Arcadia's Gift(10)

Beyond Amy’s talking, I detected what sounded like the rumble of a boat motor in the distance. My eyes scanned the water, but I didn’t see anything. I couldn’t imagine why a boat would be on the river in the dark. The Mississippi was notoriously dangerous. The rumble got louder, closer...surely I’d be able to spot a boat that big even in the darkness. I couldn’t tell where it was coming from. Sound travels oddly, almost deceptively, on the river valley. Sound waves bounce off the limestone cliffs and roll over the water strangely. When the rumble turned into a roar, Matt and I looked at each other with wide-eyes.
In the end, it was the spotlight blazing down the track, not the roar of the engine which alerted me to the train rounding the limestone curve of the cliff at the river’s edge, less than two hundred yards from my sister.
What happened next took only seconds. I jumped to my feet and screamed Lony’s name. In the glare of the single headlight, both faces stood frozen like deer. Matt and I ran over the rocky ground toward them as fast as our legs could move. Cane snapped to attention first and ran off the tracks. When he noticed Lony wasn’t following, he turned back yelling her name and reaching out for her arm. Lony snapped out of her shock and tried to run, but the heel of her sandal caught the edge of the wood rail, sending her sprawling to the ground. In the same instant, a power surge flashed through my body, twenty yards away, flinging me onto my back. The world faded to black.






 
    Nine by Night: A Multi-Author Urban Fantasy Bundle of Kickass Heroines, Adventure,   Magic
    
 


 

Chapter 6


My hearing came back first. An annoying rhythmic beep plucked on my nerves like harp strings. I thought it was my alarm clock, and I was late for school. I tried to shut it off, but my arm felt as if it were pinned at my side by a tangle of snakes.
I cracked my eyes open to see a strange room with dingy, white wallpaper and a TV mounted from the ceiling. Where am I? I struggled to call out, my vocal cords burned and something was jammed in my mouth. Although I could breathe fine, the fat tube down my throat sent me into a claustrophobic panic. My hands fumbled like they were wearing thick mittens, but I managed to rip the IV tube out of my arm. The annoying beeps escalated, sending a nurse dashing into the room to stop me just as I began wrestling with the tube in my mouth.
“Relax, Honey,” the nurse murmured as she pinned my arms to my sides. “Be still. You’re going to hurt yourself.”
My arm leaked crimson dots onto the crisp sheet from the IV hole. I tried slowing my breathing down to suppress the panic urges. The nurse brushed a sweaty lock of hair back from my face and checked me over carefully. She smelled like vanilla and hand sanitizer. A plastic nametag on her shirt told me her name was Jenny.
“It’s okay…you’re going to be okay. Just relax,” Jenny whispered as she pressed a call button for the nurse’s station and asked for a doctor to be paged. My eyes watered with fear, and I bit down on the tube tightly. She swiftly cleaned up my bloody arm and re-inserted the fat IV needle. A doctor in a navy blue scrubs hurried in and began asking the nurse all kinds of questions. Their voices seemed too loud, and I closed my eyes to fend off a headache.
“Open your eyes if you can hear me?” a deep voice asked.#p#分页标题#e#
I opened my eyes again to see the doctor leaning over me. He had shadowy stubble on his face, and his breath smelled like stale coffee.
“My name is Dr. Gibler. I’m going to ask you a few questions so I can examine you,” the doctor explained. “There’s a tube in your mouth which is helping you breathe. As long as the tube is in, you will not be able to speak. I’ll get it out in a moment. Until then, you can answer my questions with blinking your eyes, okay? One blink for ‘yes,’ two blinks for ‘no.’ Do you understand me?”
I tried to nod, but my throat burned with the motion. Now, I understood the blinking thing. I blinked once to let the doctor know I understood him.
He crossed to a sink along the wall and washed his hands.
“Do you know where you are?” he asked.
Duh, a hospital. One blink.
He dried his hands on a paper towel. “Do you remember what happened? Why you are here?”
I tried to remember, but I couldn’t focus my hazy thoughts. Two blinks.
“Okay. I’m going to remove you from the ventilator. This may be uncomfortable and your throat will ache for a while. On the count of three, I want you to take a deep breath and blow it out through your mouth. Are you ready?”
One blink.
Dr. Gibler deflated the cuff and counted to three. When I blew out, he pulled the plastic tube from my throat in one swift motion. Even though the flesh inside felt enflamed, I sputtered and coughed. Nurse Jenny handed me a Dixie cup of ice chips and popped a couple into my mouth. The cold liquid felt blissfully refreshing on my dry, gluey tongue. While she took my vitals and noted them in my chart, the doctor began asking me questions.