The first thing I saw when I opened my eyes was a series of harsh, sterile lights glaring down from the ceiling, making me squint. My body felt impossibly heavy, as though I'd been dredged from the bottom of the ocean. A soft touch on my shoulder drew my attention, followed by a woman's face leaning over me, her smile calm, too calm, like she was used to speaking to patients on the edge of remembering.
"How are you feeling, dear?" she asked gently, her voice a lilt of practiced comfort. Her words didn't register at first, they reached me as muffled echoes, floating in the thick fog of my mind. I blinked hard, trying to process her face, her presence, anything that could anchor me to reality.
My eyes zeroed in on her hand resting lightly on my shoulder. It became the only real thing I could focus on as my brain scrambled to piece together the situation. Where was I? Why was I here? Nothing made sense. I looked up at her with what I knew had to be confusion painted across my face.
She caught it instantly and offered me an apologetic smile, as if that small expression of sympathy could stitch the hole in my consciousness. "It's alright," she said softly. "Don't push yourself."
I wanted to ask who she was, what was happening, but my mouth didn't cooperate. The words stalled on my tongue, collapsing before they could even begin to form.
"You're at City Seaside Hospital," she explained, her voice low, careful, like speaking too loudly might shatter something fragile inside me.
Hospital? The word lodged itself in my chest. My stomach turned uneasily. I shifted slightly on the bed, fingers curling into the thin hospital blanket as if grasping it might pull memories back into my mind. But there was only darkness. A blank, terrifying space where my past should have been.
"What's the last thing you remember?" she asked, her tone edged now with a note of concern.
I searched. I searched so hard it hurt. My chest heaved as panic surged in, hot and choking. There was nothing. I couldn't remember a single thing. My heart thudded wildly, and nausea built inside me like a tidal wave. Had I lost my memory? Had something happened to my brain?
"Hey, hey," the nurse said quickly, her hand moving to mine. "It's okay. Don't panic. It'll come to you. Here, have some water."
I hadn't even realized how dry my mouth was until the cool rim of a glass pressed against my lips. I drank eagerly, but before I could finish, she pulled the glass away.
"You don't have anything in your stomach," she said gently, placing the glass out of reach. "You'll throw up if you drink too much right now."
I wanted to protest, but I still didn't know how to form the words.
She turned to the side table, her back to me now. "The police are here to take your statement. I can ask them to wait, maybe give you an hour or so to rest. Would that be okay?"
Police?
The word hit me like a bolt of lightning. It cracked something open.
Delmar.
As if a dam burst behind my eyes, memories rushed in, raw, painful, vivid. Vicky's twisted grin. Delmar's strong hands pulling me from the ocean. The glint of a gun. The yacht. The cabin. My screams. Blood. Gunfire.
Delmar had brought me here. He must have. He saved me again.
He saved me.
That thought alone nearly broke me. Even in the blur of chaos and pain, he had been there. Always there.
I turned my head slowly toward the door, my pulse thudding with a desperate mix of fear and something dangerously close to longing.
Where was he now?
The woman left me alone with the hum of machines and the weight of my thoughts. I stared at the pale ceiling, trying to ignore the dull throb pulsing behind my eyes. My limbs responded when I shifted, though each movement sent sharp spikes of pain through my chest. Something was tightly bound around my torso, broken ribs, maybe. My head was wrapped in layers of gauze. The hit must've been brutal.
I turned toward the window. Daylight spilled through the blinds, but it gave me no clue what time or date it was. The world outside carried on, unaware of what had happened out on the water.
What if they'd caught Delmar?
The question slammed into my chest like a second impact. What if the police or someone worse had taken him to a lab, strapped him to a table under flickering fluorescent lights, and started testing him like he was some anomaly?
I was spiraling, gritting my teeth against panic, when the door creaked open and a man in uniform stepped in.
"Can you state your name for the record?" he asked, casual as if he were asking for a coffee order. He flipped a pen between his fingers with one hand and balanced a slim notebook in the other.
I gave him my name, tone flat, throat dry. What followed was the kind of interrogation that frays a person's nerves thread by thread. He asked about my hometown, my schooling, my family, my reasons for visiting the island, as if a trip gone wrong somehow made me suspicious. It wasn't until the end that he finally got to the point.
"How did you get hurt?"
I blinked at him, incredulous. That wasn't the first question?
I told him everything, at least, the parts that wouldn't land Delmar in a dissecting tray. I told him about the boatman who'd betrayed me, about being ambushed on the yacht, about the blows to my body, the gun, the men who wanted answers I didn't have. And I told him about my rescue. I told him someone saved me. Not a creature. A man. One who dragged me out of hell twice.
The officer raised an eyebrow, skepticism flickering behind his gaze. "Did these people have any personal grudge against you?"
"No," I said, and forced myself not to mention Vicky. My jaw tightened with the effort.
When he left, a flood of nurses and staff flowed in and out like I was a turnstile. Vitals were checked, machines beeped, and every few minutes someone scribbled something on a clipboard and walked away without ever looking me in the eye.
Later, a ward boy lingered long enough to strike up conversation. He was young, probably bored, and clearly eager to share gossip.
"West side's crawling with sea pirates these days," he said, his tone low like he was sharing a state secret. "They prey on tourists. Take them hostage, ask the government for ransom money. Could be that's what happened to you."
My stomach clenched at the thought.
"What about the guy who brought me in?" I asked. "The one who saved me. What happened to him?"
He looked around, lowered his voice. "Cops picked him up. No ID. Didn't talk much. Weird guy, honestly. Not from around here, that's for sure. Big wide eyes. Looked like he'd never seen a ceiling fan before. Got spooked by every little thing. Some of the nurses thought he might be mentally ill."
My chest burned. They didn't understand. They thought he was fragile, harmless. They didn't know what he was capable of. What he'd survived.
"Hey," the ward boy asked gently, "you got any family? Someone we can call?"
"Yeah," I said, sighing. "Call my mom."
There was no point hiding anymore. I wasn't walking out of here anytime soon.
But none of that mattered.
All I could think about was Delmar. What they might be doing to him. If they were hurting him. If someone had already figured out the truth. That he wasn't just a man.
He was something more.
And he was alone.