Page 25 of Alpha & Omega (Alpha's Rejects #4)

I’m trapped inside a box. I can’t get out. It’s so small, and I’m suffocating. My fists pound on the metal, calling for help, but no sound comes out. The darkness is all-consuming, like it’s a living thing, swallowing me up.

“Help me. Help me. Please,” I cry out.

I’m trying not to panic, so I can think clearly, and find a way out, but there is nothing—no sound, light, or anything. I’m deprived of all senses except the pain in my head and leg. It’s excruciating.

Suddenly, there’s a loud banging, like someone is taking a sledgehammer to my metal box. The vibration is jarring.

The scene clears as if my eyes have just opened, and I’m face-to-face with a monster. It’s as black as night, with gleaming teeth and salivating. Its eyes are literal flames. The thing is huge, hovering over me. The beast raises its massive hammer over its head. I cry out before it slams down on my body.

The scene suddenly shifts. I’m gasping for breath, shocked to find I’m still alive.

Voices. Doctors. Nurses. Talking about me. Flashing lights. Poking me. Sticking me with needles. I can’t move. I’m trying to talk to them, but I can’t. I need to warn them about the monster. Everything moves together, garbled… light, sound, pain. I’m struggling to make sense of it all.

I feel like I’m being yanked into another world…

“Make sure he can see you when his eyes open,” said someone. It was a woman’s voice. She sounded kind.

My mind felt like I was walking through a thick fog. I heard things, but they were fuzzy, echoey, and disorienting. I didn’t know where I was or what was going on. The last thing I remembered was driving to Tony’s apartment.

I felt numb all over, yet achy and… heavy.

My eyes blinked open. Everything was blurry and the dim light was blinding. I saw figures… heads hovering over me, but I couldn’t make out any faces. But as the fog lifted in my head, so did my vision, and it started to clear. Soon, eyes, noses, and mouths appeared, and I could see color.

“There he is. I’m Dr. Torens, your orthopedic surgeon. Can you tell me your name?”

Doctor what? “King…ston.”

“What’s your birth date?”

“October… twelfth… nine… nineteen ninety… five.”

“Good. And what year is it?”

“Twenty-twenty-five…”

“Do you know where you are?”

“Uhm… hospital, I think.”

“Excellent. Are you currently feeling any pain at the moment?”

“A little… weirdness in my left leg. My body aches.

“Can you describe the pain in your leg? ”

“Tingly… burning a little. My head hurts, too.”

“On a scale from one to ten, how would you rate your pain?”

My eyes rolled into my head, still trying to focus and wake up. “Uhm… six?”

The doctor grabbed my hand. “Can you feel this?”

“Yeah…”

“Can you see me?”

She wore a white lab coat over pale blue scrubs and a surgical cap.

“Yeah…”

“You’ve been in a serious car accident. You’re incredibly lucky to be alive. Do you remember anything?”

I tried to move, but I was still so heavy.

Then, crunching metal, shattered glass, and someone trying to pull me out of the wreckage all hit me.

“Wha… I think so.”

“Hey, Kingston,” said a voice I recognized.

“N-Nach…?”

“Tony was supposed to be in here when you woke up, but he’s inconsolable, and he’s still got that concussion. We thought you might like to see Harley, but he insisted someone from the family should be here, so here I am.”

I turned my head to find the dark poof of curls spilling over his forehead. Nacho’s eyes were swollen and red from crying. Though he still looked a little blurry, I could make out the moles on his face over his tawny skin, which always were cute. God, why was I even thinking about moles?

“We’re all worried about you, Alpha. We… ah, thought we lost you. Everyone’s here this morning except for Pippin… we’ve had a bit of a setback.”

My eyes rolled again, trying to stay awake and not pass out. “S-s’okay.”

“Kingston,” said a woman’s voice, pulling my eyes in her direction. The doctor. “I’m the one who performed surgery on you. We had to keep you in a medically induced coma for a few days because you suffered from a concussion. We just wanted to protect your brain a bit.”

“S-surger-y?”

“You lost your spleen, and you had internal bleeding. And I tried to save your left leg. I really did, but you sustained too much nerve damage and crushed bone. Your leg was trapped for too long until the emergency crew finally got you out of your car…”

The bed was already elevated, so I lifted my head and looked at my legs, but they were covered in a blanket. “No… Not right… I feel it.”

Nacho grabbed my hand and stifled a sob.

“It’s perfectly normal to feel your leg still. You’ll have sensations there for a long while, from pain to itching, especially after trauma. The pain can take several months to go away, but you’ll have phantom sensations for a long time.”

My cloudy mind refused to believe it. I could wiggle my fucking toes, dammit. I had to be dreaming still, right? Or was I having a nightmare?

“No… I’m moving it.”

“I know this is a lot of information while coming out of a medically induced coma, but you need to be aware right away of what’s going on with you so we can start therapy and treatment, which will get you quickly back on your feet again.”

I shook my head as Nacho squeezed my hand, sobbing again. What she was saying rang true, but I was in denial. I felt my fucking foot. It was there!

“We had to do a below-the-knee amputation. You’ll be in a cast for a couple of weeks, and then we’ll put you in a brace and train you with a walker, wheelchair, and crutches. You’ll need to start strength training right away, which will get you healing faster. You’ll also go through rehabilitation, learning to take care of your leg and doing ordinary tasks again. Once you’re healed, we’ll work on getting the swelling down, which is perfectly normal. After that, we’ll fit you with a prosthetic. Most importantly, you need to quit smoking. It’ll hinder your healing process.”

Smoking? What was she talking about? Too many words.

She kept going on and on as nurses started to take my vitals, but I tuned her out as I pulled back the blanket and sheet to find my left leg covered in a cast.

“Kingston…” Dr. Torens pulled my attention back to her, but my eyes stayed on my leg. It was definitely shorter, but I couldn’t really tell. “Kingston, can you tell me that you understand what I’ve told you?”

As my brain cleared even more, the reality started setting in. Logically, I understood what the doctor was telling me, but I was still in denial. This felt more like a fucking fever dream. Or I was in someone else’s life. I didn’t lose my leg. I couldn’t have lost my leg. My toes moved. My ankle wiggled. I felt pain .

“No, no… I need my leg… I have to train again.”

“It’s going to be fine, Alpha. We all got you. You’re alive. You almost didn’t make it. That’s all that matters. Let us take care of you now,” Nacho whispered through his tears.

His words made my reality so much clearer. None of this was fine. Not one fucking bit. Without my leg, I couldn’t train to skate again to make money to get Alpha’s to stay open. All the hospital bills, despite having insurance, were going to break me financially. How long would physical therapy take? Would I even be able to work?

Everything about my past was just that—my past. I would no longer enjoy skating with my crew. Those days were over, and that hit me the hardest.

“This can’t be happening… God, what am I going to do?” I sucked in a loud sob as my future crashed around me.

“Kingston,” said my doctor. “Life isn’t over. You’ll walk again, and you’ll live a normal life as you’ve always lived it.”

“No, you don’t understand! It’s going to be all gone. Leave me,” I said.

She patted my other leg. “I’ll give you a moment to process. Please know we have people on staff you can talk to. We have therapists or a priest if you so prefer. I’ll send a nurse to check on you in thirty minutes and give you another dose of pain meds. We need to stay on top of the pain.”

I said nothing as the doctor and nurses cleared out of there, all except Nacho. I tried to reach for the tissue box on the table next to me, but he grabbed it and gave it to me. I took a tissue and wiped my face, though the tears still spilled, unable to stop them.

What a fucking way to wake up. I was in fucking hell.

“You too, Nate.”

“What? Y-you never call me Nate.”

“I need to be alone.”

“But…”

I turned my head away, dismissing him as my lip trembled. If I wasn’t left alone soon, I was going to scream.

“O-okay…”

Nacho quietly slunk off, and while I wanted to feel bad, I just couldn’t have him in the room with me.

I pushed the button to raise the back of my bed more so I could examine my leg closely. Then I removed the rest of the blankets from my other leg and compared the two.

The pain was growing, and moving didn’t help at all when I reached for my leg and ran my hand over the hard cast. My vision grew blurry as I grieved over my leg. Then a sob escaped me.

My life as I knew it was over. The future of my family hung in the balance. I tried so hard to help them and take care of them. And for what? Only to fail them, anyway?

By the time the nurse came in, I had finished sobbing, but my heart was utterly broken. She gave me more meds through my IV and tried to chat with me, but I ignored her.

Being already exhausted, the dosage she gave me completely knocked me out.

When I woke up again, it was dark outside, making me disoriented all over again until I recalled what had happened and that I was in the hospital.

My eyes adjusted and landed on Tony, who scrolled on his phone, the light hitting his face in the darkened room, still covered in bruises, but no longer swollen.

He must have sensed me because his dark eyes landed on mine before they teared up.

“Oh, god… King. I’m so fucking sorry,” he said, a sob escaping. “This was all my fault. When I got the call, I took myself out of my hospital room and came directly here. If I had just left him the first time…”

“Don’t be fucking ridiculous. You weren’t at fault for getting abused.”

My harsh tone made him wince, but he stood and scrambled about in the room, pouring me some water and handing me a cup. I sipped, drinking too much too fast, spilling on my front, not realizing how thirsty I was. He grabbed some paper towels and wiped me down .

“If I had just broken it off with him, then you wouldn’t have come to me and gotten in that wreck.”

I said nothing, desperately trying not to think about my leg—or lack of one. I almost hated myself for believing he wasn’t wrong. I shouldn’t blame him, but the anger at my loss grew all-consuming. It wasn’t only about losing my leg, but the loss of everything else because of it. I would be left with nothing after all that fucking work.

“It was a drunk driver, they said. They clipped you on your right back corner, which sent your car out of control. You spun out before you hit another car and flipped. Once your car finally stopped, another car hit you again. Two died, including the drunk driver. God, you’re so lucky to be alive. I’ve been grateful every fucking second for it.”

Tony started wringing his hands and rocking. “That would’ve been me one day if I hadn’t stopped drinking. God, what a wake-up call this has been. I almost lost you, King.”

I focused on the black screen of the TV hanging on the wall, not wanting to lose it in front of him. His telling me what had happened had me replaying my accident in my head over and over until I wanted to scream out the memories. To forget any of this shit had happened. But as I healed and learned to walk again, it would be a constant reminder every fucking day.

“Everyone has come to see you. Well, everyone but Pippin. He really tried, but—”

“I get it,” I snapped.

“Sorry… They’re all at Alpha’s now, taking care of the bar. Everyone’s worried about you.”

I nodded, my eyes filling with water. I didn’t have the heart to tell him I was going to lose the bar, no matter how much my crew tried or how hard they worked.

“Y-your boyfriend is really sweet. All those flowers there are from him. Harley makes you a new bouquet every day. He’s come to see you, but you’ve been sleeping the whole time. He rarely leaves the hospital. I can tell he… loves you.”

I hadn’t even noticed the flowers, but I looked through my blurry vision. They were similar to the first bouquet he made me for our second date. Pretty, simple, elegant, and a little masculine. That’s when I noticed all the balloons and stuffed animals.

“We all love you and miss you,” he said.

Tears started to spill as I begged for this nightmare to be over.

Tony reached for my hand, and when he grabbed it, I tugged it away, ignoring the hurt on his face. I didn’t want to be touched or to talk to anyone because I was about to fucking lose it.

“Kingston, please don’t hate me. Please.”

“I don’t hate you, but I’m tired, Tony.” Not only was I tired at that moment, but in general. I was fucking tired of how hard life always was. Tired that our country shit on us no matter how hard we pushed ourselves to have better lives. It loved to kick us while we were fucking already down. My reprieves in life were fleeting before I got shit on all over again. But losing my leg? That topped as the worst moment of my life.

“D-do you forgive me?”

I sighed, holding my scream in with a strength I didn’t know I had. “There’s nothing to forgive. Now please let me sleep.”

Tony left, leaving me in blissful silence.

I had always been the strong one—the one who held everyone else up. Those days were over. I just wanted to fucking break and shatter, so I did. I put my hands to my face and sobbed.

I fucking failed everyone because of one asshole who chose to drive that night.

Should I be grateful I lived?

I wanted to be, but I didn’t feel it.