Look For Me (Book 2: The Reality) 18+

January

Shooting pain.

Shooting pain is all I feel as my consciousness goes in and out, my sense of tranquility ripped from my grasp with a sudden tug.

I squeeze my eyes, the pain becoming unbearable when I blink or try to, at least. Everything is blurry; the area around me is nearly silent, aside from constant alternating melodic beeps. Then, I hear something shuffle beside me.

Another shooting pain makes its way through my head as I attempt to look. I can make out a figure of a body, but screwing my eyes shut and popping them open doesn’t clear anything up; they are still just a blob in the corner of my vision.

The person audibly gasps and clamors over to the left side of the room, “Someone, please! She’s awake!” The voice doesn’t register properly in my mind; the migraine makes everything sound like I’m underwater, and on top of my hearing being shit, my vision doesn’t want to clear up either.

This all starts to freak me out a little. I want to ask someone, anyone, what’s happening, but I can’t. My voice refuses to leave my throat.

“Oh, my goodness. I knew she was gonna make it. I knew it.”

I want to know what I made it out of. Why am I here? Where the hell even am I?! Making an effort to think does nothing other than cause another pain spike to run through the middle of my brain.

Other warm bodies enter in a flash, and the surface I am on rises slowly to fully support me so I can see the sheer number of blobs navigating the room.

“Hi there! Can you hear me, alright?”

Yes!

I try to tell her, but it’s no use.

My eyes get struck by the sun, but I can’t look away. “Her pupils are responding accordingly,” I shut my eyes. The migraine, paired with the pain of the light, is unbearable for me. “Can you try and follow the light with your eyes?” My eyelids clamp down harder as I try to make sense of everything around me, but my brain isn’t cooperating, and my body won’t listen. It’s driving me crazy!

“Well, we know she’s awake and responding to stimuli,” a man’s voice says.

The person who retrieved the others sighs in relief, “That’s a good thing, right? How long will it take before she gets better? Like, fully better?”

“I’m sorry, Becca, but there’s no telling if or when she’ll get better. This fight has been long, but she’s persistent and a survivor, so I’m hopeful about her recovery.”

Recovery? What am I recovering from?! Can someone PLEASE tell me?!

I want to know why I’m here!

“The best thing I can suggest for you is to continue talking to her, keep playing her favorite music for her, and even bring in more aromatics you know she used to like so she can smell them. This could help trigger something in her brain. This is promising for her condition, but it’s still a waiting game to see how the brain bleed affected her neurological function.”

Brain bleed? Is my brain bleeding? Or was? Is that why it feels like it’s going to burst any moment?

“Thank you so much, doctor. I was scared; it was pointless, as were the music and reading. I’ll keep doing that,” Becca, at least that’s what the ‘doctor’ calls her, says.

I blink and watch as most of the blobs leave the room. Aside from a couple, I can feel and hear them messing around with things around me.

Becca’s voice is clear in my ears as she speaks, “Hi, I’m not supposed to tell you your name in hopes you’ll remember it on your own. It’s Becca, though. I’m sorry I haven’t been here as much recently. I have a new boss who runs a pretty tight ship—tighter than yours.”

Ship? I have a boat?

“The doctor said I can come back any time, so I’ll try to prioritize visiting you now that I know you’re awake. I’ll even tell Harvey to come over and sit with you! He’s never doing anything anymore anyway.”

I feel her warm hand touch mine and instinctively try to hold it, but I can’t tell if it works. Becca sniffles with a small laugh, “Your finger just twitched! Are you trying to hold my hand back?” Wait, it worked? I attempt it again, trying to channel all of my strength into the feeling of her hand, “Yes? I’m going to take that twitch as a yes!”

I shut my eyes. If it were a possibility for me, I’d be smiling. There is no way everything is completely hopeless. From the sounds of it, the people here are taking care of me. They’re here to help me, and it calms me down a little to know everyone around me is friendly—or has been, as far as I’m aware.

Music abruptly plays, and I hear Becca again, “Hey, yes, she’s awake! And the doctor said we can visit any day. Yup. Visiting hours here are between eight in the morning and about ten at night. Yeah, you can stay as long as you want! I know. I’m relieved to know she’s getting better. Okay, Paolo, it was great talking to you.” The conversation ends, and the woman sighs, “Okay, miss thing, I got to get back to work.”

Her admission to leaving me makes my stomach churn, and the beeping that was melodic moments before is now quicker in succession, “Hey, hey, don’t worry! I promise I’ll be back tomorrow morning when visiting hours are open, okay?” She grabs my hand, “I promise.”

Becca’s hand leaves mine, and as I hear the door close behind her, I realize that the room is entirely silent.

My mind is blank. There’s nothing I can remember from before waking up, and I can’t even remember my name. Becca knows it, but I have to remember it.

It’s daytime right now. There aren’t any lights on, but I can see sun rays from my right. As time passes, the sun goes down, and the light disappears. I am soon left in near complete darkness.

My brain is not in as much pain now, at least. The doctor came a bit after Becca left and told me he was giving me what he calls ‘the boo-boo healer,’ ever since then, I haven’t been in immense discomfort.

I’m grateful because everything isn’t as overwhelming. Well, except for the overly clean smell. It makes my nose tingle, and I don’t particularly care for it.

My sleep passes, and the following day, I’m woken up by the sound of the door opening and footsteps shuffling in. I open my eyes and blink a few times. My vision comes through in spots, but I can see it is a short brunette girl with glasses. “Oh, good, you’re awake! I was scared I was going to disturb you.”

I recognize the voice as Becca’s, and my eyes flick over to the clock that reads a glowing 8:00. She actually did come as soon as visiting hours were open, and this girl is dedicated.

Becca pulls a chair beside me and smiles softly, “How are you? How’d you sleep?” Her hand finds mine, and she squeezes. “How about you blink once for yes and twice for no? I think that’ll be the best way to communicate until we can get you writing or talking.”

I blinked once in response, and she lit up. Knowing this conversation will go somewhere, she giddily pulls her shoulder bag onto her lap, “Okay, okay, this is so exciting! Okay, uhm, I brought so many things for you. The doctor said things you used to like could spark something, right? So, I brought your favorite perfumes and your favorite brand of coffee grinds. I don’t know if you remember, but I’ve been playing a playlist on my phone of songs you loved and even that movie you watched the night that—” Becca cut herself off. She shakes her head, her smile faltering for a moment, but then the girl quickly recovers and slaps it right back on, “So, what would you like to start with? One blink for smells, two blinks for sounds.”

I would love to have the chance to smell something other than disinfectant, so I blink once again, “Perfect, smells it is! I’m gonna start with,” Becca drags out her words as she fishes around in her bag until she pulls out a smaller plastic brown bag, “Coffee!” She opens the package and shakes it around before wafting it back and forth under my nose.

My eyes automatically close as the aroma hits my senses and triggers a happy feeling deep in my brain. I can’t quite place it at any specific point in my head, the lack of memories being the culprit, but I feel like I have smelled it before.

“You love it!” the brunette beside me squeals. “Okay, next up is your favorite perfume; I’ve sprayed this around the room whenever I come! You are a woman of excellent taste, so you didn’t waste time with those silly cheap ones. This one is the best-smelling perfume you could’ve purchased.” I hear her spritz the scent, and I open my eyes to find her with a piece of cloth that she’s coating in the smell. “This is your all-time favorite, Baccarat Rouge.”

As she puts the cloth near me, it smells like wood and flowers. It’s nice; I like it, but I wouldn’t classify that as my favorite smell of all time, although it is a million steps up from the room’s smell.

Becca leans over to look me in the eyes, “Are any of these doing something for you?” I close my eyes twice, and she seems slightly disappointed, “That’s okay! Honestly, I didn’t expect you to wake up so randomly. Especially while I was here,” She grabs my hand and starts rubbing the pad of her thumb over it, “They said you went into cardiac arrest and almost died a little bit ago. I wanted to visit when they got you stable, but work kept me out of state. I swear though, the very second I could I got on the first flight back to LA and came to see you.”

Is she my sister? Why would she care so much about me if she wasn’t? However, her skin is not even close to mine. She’s porcelain white, while I’m a lighter shade of brown. Is she my cousin or maybe even a friend?

It’s hard to decipher what’s what. I’ve had a brain bleed, I went into cardiac arrest and almost died, and contrary to what I assume, I have been here longer than a day.

“Here, I won’t talk about that anymore. I’ll let your brain process those smells before we try anything else like that,” Becca packs away the perfume cloth and coffee grinds before she pops up out of her chair with excitement.

“Oh! I know what to do,” She walks over to the table on the other side of the room and grabs something, “I’ll pick up where I left off the last time I saw you!”

I watch as she brings a massive book over and sits back down. Becca’s tiny fingers flip it open about three-quarters of the way through before she reads aloud, “Rose and William knew they were destined for one another. No matter the distance, they always reunited like they had never been apart. He tried to resist giving all of himself to her for fear of being taken for granted, but Rose never faltered. She loved William and knew this to be the truest, kindest love. Rose knew it with her entire being that they were meant to be and that they would find each other again and again in every lifetime.”