I didn’t have a boyfriend.
And while I couldn’t claim to have never engaged in casual sex in my life, I hadn’t had any strong urges to get out and find a man in a long while. It seemed unlikely – though not wholly impossible – that I had maybe gone out, chatted with a guy. Who maybe spiked my drink.
“Miss Holland,” the doctor said, voice a little firmer. “We need to talk about your test results.”
There were words then.
Words that made no sense, at least not with relation to me.
Words like cocaine.
Words like abuse.
Words like addiction.
Words that made them look at me differently.
Like everything I said was undermined by the fact that there were drugs in my system. Like everything was my fault because of that.
To them, I was just another drug addict.
Just another victim of an epidemic.
I sat there mostly in silence as advice on treatment was condescendingly handed to me, as the nurse gave me a pair of lavender scrubs to put on along with a pair of flip-flops from the lost and found.
“Do you need to call anyone?” the nurse asked as I was handed my prescriptions.
“No,” I told her, not caring that my voice was curt as I reached into the nightstand to tuck the money into my pocket.
With that, I signed my release paperwork, and walked out of the hospital.
I should have been panicking.
I should have been thinking about my credit cards, my lost time, what it meant that I had cocaine in my system, what my work thought. The fact that I had no cell phone to try to start getting my life back together.
But my mind felt foggy.
My body was numb.
Maybe this was what they meant when they talked about shock.
Maybe I was in shock now that everything had been brought to light.
All I knew was that I moved down the street, following the high, looming sign for a motel. I would never get into a reputable place with no ID, no credit card. But seedy roadside motels weren’t nearly as particular.
Half an hour later, I was walking through a door facing the parking lot, finding bright, blood red curtains on the window, a brown and black paisley comforter on the bed that likely hadn’t been washed since Clinton was in office, wood paneled walls, and a heinous green carpet splattered with suspicious old stains.
The bathroom was no better, full of chipped tile and grout that was in desperate need of bleach.
The only comforting thing was the fact that the towels felt rough from washing, smelled strongly of too much bleach use.
I took both of them, laying them out on the bed, climbing up, settling on my back, staring up at the ceiling.
Eventually, at some point, unconsciousness claimed me.
Maybe I had been blocking the thoughts.
Maybe my brain had decided to protect my conscious mind from it, saved me the pain.
But, in sleep, it seemed to have less control.
It let go.
It let them come.
Eyes.
The eyes came to me first. Bright, icy blue, with black and dark blue starbursts shooting outward from the pupil.
Bright, but dead.
Dead eyes.
Staring down at me, squinting small with some effort.
There was a roaring, whooshing sound in my ears, deafening.
I could feel something foreign, something like liquid contentment coursing through my veins, something strange, unnatural. Too good, too strong, too much.
Something else was wrong too.
I was hot.
Boiling.
Like a fever.
Sweat trickled down my back, my chest, it dampened the hair closest to my scalp.
Everything felt itchy.
The brush of the shirt I was wearing felt rough, uncomfortable.
Like my skin was over-sensitive.
There was an urge to claw it off.
The white t-shirt I had on. It was several sizes too big. It couldn’t have been mine. I like an oversized, comfy shirt as much as the next girl, but this was a men’s shirt – coming to my knees like a dress, so wide that you couldn’t see my shape at all beneath.
Not mine.
Someone else’s.
Someone, I figured, who had a set of icy blue eyes with no life at all in them.
But I couldn’t seem to focus on that.
All that mattered was the heat, the way it slipped up every inch of me, raked me with its blistering fingertips. My fingers clawed up at the throat of the tee, sure it was choking me, cutting off my air.
But as I struggled to cool down, to breathe, angry fists met my face. Exploding sparks of pain, blinding, overpowering.
I threw myself over, scrambling, fingers clawing at dirt, sticks, leaves, brambles. More pain, the slicing of my palms, knees.
The tightening around my throat intensified, cutting off all air for a horrifying moment before it released suddenly.
No.
Before my necklace broke.
I shot up. Awake, heart thudding in my chest, a cold sweat making the lavender scrubs stick to my skin as my hand slapped down onto my chest, finding something missing I wasn’t sure how I had overlooked before.