Chapter 150

Light flickers painfully through the gap in my lashes as I try to open my eyes. Completely disorientated and aware of noise and chaos around me, but it all seems so very far away. Strangely calm and floating inside a weird, weightless bubble of blurred reality, with sounds muted and distant.

I reach out to touch my head, disembodied with a heavy limb, aching so badly all over. I feel like my skull has been split wide open and throbs gnawingly, but a warm hand stops me mid-air. Bringing me to a focus.

‘Hush now there, darlin’, just relax. Momma Jo got you. You take it easy young lady and let me check your stats like a good girl. Don’t you move, ya’ hear. I won’t be just a tick.’ The caring honey laden voice of a southern woman washes over me and stills my movements soothingly. I flinch when her feathery touch awakens my arm, as though somehow it hadn’t been part of me until that second, and my limb tingles as I drift in and out of this strange fuzzy haze. Disembodied in my odd foggy world.

I have no idea where I am or what is going on. I can’t see properly, a sleepy blurring mist of movement as I try to focus and get the sensation that I am lying on a bed. I cannot be sure if that’s what is happening, although I am aware I am laying out flat and it’s not uncomfortable. I can make out forms, maybe people moving in front of me, and yet I have no clue what I am looking at. Everything disconnected, so far away and heaviness holds me prisoner in my strange state.

The harsh blinding brightness clicks off with a loud noise beside my left ear, amplified and echoey. It makes me flinch again and that voice comes back to me in a gentle wave once more.

‘Is that better honey? Lamp is a bit bright and you really should try and rest. It’s after two a.m.’

I can’t even make out the face hovering over me, despite its closeness, and the new shadows and darkness from what I presume is her switching off the lights for me, just makes it harder to see what’s going on. I am trying so hard to blink and open my eyes fully, they feel like they are glued shut and only as little slits with no real ability to see much.

A larger form further back appears, standing out in a white top and dark bottoms, seeming bigger than the blue haze of the woman nearer me and I can tell it’s male. It has an eerie large presence that draws my consciousness towards it like a magnet. It’s as though my mind seeks refuge in whatever it is.

‘Is she aware of what’s going on?’ The voice seems so very familiar to me, husky, masculine and warm, but I can’t keep my eyes open as I try to hone in on the shape. I can’t pinpoint why it’s so familiar to me. Fatigue swimming in as it takes over and I try to hold onto the reality in which my brain is badly connecting. I am so confused and trying hard to grasp any sort of understanding to how I got here.

‘She’s still in and out. Was a nasty, big old bump to her head, and with all that booze we had to flush outta her system, she’s just struggling to make sense of things right now. She be alright. Just let her sleep it off in the best place for her, Mr Carrero.’

My brain perks up at the name, brain connecting, clawing for recognition of the voice. It could be Mico, or it could be Alexi, maybe it could be Gino for all I can fathom right now. I just don’t know. Nothing makes sense, or even why they would be here with me in this crazy place. I am so out of whack, floating on a weird cloud of strange and yet my body won’t respond. I am trying so hard to see; eyelids heavier now and no longer under my control as they blank everything out. Fighting to keep them open marginally.

‘Does she know I’m here?’ The voice is so far off and low it’s almost inaudible. Deep, sensual, male, Carrero, but indistinguishable as to whether it’s Alexi or his cousin when it’s this far off and surrounded by beeps, clips, whirs, and noise, making everything blend into one.

‘Well, she has one mighty concussion and a hangover from hell, so it’s hard to tell. Now hush up and let the girl sleep. She will open them pretty blues again soon enough, and be wishing she hadn’t downed that boat full of booze to do away with whatever this little thing was trying to drown.’ She laughs merrily. A throaty and deep bellyache of a laugh but there is something kind about it and it’s the last thing I hear as I fall back into weightless darkness at an alarming speed. Trying to cling on desperately with a limbless body as I will myself not to fall down the rabbit’s hole. I struggle to stay in my conscious state and grip onto flickers of noise and movement instead.

I don‘t want to fall into oblivion. I want to get up and figure out what the hell is going on. How I even got here and what’s happened to me.

I have no idea at all. My memory is hazy and filled with odd images, flashes of dark, light, nonsense and breaks in thoughts. I blink hard again as I try to get them open once more and realise, lifting my hand to touch my face, that I have something over my nose and mouth. Feeling out the air tube under my nostrils that’s blowing a gentle breeze across my clammy skin and the distraction is enough to bring me back to the present once more.

I must be in a hospital, but I have no idea how I got here or even why. The last thing I can really pull together in my mind is being drunk and trying to get into Alexi’s apartment. How drunk and stupid I was. All I can visualise is waiting for him on his floor and drinking so much more booze than my body could handle. No wonder I feel completely headless, maybe I am still wasted as hell.

I wonder if I passed out?

I feel wretched, try to sit up, straining to move with soft grunts, internally fighting to throw off the blanket of darkness holding me down. Sighing and giving up with the heaviness of my body right now as another wave of fatigue hits me hard and threatens to pull me under. Still not attached in any way and I try and clear my throat to speak out as a last-ditch attempt to make them aware I am with them in the room. I hate feeling like I am a floating entity and invisible somehow.

Lifting my hands to rub my eyes open and clear the cotton wool surrounding my brain clumsily as heavy fingers twitch and slump on my cheek, lacking grace. Nothing is real or lucid and I could be high on drugs for all I know. Nothing is coordinated.

‘Don’t try and get up, just sleep. Shhhhhh.’ It’s that voice again, gentle soothing, caring and I know it can’t be Alexi. He would never sound this way when it came to me—the woman he loathes. The woman he takes pride in breaking at every turn. Alexi would not piss on me if I were on fire.

It has to be Mico, he’s the only compassionate one in his cousin’s world and I relax and not fight him as his hand cups one of mine. Bringing warmth to my limb that up until his touch felt numb and cold still. I want to be able to just get with reality and look at him, ask him why I’m here, what’s going on, but nothing works, and I am locked brutally inside my own weary head.

I can’t move or roll in any way, so weighted and achy and ready to fall out of orbit with every inhale. I can’t seem to stay awake. Being dragged backwards over and over into the quiet, and I am losing the energy to fight to stay here.

‘Cam, relax and rest. You’re going to be okay. I would never let anything happen to you.’ He soothes me huskily, a gentle fanning on my cheek of his breath as he leans close to whisper to me. The soft touch of alien heat as fingertips trail my temple and my face tenderly. The touch which ends all fight in me, almost as though he has some powerful magic, and like slipping silently from the surface of the water—I let go, fully submerging.

It’s all I hear as I succumb to the gentle waves lapping over my lifeless form and buries me in the still silence of nothingness.