can get you for now, Miss Carson?”
I push with my hands against the thin mattress and scoot upward in the hospital bed, but the muscle in my right leg is completely dead, and the act takes much more upper body strength than it normally would. “Yes,” I reply, still trying to situate myself in the bed. She comes to my side and grasps my arm to assist me. “Can you send my brother, Mike Carson, in?”
Her grip tenses and her fingers dig slightly into the flesh on my bicep, just enough to leave five little crescent marks on my skin. “No one has spoken to you?” Her eyes are wide and her lips quiver, though she tries to mask it. Talk about your terrible bedside manner.
“No, no one has spoken to me.” I give her a stern look that she attempts to avoid by staring down at my arm like she’s assessing something. “Spoken to me about what?”
“I’ll go find your father, Maggie.”
“I asked for my brother,” I clarify, but before I have a chance to ask what is going on, she’s out the door, and I’m left in the cold room alone, feeling numb, like I’m dangling upside-down all over again.
***
“Maggie Girl.” He breathes into my hair and the hot air should warm me, but chills my scalp all the way down to my toes instead. “Don’t you dare do that to me again, do you understand?”
Do I understand? No, of course I don’t understand. I still have absolutely no idea what is happening here, why I’m the one in this hospital bed, and why no one seems to want to give me a straight answer about Mikey.
“Dad,” I speak, my voice soft not because I’m trying to be quiet, but because it’s the only volume that comes out when I open my mouth. Even if I tried to talk louder, I doubt I’d be successful. “Seriously,