Chapter 39

"Fuck," I groan as I groggily wake up. The pain in my side now a throbbing ache instead of a searing pain. My eyelids flutter, but they feel ungodly heavy and as though I have no control over them—as with the rest of my body.

There are people here—wherever this is—but I can't keep my eyes open long enough to see who they are. I can hear them talking, but my head's so fuzzy that I can't place any of their voices.

How fucking high am I?

"Relax, kid." a deep voice echoes through my head. "You're lucky to be alive."

Fragments of a thousand thoughts run through my clouded mind, but darkness begins to creep back over me before I can put them together.

* * *

Opening my eyes, I look around, trying to place my surroundings. Slowly, I turn my head, and I'm surprised at who I find sitting beside my bed.

"Grant?" His name cracks from the dry and scratchiness of my throat.

"Welcome back, kid." His voice has a hint of warmth to it that I'm not used to. At least not when he's talking to me. He presses the call button resting on the bed and alerts the nurses" station that I'm awake.

"Cora?" I ask, but Grant doesn't have a chance to answer before the doctor enters the room.

"We can get into that when he's done checking you over," Grant reassures me as he stands from the bedside seat and leaves the room.

"You gave us all quite a scare, Mr. Millington." The doctor flashes a—too bright—flashlight into my eyes as he talks. "You'd lost a lot of blood by the time we you got here. We were a little worried for the first couple of days."

"Days?" I fight the overwhelming urge to climb from this bed and run after Cora, even though I can barely lift my own head from the thin mattress beneath me.

The doctor continues his examination, thoroughly checking my vitals and examining the cleanly sutured stab wounds in my shoulder and abdomen.

"These are healing nicely." He replaces the gauze covering my stomach before taking a seat beside my bed. "But I'll be honest, I'm a little more concerned with what we found from the laceration on your scalp."

"I got whacked in the head, Doc." I lightly shake my head. "I've taken plenty of helmets to the head over the years. It'll be fine."

"That was actually the issue, Mr. Millington. We did a head CT to ensure there weren't any contusions or brain bleeds from where your friend said you hit your head on the parking lot." He pauses briefly to open my chart on the tablet in his lap. "It showed something concerning, so we ran additional tests. The PET scan showed significant evidence of Traumatic Brain Injury."

"I don't quite understand what you're saying."

"It's likely that years of helmet-to-helmet contact is the culprit. I would assume that you played since childhood to have been as successful at it as you were."

"Yes." I nod. "Since about ten."

"There isn't much we can do in terms of treatment, other than behavioral therapies. But if you're suffering from things such as a lack of impulse control, fits of anger, lack of restraint, or irritability, this would very likely be the cause. And treatment would help."

"I don't," I cross my arms over my chest, knowing it's a lie, "have any of those issues."

"Well, you're quite lucky then." He continues to go over the other symptoms for a few minutes before leaving me.

Grant, who was waiting just outside the door, reenters as he leaves.

"Cora." I wince through her name as I struggle to sit myself up in the bed.

Grant shakes his head. "I went through the phone you gave to Abigail. She's not at her home address. I tried to trace her phone from the number in your contacts, but it's off. And unfortunately, with our phones scrubbing content every twelve hours, without more information from you, I really didn't have much to go on."

"I need to find her." I swing my feet off the hospital bed, and I groan through the shooting pain in my side as I push myself to my feet. My legs wobble beneath me, and Grant catches me before I fall to the floor.

"Get your ass back in the bed, kid," he demands in a fatherly tone. "There is absolutely nothing that you can do to find her that I can't help you do from this hospital room. "Abigail is bringing my laptop. We'll find her."

We have to.

I don't know what I'd do without her.