Prisoned - Marni Mann Page 0,75

It wasn’t either of those now. It was clear.

“Kyle…”

“Garin?”

“I’m right here.”

I felt him squeeze my hand, but I still didn’t see him. My eyelids were too heavy to open just yet. Everything was heavy. My muscles ached; my skin tingled. Every thought felt like it needed to swim through a sea of peanut butter before it surfaced and actually made sense.

“I need to see you, Garin. I need to see how you’re healing. Did Breath make good on his promise? Did he take you to the hospital?”

“Just relax, Kyle. They gave you some heavy medication, so if you’re going to open your eyes, do it slowly.”

Was it heavier than what Breath had given me in the past? My lids certainly hadn’t felt this heavy before. My body definitely hadn’t felt this tingly.

“I thought that whatever Breath had put in that needle…I thought it was going to kill me,” I said.

I lifted my arm to try and cover my eyes, but it was hard to move. Something was around my wrist, and another something was attached to it.

Wires. It felt like wires.

I finally got my arm up and blocked out the light. Slowly, so slowly, I shifted it down to let in a little at a time. I took a breath after each shift.

A little bit of light and then a little bit of air.

The air came in so easily, much easier than I expected. There was suddenly so much more air in here and much less pressure on my chest.

Why?

I blinked several times, my eyes now fully uncovered but still trying to adjust to the sunlight. Even though they stung and watered from the brightness, I could see Garin sitting in a chair right next to me. I could see his hand on mine. I could smell him.

Clean. He was so clean.

“Breath kept his promise,” I said as I studied his handsome face.

I couldn’t find a single cut. There wasn’t even a scab or a bruise. Not even a scar. That was…strange. Some of his wounds had been so deep; raw muscles had been sticking out of them.

“How did you heal so fast?”

“Heal?”

My stare shifted between his eyes as another thought occurred to me. “How long have I been asleep?”

“Eight days.”

“What? Eight whole days?”

He put his palm on my chest to stop me from sitting up. “If you move too fast, you’ll get dizzy, and your drain might come out.”

I couldn’t have been asleep for eight days, nor could he have healed in that time. What Breath had done to him would have taken months to recover from, and he would have been left with scars. But, if he had any, I would have seen them because his beard had been shaved. All that thick, coarse hair…gone.

“How did you get a razor? Did Beard bring you one?”

He took a second to respond. “You’ve been through a lot, Kyle. You’ve had a head trauma. I’m sure it’s making things cloudy right now.”

“Head trauma?” I touched my forehead. “Did Breath hit me on the head? What—” I cut myself off when I noticed his clothes.

He wasn’t in the black pants and button-down he’d been wearing since Billy’s funeral. He was in jeans and a thin sweater.

“Beard brought you clothes? Did he bring me any?” I looked down and saw the blanket that was tucked over me. It wasn’t scratchy gray wool. It was white and knit. And I was in a gown, a light-blue one. And I was lying on a bed with buttons on both sides of the railings that made the bed adjustable.

Why was I in a bed? With a knit blanket, wearing a light-blue gown?

Why was it so bright in here?

Beep. Beep. Beep.

I looked over my shoulder, and there were machines behind me—a heart monitor and an IV bag.

“Am I in the hospital?”

“Yes, Kyle.”

I glanced back at his face and blinked hard, waiting for the cuts and gashes to reappear. But they didn’t, and there weren’t any scars. Why was he fully healed, and why was I the one in this bed?

“How did I get to the hospital? Did Breath take me when he dropped you off? Did he do something to me?”

“You got here by ambulance.”

“An ambulance picked me up? On Margarita Island? Or did he take us to Caracas?”

There was pity in his eyes—pity like whenever Billy had been high and incoherent. Garin and I would just stare at him while he tried to put words together, but nothing he said made sense.

Was that me—muddled and unintelligible?

“We’re