Lucy heard voices that sounded far away, as if she was at one end of a long tunnel and people were trying to talk to her from the other end. The voices were intermingled with the sounds of beeping and the whirring of machines, and when she finally managed to lift her heavy eyelids, they felt like weights trying to hold her under the deep waters of sleep.
"Carla, she's awake. Go get Dr. Kennedy," a voice said near her. She looked over groggily and saw a heavy-set Black woman with long eyelashes smiling at her.
"What's your name, sweetheart?" the woman asked as she lifted the side rail on the hospital bed and locked it into place.
"I…I," was all Lucy managed to say before reaching for her head with her left arm, only to find that it wouldn't move. She looked down, confused. It was in a very long white cast that was bent at the elbow and went all the way to her thumb.
"I know it looks bad, honey," the nurse said soothingly as Lucy groaned and leaned her head back against the pillow. "And I'm not going to lie to you; it was pretty bad. But the doctors already looked at your scans, and he decided to hurry up and cast you while you slept so you wouldn't have to feel nothin' when he reset your bones."
Lucy nodded and licked her lips. They were cracked and dry, and despite the drugged feeling in her bones, hunger and thirst hit her suddenly, making her open her eyes and look around.
"Water?" she croaked.
"Here," the nurse offered her a sip from a Styrofoam cup that had a straw sticking out of it. Lucy drank the whole thing in one gulp.
"Slow down now. The paramedics had to dose you twice today because you were fighting them so badly, and with that much juice in your blood, your body may not like much in it right now."
The nurse was right. Lucy felt queasy instantly and laid her head back again. This time she felt the bump on the back of her head and winced.
"Is my head OK?" she managed to croak out the words, though they hurt her throat.
"It will be," a male voice said from the doorway. An older man with graying hair and a white doctor's coat walked into the room holding a chart in his hand and stopped next to Lucy's bed, giving her a patented doctor smile.
"Honestly, we are quite shocked you don't have a concussion. You hit your head pretty hard, and there's a pretty sizable bump back there that will need some time to heal. Now, the cut on your forehead must not have come from the car accident because the blood was already dried on it." He said, lifting an eyebrow, clearly waiting for Lucy to explain. But when she didn't, he continued.
"That cut needed six stitches, but we did a fine job, and you shouldn't have more than a thin scar when it heals. Now, you lucked out tonight, young lady, because the snowstorm brought us a slow night—which is rare—and all the machines were ready for you when you came in. I think we haven't had a patient examined, X-rayed, and fixed up so fast in the entire history of this hospital." The doctor chuckled, and so did the nurse. Lucy said nothing.
"Your arm took the brunt of your fall, and you have three clean breaks in it, one of which is in your thumb." He said, pointing at the casted thumb. "You were lucky the breaks were so clean and not in places that would require surgery."
Lucy didn't feel lucky at that moment. She felt sore, hungry, thirsty, and…different. Lucy flinched as realization hit her. Carefully, she looked at the doctor, making sure to meet his eyes, and then at the nurse. No magic welled up within her as she looked into their eyes, giddiness and relief swept over her instead.
"Are you feeling OK?" the doctor asked, concern evident in his eyes—a concern that Lucy saw but did not feel. She nodded and sank deeper into the pillows.
"You've had a lot of drugs today your body may not be used to. Sometimes that can make people feel…wired or jittery. Other times, it just makes them sleep."
The drugs! Lucy thought. That was why she wasn't feeling a thread form between her and the doctor or the nurse. They must have dulled her enough to prevent it from happening.
"Will I get more?" she asked suddenly, making the doctor and nurse exchange glances.
"Not what you had in the ambulance, but we can give you pain medication if you need it. Are you experiencing a lot of pain right now?" he asked her, but before she could respond, there was a page over the intercom—someone paging Doctor Kennedy.
"I have to go, but Nurse Denise can handle things from here. I'll check back in with you before I leave." He didn't wait for Lucy to respond but left promptly.
"Are you in pain, sweetie?" Denise asked as the doctor closed the door.
"Yes," Lucy replied quickly and then added, "I'm also hungry."
"I believe that," the nurse replied with a laugh. "You're so skinny, I'm amazed you didn't break every bone in your body falling like that with no padding on." She said with a wink.
Lucy smiled weakly as the nurse brought her a cup with two pills in it.
"Now, this is Vicodin, and it makes some people sleepy, but a lot of people just feel relaxed. Either way, it should help dull the pain. Once we get all your information, we can get a prescription sent to your pharmacy."
Lucy nodded, took the pills and the drink, and made a show of swallowing them. When the nurse turned her back, Lucy quickly slipped the pills out of her mouth and into the edge of her cast so they were pressed between her wrist and the plaster. Better to save them for when the dulling effect of the current drugs wore off. Maybe she could find a way to buy some once she was out of here.
"Could I eat?" she asked the nurse hopefully.
"I think that could be arranged, but you should know this hospital isn't known for its food." She said with a good-natured laugh.
"I'm not picky, I promise," Lucy replied.
"OK, kiddo. I'll see about getting something sent up from the cafeteria. How about you close your eyes and rest for a bit first, though? Breakfast is in an hour when the kitchen opens. When you get up, you can eat, and maybe then we can get your details: name, age, address, insurance card. You know, the basics."
Somewhere in the back of her mind, Lucy knew that she should be panicking. When the nurse came back to get her information, the only question she would be able to answer was her name—and not even her last name. Come to think of it, she wasn't even sure that Lucy was her real name. She wasn't sure if she had insurance or what her address was, or even how old she was, though she felt it must be somewhere in the 20s. All of this would equal a very uncomfortable conversation later, but right then Lucy was exhausted, and the numbing effects of whatever drugs she had been given in the ambulance were still doing their work. She felt as though she could sink into the hospital bed and never come out again.
The nurse dimmed the lights and covered Lucy with a heated blanket before leaving and closing the door behind her. Lucy looked around the room: at the windows and the cold night behind them, at the machine she was hooked up to and the little green line that showed the steady rhythm of her heartbeat, and then down at her casted arm. It was heavy against her thin stomach, which growled with the added pressure, and Lucy shifted uncomfortably. With it bent and stiff the way that it was, there was no adjusting it to make her more comfortable. Instead, she reached over with her other hand to make sure the Vicodin was still there. It was.
Lucy sighed and leaned her head back against the pillow, feeling a sense of relief that at least for a few hours she could stay in her own skin, however bruised and beaten that skin might be. At least she wouldn't get tugged into a bond with the first person she made eye contact with. She closed her eyes and felt the warmth of the heated blanket and the soothing buzz of the drugs in her body, and it wasn't long before she was asleep.
A door, somewhere in the room, opened with a loud creaking sound that woke Lucy from her dazed sleep. There was another noise, but she couldn't make it out, and drowsily she began to drift out of her restful state, feeling unaccountably annoyed even before her eyes were open. There was no one in the room. The door was closed, and the room was empty except for her. Lucy looked around, confused, thinking that maybe she had been dreaming of the doctor coming in or the nurse leaving and she was just about to close her eyes when the little hairs on her arm stood up and a feeling of dread overcame her.
Something like the sound of glass cracking got Lucy's attention and she looked at the window farthest from her bed and let out a muffled gasp of surprise. Ice crystals were forming on the thick window so fast it looked as if the full force of winter were coming into the room at once. The temperature was dropping exponentially, and the crystals spread across the glass like lace, filling it up even to the corners and then spilling over onto the wall. Lucy's breath caught in her chest as the sudden cold reached her, and her shallow breaths made clouds in front of her like cigarette smoke. Her heart began to race, and she shivered despite the heated blanket that she hugged tighter to her chest with her good arm. She looked around the room frantically for something that she might arm herself with. There was a menace behind the cold that she could not explain—a feeling of sentience and purpose that her mind couldn't account for—and then a garbage can near the door moved ever so slightly. Lucy pushed back against the thin hospital pillows as if a few centimeters more of distance might save her from whatever was happening. She rubbed her eyes with her good hand, hoping that all the medications she had been given might be causing her to imagine or hallucinate, but then a filing cabinet next to the garbage moved, and then one of the stools on wheels that doctors liked to sit on rolled across the room like it had been pushed. Suddenly, the lights in the room began to flicker, and something that looked very much like a shadow stepped out from behind the filing cabinet and took a step into the room.
It was a shadow like no shadow she had ever seen before on a sunny day. There was no person walking in front of it to justify its existence, and it was a black so dark it seemed to be pulling light into itself, like a black hole.
Lucy tried to scream, but no sound came out. Her voice was frozen, paralyzed with fear and confusion. Some part of her mind tried to tell her that she was tripping from the drugs, that this was no more than a bad reaction to a new medicine and it would pass soon, but then the shadow began to move towards her, and suddenly she found her voice.