The face I can't find
1566 Words
Lyra’s POV
When my eyes opened, the world felt wrong.
A pounding ache throbbed at the center of my skull, slow and heavy, like someone striking a drum from inside my head. My body felt weak, too weak, as if the mattress beneath me was swallowing every bit of strength I tried to gather. I blinked once. Twice. The ceiling wavered above me, shifting like water. My tongue tasted bitter, almost metallic.
I turned on the bed, but even that small movement made my vision smear into cloudy shapes. Everything was blurred. Distorted. Uncertain. Colors bled into one another. Edges dissolved. I could not tell where one object ended and another began. A cold wave washed through me. I did not understand what was wrong, only that my eyes refused to obey me.
Someone moved near the foot of the bed. I saw only a pale shape leaning closer.
“Good. You are awake.” The voice was gentle, steady. “My name is Ifeanyi. I am the doctor here. You are safe. Try not to panic.”
Safe.
He was saying other things, his tone calm and reassuring, but the words slid past me without meaning. My mind was struggling to find something solid to hold on to. Something familiar. Something mine.
But there was nothing.
I drew in a shaky breath. “Who am I?”
The question came out quiet. Too quiet. Yet it felt like it shook the room.
The doctor paused. I could sense the hesitation even through the blur. He took a step closer. His outline shifted, a soft smudge against the bright room.
“We will talk about that,” he began carefully, “but first I need to know how you feel. Do you feel numb anywhere? Can you move your fingers?”
“I cannot see,” I whispered. My throat tightened. “Everything looks… wrong. I cannot make out your face. I cannot make out anything.”
“You are partially blind,” he said gently. “And partially Deaf. It is temporary. Your body went through something very traumatic. You will heal in time. I only need you to trust that I am here to help you.”
His words felt distant. Like they were meant for someone else. I swallowed hard, the dryness in my mouth making it painful.
“Please,” I said, my voice shaking. “Who am I?”
Before he could answer, another voice cut through the room. Deep. Cold. It did not soothe. It sliced.
“You are a slave.”
The doctor turned sharply. I could sense it from the shift in sound, the difference in the shadows moving beside me. My heart lurched. I searched the room with my useless eyes, trying to find the source of that voice. All I could see was a dark shape. Black clothes. A darker outline that stood very still.
“You contracted an illness,” the voice continued. “A very inconvenient one. But you will be treated.”
His tone carried no kindness. No warmth. It dropped like stones at my feet.
My fingers curled into the sheets. “Who are you?” I asked.
He stepped closer. The dark shape sharpened just a little in my vision, but still not enough for a face. Only the outline. Tall. Dressed in black, oozing the right amount of confidence and an intimidating aura.
“I am Diego,” he said. “Your master.”
The word hit like a cold slap.
“And when you are healed, you will return to your duties. Maid work does not finish itself.”
He turned and walked away without waiting for a response. The door clicked behind him. The silence he left behind felt heavier than his presence.
I stared at the blurry space where he had stood, my breath shallow, my hands trembling against the sheets.
The doctor let out a tired exhale. “He should not have spoken to you like that,” he murmured. “But he is the Alpha of this pack. You are under his authority.”
I tried to breathe, but my chest refused to loosen.
“Your name,” the doctor said softly, “is Lyra. That is who you are.”
Lyra.
The name felt unfamiliar in my mouth, but I nodded anyway.
It was all I could do.
Days passed. Then more days. Soon they blended together until I could no longer tell where one ended and the next began. Morning and night felt the same inside that quiet room. The steady beeping of the machine beside me became the only way I knew time was moving at all.
My healing came slowly at first. My head still felt heavy most mornings, and the world still spun when I tried to sit up too fast. But the blurriness began to fade. Shapes sharpened. Colors returned. Shadows grew clearer.
One afternoon, I opened my eyes and the ceiling did not swim.
By the end of the week, I could see the faces of the nurses when they walked in. They were soft and kind, always smiling as if trying to make up for something they could not change. Doctor Ifeanyi came in with a pair of glasses, placing them gently on the bridge of my nose.
“Your vision is much better,” he told me. “The glasses will help you focus and protect your eyes for now.”
I nodded, staring at the room with a strange mixture of joy and disbelief. Everything looked crisp. Real. My hands. My reflection in a small mirror. Even the sunlight slipping in between the curtains.
It felt like waking up for the second time.
A few days later, they gave me a hearing aid for my left ear. The moment the sound clicked into clarity, I gasped. The rustle of fabric. The hum of the lights. Someone’s laughter down the hall.
I had not realized how much I missed hearing the world clearly. I did always strained my ears to hear well.
But even with all that progress, there was one thing missing.
Him.
Diego.
Not a single visit. Not a passing glance. Not even an angry word tossed through the doorway. Nothing. Only silence where his presence should have been.
At first, I thought he was simply busy. He was an Alpha, after all. Whatever that meant. But when the silence continued, questions stirred quietly inside me. Soft at first, then louder.
One afternoon, as Nurse Clara adjusted my pillows, I finally asked, “Does he ever come here?”
She paused. Her expression tightened in a way she tried to hide with a smile. “Who do you mean?”
“Diego,” I said softly. “The Alpha.”
Clara exchanged a look with the other nurse in the room. A look filled with the kind of pity that made me shrink into myself.
“The Alpha does not visit people,” she said. “Especially people who are not important.”
I lowered my gaze. The words stung more than I expected them to.
Not important.
I did not know who I had been before waking up in this place. I did not know what memories waited behind the empty walls of my mind. But something about being dismissed so easily made my chest tighten.
I tried again later. I asked another nurse. Then another. But the answers were all the same.
“The Alpha keeps to himself.”
“He has no reason to visit you.”
“He does not involve himself with matters like this.”
I swallowed hard. The words kept replaying in my mind, circling the same painful place. Not important. I told myself it should not matter because I did not know him. I did not owe him my thoughts or my worry.
That evening, the shadows in the room grew long, stretching across the floor like slow moving hands. I kept staring at the door as the nurses came in and out, hoping for someone else. Someone taller. Someone dressed in black. Someone with that cold voice that lingered far too easily in my memory.
But every time the door clicked open, it was never him.
No matter how many times I tried to pull my thoughts away from him, they drifted back. I wondered what his face looked like. If he had a scar. If he had sharp eyes or soft ones. If the coldness in his voice matched his expression or if there was something else beneath it.
Something I could not see.
Something I was not meant to see.
When the door opened again, I lifted my head automatically.
Doctor Ifeanyi stepped inside, a smile tugging softly at the corner of his mouth. He looked tired, but in the way a person looks when they finally have good news to give.
“You are healing very well,” he said gently as he approached my bed. “Better than we predicted.”
I nodded, though my thoughts were still somewhere else, caught in the space between curiosity and disappointment.
He paused for a moment, studying me in that careful way he always did, as if checking whether I was strong enough to hold the next thing he would say.
Then he smiled a little wider.
“You will be discharged today.”
- Writer
