Nightfall ✓

Chapter 20

• chapter twenty •  

I opened my eyes very, very slowly. A single beam of light came in through a small hole in front of me. I was lying on something hard and I couldn't breathe. It took me a whole minute to figure out where I was: I was still lying in the backyard of that hotel, underneath the stones and broken stuff. The beam of sunlight looked like it was late afternoon. I don't know what it is about sunlight; but to me it seems that you can just look at it and tell what time of the day it is.

I tried to lift my right arm to push some rubble away, and screamed. It hurt too much. It hurt like the way it had hurt when I'd fallen down from a tree and broken my arm. I made some breathing space by pushing stuff away with my left hand. A huge red blister extended from my elbow to my wrist. It really looked like afternoon, now that I could look at the sky clearly.

Three names came to my head then: Liam, Ashley, Zack. A huge wave of pain crashed into me. Liam was dead. I couldn't get the vision of his charred body lying next to the drinks table out of my head. Closing my eyes made it worse. I tried to focus on something else. Like, getting myself out of this mess.

Groaning, I propped myself up on my left elbow. I felt nauseous, but I held the vomit down by shutting my mouth tightly. Then a sound came to my ears. A lady's voice. And then other voices. Five people were roaming about. Two of them were carrying a stretcher. They looked like a medical team searching for survivors. I wanted to call out, but I was scared that if I opened my mouth I would puke all over myself. So I picked up a stone and threw it in their direction. The lady, probably the doctor, looked at me. "Hey! There's a girl over there." They came over.

"I think my—" I swallowed, "—right arm is broken."

"It's alright." She smiled at me and examined my arm slowly, taking care not to cause me more pain. Then she took out a syringe from the pocket of her white coat, and injected the yellow stuff into my shoulder. The other guys then lifted me gently out of the rubble and put me onto the stretcher. That felt better. "What's...the date?" I choked out.

Unable to control myself anymore, I leaned over the stretcher and retched. She stroked my back. I lay back down again. My eyelids were drooping, maybe because of the injection she'd given me.

"It's 25th of August."  

I noticed that I couldn't hear anything with my left ear. "I've been knocked out for two days?"

"Yes, sweetheart." She looked at me. "Why don't you try and get some sleep? When you wake up, you'll be in a nice, comfy bed. Everything's gonna be okay."

Nothing's gonna be okay. I couldn't ignore the huge hole inside me. I felt so incomplete, like something precious had gone missing. I closed my eyes. Whatever I did, it was there in the back of my mind: Liam is gone. He's not coming back.

I fell asleep, and when I woke again, it was night. I was lying in a hospital bed, my right arm was in a plaster, someone had put cream on the burn of my left arm, and my head was pounding. There were bandages on the cuts of my leg. I could feel a band-aid on my face, too. There were two other beds in the room, but the patients were sleeping. Both of them were girls. My bed was next to the window. I stared at the stars outside. Everything hurt—from my body to my brain to my heart. But the physical pain was nothing compared to the emotional one. The inside of my chest felt like someone had dug their nails into me. A lump formed in my throat. The door of the room swung open and a nurse walked in. She saw me and smiled. "You're awake? That's good." A badge on her chest read 'Amanda, Uofl Health Care.'  "How are you feeling?"