Page 18 of Frankie and the Fed

“She’s waking up!” I hear a familiar voice from the left.

“Mom?” I barely get out on a whisper. My voice is hoarse and muffled. I cough. How did she find me?

“Here’s a glass of water. Raise your head a little,” she says, and a hand is there behind my head to support me, to help me drink. I take a sip, then another.

I try again to force my eyes to open. My head is heavy, and my eyes sting. I open them into narrow slits.

“Hey, sweetheart.” Mom hugs me now, careful not to put weight on me. “You’ve woken up. You’ve come back to us.” She sounds so…shocked.

“Mom? What happened? Where am I? What am I doing here?” I’m confused, trying to remember what happened, but the world is a blur, just a mix of colors and sounds and pain. It hurts everywhere.

“She doesn’t remember,” I hear another voice say, and I try to turn my head in his direction.

“Dad?”

“Yes, I’m here,” he says, closer to me now. But I can’t turn my head.

“Where am I?” My face hurts, and there’s something white blocking my field of vision. I try to raise my hand, but there’s something on my finger. I try to shake it off me.

“Shh, calm down,” Mom says. “You’re okay now. You’re in the hospital.”

But I’m not calm at all. I raise my hand again to touch my face. I feel the bandages on my cheek. My nose is covered as well, and every touch hurts.

My mother puts a hand on me and shares a meaningful glance with my father. “Shh. Relax, sweetheart. Everything will be okay now.”

Why don’t they tell me what happened? I try to take out all the tubes in me. What is this? What did they do to me? What happened to me?

I struggle to break free, pull out the needle that’s stuck in my arm and throw it to the floor. I need to get up and run away. Michael will find me.

“You’re hurting yourself.” Mom tries to hold my hand to prevent me from getting up. “Calm down.”

“I can’t go back to him,” I groan. “I can’t.”

“You’re okay, Ayala. You’re in a hospital,” Mom says again. “We’re here, watching over you.”

I glance at Dad and see tears running down his cheeks. I’ve never seen him cry before.

A doctor, at least I assume this man is a doctor as he’s dressed in green scrubs, enters the room and approaches me. “How are you feeling, Mrs. Summers?”

I cringe at that name. I don’t want to hear it ever again. “How did I get here? What happened to me?”

“Why doesn’t she remember?” my father asks the doctor.

“It’s typical of trauma. The brain represses. Usually, most of the memories return within a few days.”

“So we shouldn’t tell her what happened?”

“Give her time. Don’t push her.”

I watch them, talking about me as if I’m not in the room. How did I get here? I have to remember. The shadow of a memory sits right at the edge of my mind, but it’s not ready to solidify. It hovers just above the edge of my awareness. Damn it.

The doctor keeps probing my body, and I squirm. “Stop, please,” I beg, but he continues.

The examination ends, and I close my eyes. Too tired to continue fighting, I fall back to sleep.

* * *

There is no sense of time in this place. When I wake up again, everything looks and sounds the same. The bright light, the beeping...