Chapter Four: Left with no Choice

The bathroom floor was cold.

I laid on the cold bathroom floor, every inch of my body screaming in pain. 

My head was in a war zone, But the worst part? The silence. 

It was suffocating, like the air itself had turned heavy and still. 

I tried to sit up, but my limbs felt like lead. 

Then, a strange pressure pressed down upon my eyelids, the feeling of being sucked into some kind of dark, open space. 

My hand flew to my face, fingers shaking. Wet. Sticky.

Blood.

It trickled into my fingers, a slow tide that felt heavy and suffocating. 

Panic clawed at me, I tried to open my eyes, but it was useless. The effort itself was painful, and the outlines I once could see were gone.

I could only see pitch darkness.

My right eye, burned like fire, the pain so strong it sent my whole body tumbling back down when I tried again to stand up.

I can't see.

It hit my brain like a streak of lightning, and I felt breathless, frozen in fear. 

The bathroom swayed to a tilt, and it was as if the world had swallowed me whole as I crashed back to the floor.

And then, I heard the door..

It slammed downstairs, followed by the sound of tires screeching on gravel.

It was Landon. 

I felt a cold, hollow emptiness settle in my chest. 

He was leaving.

It was just a thought, and nothing more. All that mattered was the pain. The pressure in my skull. The burning in my eye.

I dragged my body towards the door, clinging to the frame for balance, desperate to be out, desperate for someone to help me. 

My limbs wouldn't cooperate, and every movement sent a wave of dizziness crashing through me.

I opened my mouth to speak, but no words came out. I couldn't scream, couldn't whisper, and my throat felt dry.

So I gave up.

I must have laid there, on the cold bathroom floor, disoriented and terrified,and in severe pain, for who knows how long?

My head pounded, and It was getting harder to keep my eyes open.

****

I woke up to the ringing of a telephone. 

It was too much. 

The sound was too sharp, too jarring. 

My eyes burned with the effort of trying to open them. Everything around me was a blinding mess of black and noise, and then. I screamed. 

A ragged, broken sound that came from deep inside me.

"Shh. easy now, Elara. I'm here."

I turned my head in the direction of the voice as I felt a strong hand cover mine. 

It took another moment before I placed to whom it belonged.

It was Mark, our driver. 

How had he gotten in? Why was he here? I wondered.

His cool hand pressed against my forehead. I jerked, but the movement just made everything worse, and a wave of nausea went through me.

"Landon sent me to check on you, and make sure you lock up before retiring to bed," Mark said, his voice sharp and formal. 

No warmth. No reassurance in his voice. Only coldness. "Don't try to move. Just let me get you some help."

I wanted to scream, to tell him about Landon and how he left me here, broke me, and discarded me as though I meant nothing to him. 

But my weak body refused to cooperate. Inside my head, it was too loud to think.Too much pain.

But he didn't wait for my response.

He was already on the phone, saying rapid words to someone else, in a low urgent voice. It was the concern and fear in his voice that scared me too.

Mark was never afraid. He was calm, collected, always sure. Tonight, he wasn't.

"Don't worry," he said after the call, softly. "You're going to be alright."

But that was the thing, I didn't believe him. 

***

By the time we reached the hospital, I was completely sapped of my strength, and my body felt like a sack of grain.

The fluorescent lights above painfully stabbed my eyes and I turned away. It didn't matter that all I saw was darkness.

Sharp needles of light tore through my skull. Mark guided me through the sterile corridors, his hand firm upon my arm, and yelling to the nurses.

I could feel the blood from my eye oozing down my cheek. 

The heat of it was sickening. My right eye felt on fire, every time I tried to blink, it sent another wave of panic through me.

I was so, so alone.

Where was Landon? Where was he? Why wasn't he here? Why wasn't he even answering his phone?

I didn't want to believe that he hated me to that point.

Mark had already spoken to them, and the nurses took me into a room. 

I collapsed in the chair, my body shaking like crazy. By now, my right eye had blood covering it, and I could barely see through the haze of it. 

Hours seemed to have passed before my eye doctor entered. 

Dr Knoxx rushed to me, and knelt before me. Her voice was urgent as well.

Like Mark, she also sounded worried.

"We have to operate on your right eye straight away," she said, and her tone was such that it didn't permit an argument. "There has been too much damage from the impact. If we don't fix it now, you could lose your sight forever."

I had nothing to say. It was too much, my head too heavy. The words swam around my head, but it meant nothing at all. 

It was all so very far away, unattached.

Dr. Knoxx put a clipboard in front of me, as she handed me a pen.

"Sign this," he said. "We don't have much time."

My fingers fumbled to take the pen. I signed without thought, my stroke just a blur as my disoriented state set in.

I couldn't read my signature. I could not see it.

The doctor nodded, almost as if satisfied, before turning to a nurse. "Get the OR ready," she barked, urgency creeping into his voice.

Mark didn't follow me as they wheeled me toward the operating room. 

He stayed behind, his presence hovering in the hallway. I wanted to ask him where Landon was.

But I didn't have the strength.

As the doors slid shut behind me, cold sterile air filled the room, and a terrifying thought sent panic through my body.

Landon is gone. He's left me. He no longer loved me.

And I knew, deep inside me, that when I found him, when I finally confronted him, nothing would stop me from making him regret this.

Just as they were about to administer the anesthesia, I heard the door creak open, the faintest whisper of footsteps behind me. 

Even though I tried to fight it, my heart pounded in my chest.

Was it Landon?

Then the door slammed open and I heard a voice. 

But it wasn't him.