The Hospital Visit

It wasn't a needle that struck me, it was nail. A finger nail from the older woman that I had met in the alley way behind Ally's Alley. I had fainted from fright, exhaustion, who knows what else.

I woke up to Rascal looking over me at the hospital. My first initial thought was that we were both dead because the way that he was looking over me and his head was blocking the light which gave the impression that the light was a halo. Rascal was concerned, for once.

"Baby, you've been out for two weeks. What the hell happened?"
My voice croaked as I attempted to speak for the first time. "I was hoping you'd tell me."
"Jack found you down behind Ally's, passed out and we've been trying to wake you up since!"
"Ally's Alley?"
"Yea, did you go down there for a round? After hours?" He looked at me like I was up to no good and my heart sank past the hospital bed, for that was true. I was up to no good that night, and well, I was hoping in that moment that my feeling of guilt wasn't read all over my face as well.

"Can you get me something to eat? I'm starved."
"Sure, that's fine, just wait here."
"It's not like I'm going anywhere."
Rascal smirked and left the room, leaving the door just slightly ajar. I could see beyond the door into the hallway, white walls, white floors, pale lights. One just past my range of sight was flickering... it was really annoying. I finally had a chance to look around my own room. There was a curtain on my left, seperating me from the other patient in the room, if there was one. It was as silent as the grave over there.

I tried to piece the night that I remembered last together, from deciding to go out with Jack after his shift, to getting to the bowling alley, to seeing that woman. Who the hell was she?

The blinking light finally quit and died down the hall. As well as the next five lights that led up to my door. The hospital blankets don't give you too much to warm up to, as I soon discovered that a draft came through the open door. I buzzed for the nurse using the bed monitor for another blanket and closed my eyes. I figured it was just me waking up a few weeks after some weird reaction to the coma (if that was the right word) and I was just imagining things. Lights don't go out in succession like that, turning on maybe, but not turning off.

I heard the curtain next to me snap back, but I kept my eyes closed. I didn't want to give the appearance that I was awake, nor available to talk. But as I closed my mind to all that was in my room, and concentrated on the returning footsteps to my room, I could feel myself floating away again, and that stab once more. This time it was in my arm, but I fell once more into the darkness that I now feared.