When Markayla next became aware of anything, it was the intense pain in her left arm. She was confused at first and her head felt like it was filled with lead. She floated in and out of consciousness like one floats between wakefulness and sleep.
It took her mind a few minutes to get fully functioning again. Then finally, the terrifying incident of the night before came slowly floating back to the forefront of her mind. She felt her heart rate speed up before she struggled to open her eyes.
Bright light met her gaze. The glaring light almost engulfed her in its brilliance. She might have wondered if she’d died and gone to the afterlife had it not then hit her that it was the sun shining through the window of the hospital room she was in.
Her disoriented frenzy of confusion gave way to adrenaline-pumped clarity.
She had witnessed a man being murdered in cold blood. That man’s murderer then ran after her once she was spotted and turned to run toward… a door heading away from the main room? Yeah, that had been it. But she’d first rammed into someone wheeling a cart first, right? Yes, the cart with refreshments on it. The stout woman pushing the cart had yelled at her for it, totally clueless as to what horror had just transpired just around the corner in the next room.
Fearing it would take too long to maneuver around the cart and down the hall to the main room before she was grabbed by the madman, she’d turned and headed in the other direction.
The door she’d silently hoped to hell would open did in fact open. She’d run out into the darkened night. The rest was a blur.
Voices shouting… A loud popping sound… Screaming… A burning sensation in her arm… Blackness swallowing her.
“Oh, hey there. You’re coming around now, ay?” she heard a professionally friendly voice say.
Her eyes flew wide open. Panic overwhelmed her and she began to moan in fear despite the bright white smile just inches above her face.
“Shh, shh, it’s ok. You’re safe here.”
She looked up into a pair of friendly green eyes.
“I-I’m in the hospital?” she stammered.
The blonde nurse confirmed her suspicion with a nod and an unfortunate look in her eyes before saying, “But you’re going to be ok. You were very lucky.”
“Lucky?”
“The bullet grazed your arm but didn’t hit any bones or major arteries.”
“What? Wait. I got shot?” That would explain the loud pops she’d heard. “But what about the guy with the knife? He stabbed a guy. I saw it.” Her voice began to rise an octave or so.
The nurse patted her shoulder comfortingly. “Try to relax, honey. You’ll only—”
“Jack. Jack! What about Jack?”
The nurse’s expression said it all.
Markayla was too stunned at first to cry. Then her body began to shake as she wept silently. Then she wailed so loud that she could probably be heard all the way down the hospital’s corridor. Eventually, she was sedated.
She hoped she’d never wake up again.
ns216.73.217.39da2
and then Add to home screen.