Chapter Four

I’m blind, not deaf

Hope

The ringing in my ears mixed with the noise of fluorescent light above me, and I regained consciousness. The smell of antiseptic, iodine, and blooded bandages told me I was at the Healer’s Abode. It was hard to breathe as if my throat and lungs were on fire. I coughed and regretted it in a second. All my guts were in agony. I whined and bit my dry cracked lower lip. Someone went into the ward, shuffling audibly the feet against the tiled floor of the infirmary to inform me about one’s presence.

“I’d recommend you not to do any jerky movements, Hope,” a sweet female voice declared. “My name’s Lucy Farrole. I’m your healer.”

Lucy Farrole came closer to the bed where I was lying. “I’m going to check your pulse and other functions. If you feel anything wrong, let me know, please.”

“It’s–” I coughed again and cried out of pain. “I can’t breathe.”

The bed beneath me cracked and started moving. The back of it rose, bringing me to a sitting position.

“Open your mouth, please, I’ll give you some water.”

I dried the glass my healer pressed to my lips in one gulp, but it didn’t ease the stinging.

“The burning feeling in your throat and respiratory tract could be caused by prolonged use of a medical ventilator out of severe respiratory failure you experienced after the operation. It happens rarely, but has a place to be.”

A medical ventilator? Respiratory failure? Operation?

My mind couldn’t comprehend this information. The last I remembered was Lewis and I, running out of the assembly hall.

And then we’d fallen.

“Lewis!'' The shout went out of my mouth before I had a chance to think. “My husband. Where is he?” I leaned against the bed armrest and tried to lift myself up through the unbearable pain in the abdomen and almost succeeded, but when a needle went out from the vein of my right arm, leaving behind a hot thin trickle of running blood, I freaked out.

A pair of tiny but no less strong hands pinned me to the bed back again.

“Hope, please, you need to stay in bed or you’ll pop the stitches.”

“Why–” I suddenly felt sick and dizzy, and it nipped my question in the bud.

“Hope, what’s wrong?”

An acid burp flew out of me. Fuck, I was so ashamed of it.

Lucy’s hand glided up behind my head, “If you’re going to puke, I’m holding a bedpan right in front of you.”

There was nothing I could throw up now, but the bloody spasm of gag reflex hurt me so mercilessly and echoed in the area where the stitches were.

Ranita, help me.

When the episode had its end, the bed beneath me lowered, and I found myself lying.

“What happened?” I asked quietly, “Where is he? Where is Lewis?”

Lucy Farrole was quiet, and this silence put everything upside down inside me.

“Hope, you need to rest.”

“WHERE IS MY HUSBAND?” I was inhaling and exhaling unevenly, what felt like a million piercing sharp blades in my throat. Why she didn’t tell me?

“Hope,” the healer broke the silence, “I’m sorry.”

No, no, no. No. It couldn’t be real. Please, no.

“The bullet went through him and got stuck in your spleen. You survived just because you fell on the back.”

That wasn’t true. It couldn’t be. No way.

“Lewis had no chance with the exit wound he’d got. He died on the way to the abode from blood loss.”

The blood on my dress. I’d thought it’d been mine. Lewis had been bleeding on me and I’d had no goddamn idea. The only loved man in my life had been dying, shielding me from the firefight.

“I’ve got to go,” I said and made an effort to jump off the fucking bed, but my body let me down, and I fell on the frigid hard floor of the damned abode.

“Marry, call the guardians,” my healer yelled. “Hope, roll over.”

I buried my nails into the tile, feeling them come off from the beds. My heart was pounding in my ears. When Lucy’s hands flipped me over onto my back, I opened my mouth and unleashed a deafeningly loud howl I’d never heard or even thought I’d been capable of.

Lewis.

My husband.

The love of my love.

He was dead.

The smell of the cheapest cigarettes burst in my nose. Two other pairs of hands grabbed my limbs. The guardians had come. I didn’t know why, but my entire body was fighting back. I should have been beset by a pain in my abdomen. Instead, I was suffering from the anguishing hurt in my heart.

“Leo, hold her. Hope, please, you need to calm down. You can harm yourself.”

I wanted to cry. Ranita, I would have washed the world with my tears for Lewis. If only I’d had them. But I had neither tear glands nor eyes.

“Why don’t you merely inject the sleeper?” asked a low male voice.

“It’s been only five hours since we took out her spleen and a part of her pancreas. Her organism is still weakened after the cult’s attack and might not be able to bear a dose of the sedative. I don’t want to risk it.”

But I wanted to.

I wanted her to get me sedated to death.

“She’s bleeding,” said another male voice. This one seemed older.

“Stitches. Ranita,” the healer swore. “Keep her still, I need to check.”

Two men pressed me into the bed, and the warmth touched my skin under the procedure thin rob.

“They’re in place,” she sighed, “Marry, bring the smallest dose of Bolutone. She’ll hurt herself.”

My spine curved from the choked cry.

“Hold her, boys, I need her vein.”

A stinging pin prick pierced the skin of my left arm. In a matter of a minute, I lost the ability to resist. Then I wasn’t capable of even managing a squeak.

“Let her sleep for a while. I’ll check Hope in three hours.”

The steps of three pairs of feet headed to the exit.

“Crazy bitch,” the older voice whispered.

“She endured the terrorist attack and lost her husband, Mark. Show some respect.”

I didn’t give a shit what they thought about me.

The door shut. I was alone in the infirmary. All of my muscles turned into jelly on the healer’s sheets. My head fell on the shoulder out of a lack of power to keep it up. The fucking fluorescent light right above me started flashing with a hideous shrill sound. A drop of water landed on the ceramic sink, but I didn’t comprehend this sound. My mind stopped working. I heard lots of sounds and didn’t detect them, or, couldn’t understand where they came from.

Fatigue and somnolence hit me so accidentally and hard. My skin crawled although it was quite warm here, and a thick blanket covered me. For the first time, I felt my eyelids (or what was left of them) flinched as if trying to shut, and it frightened me, but everything I did was breathing out. I was finally falling asleep.

“I am so sorry.”

This monotonous male voice took me unawares. The fucking sleeper took its part. I’d had to strain to murmur the question through a dream, “Who’s here?” There’d been no noise, smell, or hint of people coming in. I didn’t even feel the presence of the man, which happened rarely.

“You–” he faltered, “you can hear me?”

Even being drugged I realized what a stupid question it was.

The effect of the medication was stronger than me. Before the entire blankness devoured me, I deadpanned, “I’m… blind… not deaf.”