The Mafia's Precious Pet

DEAD OR ALIVE

~Rose

The thought of what I experienced back inside his room kept me in a seriously appalled state. The shock and pain that I felt was completely unbearable. Restlessness settled on me, and I was feeling very disconcerted. I couldn't stay there anymore or even stay within feet of him.

As I sat alone in my car, the darkness outside mirrored the emptiness I felt within my heart. I looked outside the school's environment, I felt as though the whole world was suddenly crumbling around me. Tears burst forth like a dam breaking through, streaming down my face in relentless torrents. My body shook with convulsive sobs, each one wracking my frame with anguish.

I buried my face in my hands, my cries echoing through the silence of the night. The pain was suffocating, making it hard to breathe. My heart felt shattered, like a thousand pieces of broken glass.

I turned around in the back seat, looking for my scuffs to change into, when my eyes went directly towards the building entrance, and I saw Grey walking out– well, practically running out of the building directly to the position where my car was parked.

I could clearly see his sunken eyes with a distant, unfocused gaze and drooping eyelids and eyebrows. His sunken cheeks and the dark circles under his eyes were very visible as I watched him quicken his steps as he made his way towards my car.

Time lost all meaning as I kept weeping, the world around me fading into insignificance. All that mattered was the searing agony that threatened to consume me at the moment.

I drove off immediately, trying to avoid letting him come any closer to my car and, most importantly, to me.

He ran ahead of my car with the intention of blocking the main road to the school's gate, but I already knew what he was planning to do to stop me from going away that night.

I couldn't let his deception work. I knew him too well– or I thought I did until this moment– but at least the little I believed I knew about him helped me to think ahead of him at that moment, as I was determined more than ever to just stay away from him, the source of the pain that threatened to consume me whole.

I sped down the deserted highway, and my emotions swirled like a tempest. Tears of anger and betrayal streamed down my face, blurring my vision.

My hands gripped the steering wheel tightly, my knuckles were white with tension as color drained from them.

It was raining so heavily, I couldn't see clearly. My eyes darted towards the instrument cluster screen, but I wasn't so focused and everything felt so jumbled up, so, I turned on the windshield wipers to clear the droplets of rain that fell onto my windshield, so I could see properly.

The events of the night continued to replay in my mind like a cruel loop: walking in on my fiancé with another woman, the shock, the pain, the feeling of my world shattering.

I drove and turned to the right, approaching toward the other road. My anger and pain boiled over, causing me to push the accelerator harder.

I turned my head, checking if Grey was following me from behind, but I could only see a reflection of a car light that made me suspicious and made me think that he might have followed me.

The speedometer of my car climbed higher and higher, the wind whipping through my hair as a result of the speed with which I drove my car in a frantic effort to escape from Grey and the torment that defined him at that moment.

Suddenly, a faint sound, a jolt, and the world around me dissolved into chaos. A sudden gasp escaped from my mouth and the last thing that filled my ears was the sound of glasses shattering. And at that fleeting moment, the last thing that filled my vision was an eighteen-wheeler crashing into my car with full force.

My car careened out of control and veered off the road, and I felt a strange sense of weightlessness before everything went black.

I couldn't tell what happened next, because the world around me went blank and dissolved into a dark void that I wasn't sure I was ever going to wake from.

The sound of machines beeping from a distance filled my ears and my eyes slowly fluttered open as I slowly regained consciousness. I was met with the harsh beeping of machines that now sounded more clearly, and the sterile smell of hospital antiseptic. Groggily, I opened my eyes to find myself surrounded by unfamiliar surroundings and equipment. Panic set in as I scrambled to piece together fragmented memories of the accident that clouded my mind.

I tried to move around but the pain that shot up through my head was so unbearable that I wailed in agony,

"Stay still, everything is going to be alright," a man in white said as he walked up to me and picked up my arm, scrutinizing the small cuts I had on it.

It was a doctor. A wave of realization hit me: What was I doing in the hospital?

Fear washed over me as I realized the gravity of my situation. I tried to move, but a sharp pain shot through my body, forcing me to remain still. Tears pricked at the corners of my eyes as I felt a sense of vulnerability and helplessness.

"What– what happened to me?" I asked the doctor, but the sudden dryness that rose up in my throat protested against trying to make any speeches.

"Here," he said, and stretched his hands to me, extending a medium-sized plastic cup filled with water to me, as though he had read my thoughts.

I took it with both hands, bowing slightly in courtesy and then gulping down the cool and satisfying content in the cup that soothed the dryness and ache in my throat.

Water had never tasted so good. I was sure of it.

"Do you feel a lot better now?" He asked me and took the cup from me.

I simply nodded in response, "but, why am I here?"

I needed clarification because my mind was in a total mess.

" Now, I don't want you to panic, but you had a very serious accident. It's a miracle that you even survived it," he replied.

I shook my head rapidly in disagreement, "but I don't remember it."

"It's been three months since your accident, actually. This is the first time you've woken up since then."

My eyes grew wide with shock as the reality of my near-death experience began to sink in. At that moment, I was overcome with emotion. A small sob involuntarily escaped my lips, it was a mix of tears, fears, and pains.

"You don't have to cry. In fact, I think you should be happy because it's a miracle." He consoled, but it did nothing to ease my pain.

"Three months?" I asked him in the midst of my mental turmoil.

"Well, yes," he was still trying to console me when we were distracted by the sound of the door opening.

Our attention darted to the door,

"Mrs. Carlton," he exclaimed, and then moved away to usher her in.

She had very black hair, like ebony, and it was styled into expensive-looking curls which sat leisurely on her shoulders. Framing her face with delicacy and making her round cute brown eyes, which still glimmered with youthfulness, stand out. Her fingers, which rested leisurely at her sides, were long and slender, and her nails manicured and painted a faint floral pink hue.

She wore a tailored, silk blouse in a rich, jewel-toned emerald green, perfectly complementing her refined features and poised demeanor. The luxurious fabric draped elegantly across her shoulders, accentuating her smooth and slender neck and the subtle sparkle of the diamond necklace around her throat.

The sumptuous fabric of the equally emerald-green pencil knee-length skirt hugged her curves in all the right places, exuding understated sophistication and refinement, perfectly befitting a woman of her stature and elegance.

"She's awake. I should have called you earlier, but I had to explain a few things to her first," the doctor explained.

She tilted her head a bit and then walked close to my bed. As she approached me, I could see a warmth flood her eyes and soon, the rim of her eyes was shimmering with tears.

"It's such a miracle." She gasped, a faint teary tone laced in her voice.

"Indeed it is," the doctor replied.

Soon, a man I didn't realize had entered, came to stand beside her.

His lips quivered with restrained emotion, his blue orbs were dull, but there was a hint of relief in them as his eyes roamed my body.

His long sandy blonde hair looked messy, as though his fingers had combed through them multiple times. His angular face and sharp jaws pulled me into some sort of trance.

He was indeed handsome.

"I'm so happy that you made it," he said, his voice breaking as he did so.

He moved to touch my head but I flinched. I didn't know who he was. In fact, the only one I knew who stood in that room with me was the doctor. There were no personal attachments to it whatsoever.

The man looked up at the doctor in shock at the way I behaved. I mean, did I do something wrong?

"Why is she flinching?" he asked, "like she's trying to avoid me."

"Exactly, I can see the look she's giving us, like we're strangers." The woman's voice came.

It sounded calm and yet alarmed, as she was also experiencing the same shock the man felt.

She walked over to me and also tried to touch me, but immediately panic flooded my bloodstream and I moved away from her touch rapidly, like it would burn my skin if she touched me.

My eyes then darted to the doctor, telling him with unspoken demands to tell them to leave and that they made me feel very uncomfortable.

He came to stand in front of them.

He then sighed and turned to me, "What I'm about to tell you will shock you all, but I hope that you handle it with maturity." He paused and looked at our faces, gauging our expressions.

"The thing is that the accident was extremely severe, resulting in a traumatic brain injury (TBI) that affected her temporal lobe and further resulting in acute retrograde amnesia."

A gasp, laced with shock, which interrupted the doctor escaped the mouth of the lady as her palms flew up to cover her mouth which had dropped open.

That made me blink in confusion. What did he mean?

"What?" the man exclaimed while I stared on in confusion.

"The impact caused significant damage to her hippocampal, the part of her brain where memories are stored. So right now, she doesn't recognize either you or anyone from a specific period in her life, although we are yet to determine that as she has only just woken up."

Wait, was I meant to know who they were? And what did he mean by amnesia?

"But, is there any chance that she'll start to recover her memories soon?"

What the hell were they talking about?

"I can't really say if it's transient or not. We just have to wait and see to what extent she'll heal," he said.

"Oh no." The woman lamented as a tear dropped from her eyes while she looked at me with pity.

"I should leave you all," the doctor said, and turned to leave.

"Please, explain to me everything you just said," I said.

"My dear." She called me softly and walked up to me. "He's saying that you've lost your memories as a result of the accident, and it's not certain when you'll get them back."

"What did you say?" I asked her again, not sure if I heard her well enough.

"I'm sorry." I, and your boyfriend, are over there," she said, and looked over her shoulder to the completely emotionally disorganized man who was standing a few feet from her. "David, will make sure to help you recover."

No way, why did I not feel very good about this? My life was gone and the question of who I was will continue to be a taunting and hunting shadow that'll loom over me indefinitely.

"You'll be fine," the woman who claimed to be my stepmother said as she patted my hand softly with unfiltered care.

As I looked at her through my hazy vision, I wondered, was she always like this with me?

A tear escaped my eyes. I was alive, but why did I feel dead on the inside? Was I dead or alive?