What If

Chapter 42

"Jesus, John! She's completely pissed! Is she gonna be alright?"

"She'll be fine. She's just gonna have a splittin' headache."

"Do ye think she'll remember anything when she wakes up?"

Throb . . . Throb . . . Throb . . . Pound . . . Pound . . . Pound. That was the state of my head at that very moment. I was slowly waking up, but, God, I did not want to do so. Just lying there, my head was trying to implode with the force of a thousand nuclear bombs. I didn't dare move. Even twitching my eyes at the sound of their voices was enough to cause a 10.0 earthquake in my brain.

They spoke softly, just above a whisper, but even that was causing bursts in my head like multiple popping balloons. They wouldn't stop talking, and as much as I wanted to scream at them to shut up, I didn't, knowing that that would make my hangover much worse. But they wouldn't stop and they were making everything much, much worse by not closing their damn mouths. Instead, I squirmed a bit and did a light moan, the most I could do to alert them to my coherent state, but it still put dents in my skull as if someone was repeatedly stabbing me with an icepick.

With my movements, they immediately stopped talking and studied me until I was still once more.

"She's awake," the first voice said now in a full whisper. It still wasn't enough not to cause damage to my already fragile skull.

The mattress I was on top of starting shifting and moving independently of me, causing me to moan out even more in discomfort.

"Colleen," the other voice said softly. A hand was laid on my arms and shook me gently, but swiftly side to side. I groaned, the sudden rocking motion making me incredibly nauseous.

"Stop," I moaned quietly, my head just about ready to split open like a banana.

"Colleen, come on." He struggled to pull me up by my shoulders, but I resisted, not wanting to go anywhere or do anything. However, the man pulling me was much stronger and won, sitting me up and holding me there so I wouldn't lie back down. I had enough muscle control to keep myself stable, but my head said otherwise. I grabbed the sides of my head and groaned, sitting up not doing anything to help it at all.

"Oh God," I growled, nearly ripping the hair right out of my head. It was way worse than me lying down, but the person next to me had too good of a hold on me to even let me think of it.

"You're gonna be alright, love," he said. I recognized the voice. It was very familiar to me, but my head was under so much physical pressure that I couldn't put two and two together and I had my eyes clamped shut as to not allow any light in. "Ye just have a really bad hangover." He had his arm wrapped around the back of my shoulders and was squeezing me close to him. I buried my head in the crook of his neck and pressed myself there, trying to keep myself as still as possible so I wouldn't die from my headache. "Here, drink this."

I cracked my eyes open only about halfway. The room around me was brown, mostly wooden, and had almost no light coming in, but it was enough from absolute darkness to rip my brain wide open. In front of me was a tall clear glass, about two-thirds filled with water. I took it and drank it quickly. I felt severely dehydrated despite how much liquid I drank last night. I swallowed thickly, almost having trouble using my esophageal muscles, and handed it back to whomever, closing my eyes once again.

He rubbed my arm up and down and said "Feel better?"

"No," I said rather abruptly. I wanted him to stop talking immediately, manners not being my biggest concern at the moment.

"Come on," he said, nudging me a little bit. "Open your eyes. The sooner you do it, the sooner you'll get used to it and it won't hurt anymore."

I grunted, not wanting to listen to his advice at all. I wanted sleep and plenty of it. Darkness wouldn't be so bad either. He started shaking me when I wouldn't comply and I groaned loudly to get him to stop.