The Favor 9

//

Author's Note

: This story is part of a small collection of Lesbian stories I'll be uploading this week. This particular one is an edited resubmission of a story that was previously posted on Literotica. Apologies if you've already read this. It is not my intention to trick people into re-reading something.

Enjoy!//

*****

"...moderate cerebral cont..."

"...no..."

"...for over an hour..."

Everything sounded muffled, as if the source of the sounds was near but the waves themselves had to travel through a thick cotton wall. It was easier to pick out her own heart pumping, like a freight train. Tracy groaned, her eyes moving back and forth beneath lids that weren't ready to open.

"... thing out of the ordinary?"

"No... No, she's been perfectly..."

She knew one of those voices. Jeff.

Jeff is my husband

, she thought, but when she tried to dig deeper, there was nothing.

Jeff is... my husband.

She couldn't remember anything about him. Not what he looked like. Not his favorite color. Not his birthday.

Jeff is...

"...have her scheduled for a CT scan in about ten minutes."

"What's, um... What's that—"

"We'll be looking for any bleeding in or around the brain."

"Jesus," Jeff sighed. "Do you need me to, like, sign anything?"

"The nurse is drawing it up."

"Should I... um..."

"Why don't you go sit with her?"

Shuffling sounds. Squeaking. Rubber soles on tile floor.

A hospital

, she thought.

I'm in a hospital.

Her body felt far. Distant. Or maybe it was that her head was slow. In either case, there was a delay between thought and movement. She tried to close her hand, but her skin felt stiff.

"Doctor!" Jeff said, from somewhere just beside her bed. "Doctor! She's awake!"

"Get the techs in here. Stand by with Dexamethazone, ten mg IV, and get the resident down here."

Pain flared up behind her eyes when she looked at Jeff, and she whimpered. Thrashing weakly. "Ow," she groaned, "

Owww!

"

"Baby, what's wrong?"

"It hurts!"

Someone pulled at her right eyelid, and Tracy recoiled from the bright light that flooded in. "Can you tell me where it hurts, Mrs. Huntsman?"

"

It hurts!

"

"Mrs. Huntsman, can you follow my finger?" The man clicked off his light and held up his index finger. Tracy struggled to focus, her brow furrowing heavily, and the pain erupted again when the Doctor moved his finger far to her left. "Okay, I need everyone out of the room."

One of the nurses turned to guide Jeff out of the room, but he protested. "Hey! No! I'm—"

"You too, Mr. Huntsman," the man said, as he picked up the chart on the end of the bed and made a notation. The last nurse out the door turned off the lights behind him. "On a scale of one to ten, with one being no pain and ten being the worst pain of your life, how is your pain level now?"

"Four," Tracy groaned, "I think."

"There are no wrong answers. Four? Are you sure?" Tracy nodded with effort. "What about just now? Before I sent everyone else away?"

"... Seven."

The doctor nodded. His pen made offensive, jagged scritchings as it traveled back and forth over the paper, and Tracy rolled onto her left side while covering her right ear.

"What is causing you more pain right now, light or sound?"

"Both," she whined, curling into the smallest ball she could manage. The doctor carefully set the chart back in its receptacle and stepped out of the room. Things were finally quiet for a minute, and Tracy was just about to sit up when she heard footsteps and went back into her huddle.

"Mrs. Huntsman," said a voice she'd heard earlier. Tracy grunted in response. "The CT machine is ready for you. We're gonna move you down the hall and then up one flight on an elevator." The nurse slowly walked around the bed, removing the brakes and adjusting the rails along the sides. "Do you think you can handle that?"

Tracy grunted again, nodding very slightly.

"Good. Okay. Let me know if the lights are too bright. We can get you a mask if you need it."

***

Tracy sat up when the nurse stepped out and counted. The ache behind her eyes was intense, even through the medication. The room being darker helped. She lifted her right hand and probed the bandages above her temple, and felt nothing when she pressed her fingers against the covering. It still felt swollen compared to the left side of her head.

There was bustle outside of her room, but it all blended together into noise. She had to focus to make out the individual nurses. She knew them all by name now. They came in every half hour, on the dot, to check on her. It had been every ten minutes for the whole first day she was there. Monitoring her pain level, her blood pressure, and a dozen other things.

Tracy hated it. She felt like she was under a microscope. It would have been better if she could remember more, but the few details she could recall of anything were only enough to give her hundreds more questions. Thousands. The confusion ate at her.

She slid to the side of her bed and tested standing up again. No dizziness.

She pushed herself away from the bed, and smiled when she could support herself completely. The first step was a little wobbly, and the second was slightly worse. She had to lean forward and grab the armrest of the chair to steady herself before equilibrium returned. The tile felt cool under her feet.

She looked around the room again and still felt lost. Nothing struck her as familiar. Not even the clothes on the armchair she assumed were hers. Jeans and a blue blouse, with a pair of wedge-heel boots. She looked down and flexed her toes. Light blue polish on her nails.

She couldn't remember painting them, or if getting her nails done at a salon was something she did. Not knowing herself brought another wave of disorientation and dizziness; one that passed more slowly than the last. Tracy leaned on the chair more completely, eyes closed, and blew several long breaths out through pursed lips.

With every breath, she felt a little bit better. A little bit less 'lost in her own skin', although well short of anything resembling normal. She couldn't remember what normal was. Wouldn't recognize normal if it came up and introduced itself politely.

If you're going to do this,

she told herself,

do it now. Otherwise you're waiting another half hour.

Tracy reached into the pocket of the jeans folded neatly on the chair and pulled out her phone. It had taken her most of the night, discreetly attempting to access it when the nurses weren't looking, to figure out that hers had a biometric thumb scan.

Footsteps. Tracy took a half step backwards, getting her closer to her bed just in case, and then breathed a sigh of relief when the nurse kept on going.

The home screen of her phone was a picture of her and Jeff, shoulder to shoulder, each enjoying a glass of wine. Smiling honestly. Two younger women, barely more than girls, leaned over their outer shoulders. One on each side. The one on the left, the younger one if Tracy had to guess, was the one reaching forward to take the picture.

Larissa and Shawnee

.

Their skin was lighter than hers, and still a fair bit darker than Jeff's, but they definitely had her hair. Waves upon waves of voluminous curls. Tracy stared at the picture for several minutes, waiting for the moment to strike when she felt something. The pull of maternal instinct, or an emotional reaction of some kind. Of any kind. For any of them.

She recognized them, enough to put names to them, but no more. Simultaneously daughters and strangers.

Tracy awkwardly navigated through the phone, scrolling through a lengthy list of contacts. Some registered not at all. Most of them seemed familiar, although no faces presented themselves to go along with those names. It wasn't until she got near the end of the list, sorted by recent activity, that a single detail rose from the depths of the murk.

"

Hullo?

" asked the voice on the other end, after picking up on the third ring.

"Is this... Brit?"

"

It is... Hi Tracy. Is um... is something wrong?

" Her sharp London accent was a surprise.

"You owe me," Tracy said, her voice shaking slightly.

"

Come again?

"

"You... owe me."

The voice at the other end sighed. "

Yeah alright. What can I do?

"

***

Tracy looked backwards nervously as she tossed her discarded bandage into a trash can. She'd made it outside, in front of the hospital, and no one had attempted to stop her.

"Should you be walking?" Brit called, through the open window of her car, as Tracy approached the passenger door. Her friend's feathered blonde hair hung loose around her shoulders.

"I'm fine," Tracy said, as she stepped carefully down from the curb and opened the door.

"Then why aren't you wearing your bloody shoes?" Brit's cocked eyebrow screamed her disapproval.

Tracy dodged the question, tossing her boots into the back seat as she sat down. "Just drive."

"You're not going to tell me why I'm picking you up from the ER, or why you look like an extra in the first few scenes of a zombie flick?"

"

Drive

," Tracy said, more emphatically. Tears welled in her eyes.

"Alright," Brit said, as she stepped on the gas. "Alright."

"Thank you," she sighed, as she leaned back into the passenger seat.

"Where am I going?"

Tracy didn't answer. She just stared forward.

"Alright. I guess we're going

this

way," Brit said, making a right out of the hospital parking lot.

Traffic ahead of them was light. A four-lane road with a green belt running down the middle, broken at regular intervals for intersections. She knew what the signs meant; even the ones that were just symbols. She recognized all the letters. She could put names to the colors of the cars they passed, if not make or model. Street names felt familiar too, but that was it. That was the extent of her memory. Everything else felt alien. Other.

Palm trees lined the sides of the roadway, brushing the surface of the sky as they whizzed past like great green cotton swabs. Tracy watched the air scatter around them, swirling in their wake. Waves rippled outward toward the horizon, sending the clouds bouncing to and fro. Part of Tracy knew clouds shouldn't behave like that, and that trees don't actually touch the sky, yet she was enraptured. Utterly and completely.

"Trace?"

Tracy gasped, snapping back to reality. The jarring transition put a terrific pain behind her eyes.

"Trace, are you alright?"

"I'm fine," Tracy mumbled.

"Weren't you wearing that top on Friday?"

Tracy looked down at herself and sighed. "I..."

"You were." Brit's accent almost completely dropped the 'r' sound. Tracy latched onto every detail she could absorb, and found comfort in that. "Does Jeff know you're all good?"

Tracy glanced sideways. "Y... yes." It was weird to have others know more about her life than she did. "Maybe."

Brit gasped. "He doesn't?"

Tracy shook her head, and cried out, "Hey!" when Brit slowed down and turned into the parking lot of a strip mall.

"You've gotta tell him," Brit said, facing away while she turned her little car around. "You've gotta tell him. We're going back."

"You owe me," Tracy said, raising her voice to be heard over the road noise and the traffic around them. Brit brought the car to a hard halt, in the middle of the parking lot, and stared across the car at her. "Please. Just... not yet."

Brit slumped a little and put both hands on the steering wheel in front of her. "Every instinct is screaming right now to ignore what you're telling me and take you back for your own good."

"Please," Tracy whispered, her eyes watering.

"Ahh Jesus." Brit slid over and reached across the middle of the car, taking Tracy in her arms. "It's alright. It's alright." Tracy sobbed, leaning into Brit's shoulder, and wrapped her arms tightly around her middle. "It's alright."

"Get Fucked!" Brit shouted, out of her window, when a car honked at them a minute later. Tracy whined, leaning into her friend more fully. "Oh, sorry hun. Sorry."

"It's okay," Tracy whimpered.

"Seriously. Are you alright?"

Tracy shook her head. "No. I can't..."

Brit smiled encouragingly.

"I'm having a lot of trouble remembering... like anything."

Brit ran her fingers through the stiff hair at the base of Tracy's neck, scratching lightly, and pulled her hand back with a soft sigh. "Go on."

"I woke up in the hospital yesterday. That's... like... "

"That's all you remember?"

Tracy nodded, and her friend sat back in the driver's seat with a drawn-out 'whoa'.

"There's little things. Other things, but it's so random and so little that it's..."

"Alright," she said. "Alright."

"I couldn't sit in that bed any longer with them coming in and out, in and out. I needed to... I don't know."

"You can never sit still in your office either," Brit said, smiling. "You're always rushing off to handle one crisis or another."

"I am?"

Brit nodded. "They're gonna be in trouble tomorrow if you're not back at full strength."

Tracy blushed a little, her dark skin reddening. "You know, logically, that shouldn't make me feel better. I have no idea what it is I do well. It's hard to take pride something I know nothing about, but..."

"You're welcome," her friend said, taking her hand and squeezing it. Tracy squeezed back and nodded. "So."

Tracy wiped at her eyes with the back of her wrist, and laughed. "So."

"Not back to the hospital."

"Right."

"And not back home," Brit said.

"Right."

"So where should we go?"

Tracy shrugged.

"Okay. I have an idea."

***

"Here we are," Brit said, as she stepped down into the sand. Tracy held her right hand up, shielding her eyes, and looked back and forth. It was late afternoon, and the sun was close enough to the horizon that the water was practically blinding to look at. She glanced up the one side of the beach, taking in a few volleyball games and some joggers, and then back down the other way. Sunbathers, kids building castles.

Tracy shook her head. "What am I looking at?"

"This is where you got married," Brit said. Her lips curled up at the ends, but the smile didn't quite reach her eyes. Almost, but not quite.

"Married."

"Yeah."

"To Jeff."

"Mmmhmm!"

Tracy frowned as she looked around. None of it was familiar. Not the people, not the landscape, not the vibe. "How could I forget something like that?" she murmured. "Are you sure this is the place?" Not the waves. Not the ocean. Not the sunset.

Her friend nodded. "You've got pictures on your desk." A breeze kicked up, warm air blowing in from the Pacific, and Tracy turned her head.

The wind pinned Brit's clothes to her body in a way that defined her. It wasn't that the clothes were loose, or ill-fitting, but they didn't say anything about her. The sleeveless Iron Maiden t-shirt and jean cutoffs didn't talk, or, if they did, Tracy didn't speak their language. The way Brit smiled, with the sun on her face and her dark blonde hair streaming behind her, was definitely saying something. It spoke to Tracy. The way her toes clenched, bunching beneath the sand. The neck of her shirt whipped open wider for a moment, and Tracy saw no hint of a tan line.

"Do you like it here?" she asked.

Brit's smile widened dramatically as she nodded. Tracy turned around and squinted back at her friend's car, and wasn't surprised to see a roof rack about the right size to carry surfboard. "It's brilliant."

"I'm glad you brought me here first," Tracy said. "Didn't have to put my boots on."

"Yeah, I thought going barefoot a bit longer might go over well. You always have some pretty significant lift in the shoe department."

Tracy nodded slowly. She rose up on the balls of her feet, stretching her arches and calves, and a kind of comfortable muscle memory flowed through her legs. She looked down and watched quietly while tendrils of sand rose, twining, around her calves. The feel of it was light, like the sand was investigating her. She smiled encouragingly, and the sand moved to engulf her feet completely from the ankle down. Swirling around her playfully.

"It'll take some pretty high platforms to be taller than me," Brit said.

Tracy blinked in confusion. "I didn't..." The sand around her legs was gone, barely covering her toes. She stared sideways and squinted, and they both started smiling at the same time. "Very dry."

"

Very

dry," her friend said.

Tracy took a steadying breath as she tried to get a grip on herself, and frowned. "Do I really wear heels because I'm self-conscious about my height?"

"Can't say for sure, but that's a bit of a theory of mine."

Tracy sighed and nodded, absorbing that as well. They both turned back toward the sun and stood quietly for a few minutes.

"It's not helping," Tracy said, eventually, "but... this is nice."

"Yeah."

***

Brit bit her lip, and shifted in her seat while she drove. "Was... ummm. Was Jeff there? At the hospital?"

"At first," Tracy said, looking out the window. "The doctor sent him out of the room while they got me ready for some tests or something. I think he was there for a while after that, but that was... Friday? The doctors... I don't know if they were keeping me secluded on purpose, but... No. I don't think he came today."

"What about your daughters? They're not at home any more, right?"

Tracy shrugged. "I don't know if they know."

"And

you

have no idea what happened?"

Tracy shrugged again.

"That's gotta be maddening."

The sun had set behind them, and the sky was rapidly fading to deep blue. It was a clear night, though few stars could be seen with Los Angeles so close. Tracy stretched her legs out as far as they could go, and relished the strain of resistance when she pushed against the floorboard. The arches and calves. The tendons behind her knees, and her thighs. It felt good to be out and moving around.

"Where are we going?" Tracy asked.

Her friend laughed. "What kind of answer do you expect to get from that? If I gave you the name of the place, what could you do with that? Would it mean anything?"

"Ugh," Tracy groaned, leaning into the side door. "Fine."

"It's good to see you're still you. Restless as ever."

Tracy settled back into her chair and tried her best to be patient, but it was an ill-fitting virtue. She was just about to open her mouth to ask 'how long' when she felt the momentum of the car shift relative to the traffic around her, slowing where others were maintaining. She scanned the buildings ahead, but came up with nothing as Brit wheeled sharply to her right.

"Here we are," her friend said, as they came to a stop. Tracy reached into the back seat to grab her boots and swung her feet out of the door to slip them on. Brit scampered around the front of her car to help her, now wearing a pair of unlaced, low-top Chucks. "Easy. Easy." Tracy had to hold onto her friend more tightly than she had anticipated, and more than she wanted to, to get upright, but once she was steady, it wasn't so bad. Brit waited with her, smiling patiently.

"Is this a joke?" Tracy blinked and turned to her friend. "This is a joke."

Brit kept a straight face as they started walking.

"This isn't funny," she said. "Why are you taking me to Hooters?"

"

This

is your favorite restaurant."

Tracy blinked as she studied Brit's face. "I can't tell if you're joking."

"Not this time," her friend said, smiling lightly.

"Hooters."

Brit's smile got a little wider. "I can't tell you how many times I've heard you go on about the stupid wings."