Before Dawn. Morgan Rice
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been knocked unconscious on her seventeenth birthday and only woken up again on her thirtieth birthday? Or fortieth? Or eightieth!
She began getting increasingly agitated at the thought of coming face to face with Amy, Dinah, and Nicole, all married with children. She knew she was lucky to be alive, but the thought that everyone had moved on without her was terrifying.
Somehow, as though fueled by her intense emotions, she managed to get her eyelids to open.
“She’s waking up,” someone said.
“That’s not possible. She’s in an induced coma.”
“I’m telling you!” the first said again, more insistently. “She just opened her goddamn eyes.”
Kate could tell by the tones of their voices that something wasn’t right. The speed with which she’d been hit, the angle with which she hit the ground, the way her head had collided with the asphalt – she absolutely one hundred percent should have been dead.
Hearing their voices, knowing that she had somehow defied all logic to be still be alive, made her start to panic even more. She started blinking and began to be able to focus on her surroundings. White ceiling tiles were flashing above her and on either side were doctors and paramedics, all looking confused.
She tried to ask what was happening to her but she couldn’t move her tongue properly. There was something in her mouth.
She reached out with a hand, trying to grab one of the doctors. As she moved, she noticed the line coming from her wrist. It was some kind of needle, a drip or IV. The sight made her feel queasy – she’d never liked needles. There was dried blood on her arm.
Kate realized then that it was very soon after the accident. There’d be no blood on her otherwise, and no paramedics. They wouldn’t be rushing her down a corridor like this. If she’d been in a coma for years and years she’d be lying in some ward somewhere, completely forgotten by everyone, probably covered in dust and cobwebs.
Knowing that no significant time had passed calmed her down a little, but she was still unnerved by the doctors and the expressions on their faces.
At last she managed to reach out and clasp hold of one of the doctor’s sleeves. He looked down at where her hand was gripping him, bunching the fabric up. His face paled, as if he were looking at a ghost. He looked up at the paramedic.
“I thought you said her bones were shattered.”
The paramedic looked down at her hand, too.
“They were,” he said.
All at once he stopped walking, as though so completely stunned he could no longer carry on. They left him behind and he disappeared from view.
Finally, Kate felt the gurney turn a corner, and at last she came to a rest. The doctors were fussing round her, attaching her to different machines, all making their own kind of bleeping noise. She was prodded and poked. But with every minute that passed, she seemed to regain another faculty, or control over another body part.
She tried to speak but that thing in her throat was in the way. So she reached up and felt a sort of plastic guard around her mouth.
“Hey, hey, hey,” one of the doctors said, trying to guide her hand away. “That’s helping you breathe. Leave it where it is.”
She did as she was told.
“Let’s increase her propofol,” one of the doctors was saying to another. “There’s still a chance of brain swelling. A coma will give her the best chance of reducing damage.”
“She’s had the maximum dose,” the second said.
“Well then there’s been a mistake,” the first argued. “That paramedic seemed out of it to me. Probably wrote down the wrong thing. There’s no way that girl’s had the maximum dose.”
“Okay, fine, if you say so.”
Kate felt a tingling sensation from the place where the drip was inserted in her wrist. A weird feeling crept through her body, like the sort of tiredness you feel during a boring movie. It definitely didn’t feel like she was being anesthetized.
The doctors were all looking at each other now.
“There must be something wrong with the supply,” the first said. “Oh God, look into it, will you? The last thing we need right now is another lawsuit.”
One of the doctors disappeared, leaving just two behind.
One of them leaned down. He shined a flashlight into each of her pupils.
“Are you on drugs?” he asked.
She shook her head.
He didn’t look like he believed her.
“Because if you’re on anything that might interfere with the propofol we need to know. No amphetamines?”
Kate shook her head again. She desperately wanted the tube out of her throat so she could speak to them.
The doctors looked at each other, completely at a loss as to what to do. Just then, another person walked over to the bed. It was a woman in a suit.
“We’ve got an ID for the girl,” she said. “There was a card in her backpack. Kate Roswell from San Marcos Senior High School. The principal is going to get me the parents’ phone numbers.”
The doctors nodded.
“Or you could have just asked her yourself,” one of them said, gesturing to where Kate was lying in bed, wide awake, blinking patiently.
The woman faltered.
“I was told she was being put into a coma.”
“She was,” the other doctor said.
The two of them gawked at her, and they seemed completely stunned.
“Can you excuse us for a moment?”
They walked off together, in a daze.
The woman turned to Kate.
“Kate, can you hear me?” she said.
Kate nodded.
“And you’re Kate Roswell, is that right?”
Kate nodded again.
“I’m Brenda Masters, I’m a social worker here at the hospital. Has anyone told you what happened?”
Kate shook her head. But she didn’t need to be told. She remembered everything. The RV as it slammed into her body, crushing her bones to pieces. The blackness creeping into her vision as she felt death closing in on her. And Elijah. Elijah with his fangs bared, sinking them into her neck.
“Typical doctors,” the woman said. “They never think to actually speak to the patients.” Brenda sat herself down in the seat next to Kate. “You were hit by an RV. You’re in Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital. I’ll be working with you and your parents while you recuperate. Don’t worry, they’re going to be here really soon.”
Brenda patted her arm.
But the last thing Kate wanted right now was her family. They’d find some way to blame her, surely. They’d say she was reckless for letting the brakes on her bike become faulty, or for riding down that hill too fast. She could imagine her mom now, laying into her. Worse, she might claim that Kate was attention seeking because of Madison getting to go to college and her not having a cake on her birthday. A million thoughts crossed her mind and tears brimmed in her eyes.
A small frown appeared between Brenda’s eyebrows. “You don’t want your parents here?” she asked.
Kate shook her head again and one of her tears fell down her cheek.
The woman seemed concerned by the revelation. She probably didn’t understand why a seventeen-year-old girl who’d been in a near fatal accident didn’t want her family around her. She’d probably never met anyone like the Roswells.
“Did you do something you weren’t supposed to?” Brenda said gently. “Because if you’re worried they’ll be angry