//
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?"
