Graphite

It goes from nothing to everything, just like that, a burst of light illuminating my closed eyelids orange.

I breathe in deeply, and my nose burns from heavy use of disinfectant and perfumed flowers, the store-bought kind that are spritzed every hour with a bottle labeled Fragrance.

Beeping, slow and methodical and in time with my heart. The voices that bounce around the room are the sounds of people who are trying to be quiet but can’t. There’s a heavy weight on my wrists, metallic and cold, and my right wrist is burning. I’m on an IV.

I can feel the plastic tubes trailing from my nose and behind my head, hooking up on my ears and leaking in cold oxygen. It’s uncomfortable and I want to rip it right out.

I’m in a hospital.

“God, she looks fucking horrible.” A familiar voice mutters, disturbing me from my reverie, an edge to the voice as if they’re holding back tears.

“No shit, Sherlock. She was tortured for three weeks straight while she was conscious. No one knows what they did to her while she was asleep. Look at ‘er, she’s been withered away to the bone.” Another familiar voice, cold and analytical, there is nothing behind those gravel-toned words other than ice.

“And what the hell did you do to help her? She almost got raped on your watch! Not to mention cut off from the little food they were giving her.”

Tension falls across the room like a thick, velvet curtain. The air radiates with it, buzzing and humming like an electric current. Two sets of deep, calming attempts at breathing echo each other.

His words grate against my ears, stirring a genuine reaction somewhere I’d long given up on. It feels vaguely like hope, sweet and light and fleeting, but hope. “She’s here, isn’t she?”

“Barely.”

No one’s noticed that I’m awake yet.

Before I even open my eyes, I speak, the words grinding against my raw throat.

“Why in the fucking world am I handcuffed to a hospital bed?” Everything goes silent, like someone hit a mute button. I can hear the dripping of my IV bag, dripping with the steady tempo of a metronome.

My eyelids flutter open, and I blink a few times before I’m accustomed to the light. It’s harsh and bright, like there are seven million flashlights being shone into my face all at the same time.

There are nine people, nine blurry figures who immediately stop dead in their tracks and stare at me like Christ risen from the grave himself. I recognize only six of them.

Tack and Daz, who I’ve known since I’ve been able to load a gun (pretty damn long), jointly drop their Styrofoam cups and the soda inside fizzles on the ground.

“Shit,” Daz mutters, her blonde curls shivering around her cherub-like face.

“Way to go, sis, drown us why don’t you?” Tack retorts, moving his feet away from the spill and sopping it all up with rolls of paper towel.

“Oh fuck off, Tack, you spilt your cup too and that had nothing to do with me.” They bicker in the way that twins do before they stop suddenly, wide brown eyes focused in on me like red-dot on a sniper.

“Well?” I ask, painfully jingling the handcuffs. “Care to explain?”

I’m only met with more silence, heavy and sad like a weight bearing down on my chest.

My eyes scan across the room, cataloguing everything I’d possibly need to know. There’s a brown couch taking up most of the back wall, old and ugly with white fluff sticking out of the seams. There’s a coffee table whose shine is dulled with age and knicked and scratched, loaded with vases of fake flowers and empty condolences. A glass frame with a dollar-store pattern engraved into it holds a picture of yet more flowers and a meaningless inspirational quote, as if a person on their death bed can really stand someone telling them it’ll be alright. White plastic chairs with metal arm rests sit cold and clinical beside my bed, several of them pulled up in various patterns.

After Tack and Daz, Olivia stands with her weight balanced between Liam and Alison, probably the only person who can know me better than myself. I wait to feel something, to feel pain, but instead there’s a fluttering emptiness in my chest, a hollow cave where something is supposed to be but instead it got lost on the way there.

The next face is one I thought I’d never have to see again. Emerald eyes framed by long lashes, a mouth usually turned up at the corners with a dimple sliced into each cheek, but this time turned into a scowl. His eyes glisten with a mixture of anger and relief.

My eyes slide down to his bandaged hand, a spot of red permeating the white bandage. I feel myself smile before I can help it.

Then the next four boys, a group of strangers who I’ve never met in my entire life, burst out laughing. Loud guffaws and oddly high-pitched giggles bounce around the room, immediately diffusing the tension. Harry’s scowl turns even deeper, but everyone else joins in on the laughing. I raise an eyebrow.

“Oi, Harry, mate, this the bird who stabbed you with a bloody fucking pencil? While she was handcuffed?” The one with the blue eyes and swooped hair wipes a tear from the corner of his eye as he continues laughing.

“Actually,” I say, “the pencil wasn’t bloody until after they removed it from his hand.” I shrug, though it hurts like a bitch to do as much as bat a fucking eyelid.

“Tough one, you are,” a blond boy with a surprisingly thick Irish accent coating his words says, holding out a hand to shake mine. I manage it just barely. “The lads and I can’t thank ya enough for putting that bastard in his place, finally. Thought he could get away with all the ladies. A nice pencil stabbing did him well. The name’s Niall. Niall Horan.” He winks.

The rest of the boys introduce themselves as Zayn, who had hair dark as night and eyes the color of caramel, and Louis, the blue-eyed boy who’d spoken earlier. They’d been recruited specially.

To find me. I didn’t know what to do with that kind of information.

After a minute or two, I shift around in my bed. “While all the pleasantries are nice, could one of you tell me why I’m handcuffed to this bed? Was I or was I not held fucking captive for three weeks?” For a second my eyes glaze over but I shake my head and rid myself of it.

“Phia….” Olivia draws out my name like it belongs on the end of a string. I still can’t believe she’s alive, breathing and healthy in front of me.

“Tell me what happened,” I whisper, soft but firmly. “Tell me everything that happened. Tell me why I thought you were dead for three weeks.”

Olivia gulps a knot down her throat. “The truck only hit the left side of my body, mostly my leg and ribs. I was shot in the shoulder, and they kept me in ICU for a week before I was coherent enough to talk.” She shudders. “I managed to hold out for another before Niall came,” she says, gesturing weakly to the blond boy who has suddenly found the tiled flooring to be the most interesting thing on the planet. “He and the others got me out, but they couldn’t find you. For some reason, you were under lock and key, not in a hospital like I was.” She begins to tick numbers off on her fingers, her eyes drifting blankly to a spot above my head, her forehead creased with worry. “It was another two weeks before Harry managed to find out where you were. One more after that until he could get clearance to even breathe in your hallway. A week to gain the trust of the Super. Four days to undergo training to interrogate you,” Olivia’s breathing grows ragged and shaky, clogged up with unshed tears. “And another week before we got you out.”

It didn’t take a genius to add up the numbers.

“I was there for nearly two months.” I say flatly, any emotion that was beginning to surface pulled from my face. “And I was only conscious for three. Weeks. Of . it.” Liam and Olivia flinch, Tack and Daz back away slowly from the bed, as if they’re expecting me to have a psychotic break. Alison pulls a hand up to her mouth and leaves the room entirely.

No one is looking at me. No one is making eye contact. God fucking damn it, why won’t they look at me?

“The handcuffs?” I say next. I’d say the wait for an answer is painful, but it’s not. It’s just time passing and time being wasted.

“You’re a risk to yourself and others,” Liam’s kind brown eyes connect with mine, and yet I still feel nothing. “Sophia, the doctor had to sedate you. You tried to kill the nurses. You tried to kill yourself. More than once.” He takes a deep breath and his eyes drift up to the ceiling, bloodshot and ringed underneath with purple bags. His bottom lip quivers and I want to feel pain, I want to feel heartbreak for making the people I care about feel this way, but the only thing I can focus on to keep my thoughts clear is death. That there’s a way out for me.

“Oh, Holly isn’t exactly unfamiliar with death, isn’t that right, love?” Harry speaks with words of poison, cutting into my skin with serrated edges. His face looks determined, full of resolve.

“Fuck off, Styles. My name isn’t Holly.”

“Don’t pretend everything’s right as rain with you, Holly. How many times did you try to kill yourself in that holding cell? How often do you wish that you chose to stab yourself with that pencil instead of me?” My knuckles grip the bed railing until they turn white.

“I couldn’t reach,” I mutter under my breath.

“I’m sorry, what was that?”

“I couldn’t fucking reach!” I scream, hurting my throat in the process. “Do you think if I could have managed to do myself in with that pencil I wouldn’t have? It’s all I’ve wanted since I woke up in that hellhole! But of course, I couldn’t reach, not with those cuffs. So I went for the next closest thing. Thanks for that.” I hiss, my voice cracking and tears blearing my vision.

After my outburst, I realize what he was trying to do. As the pain, as everything I went through washed over me in waves, sobs wrack my body, I know what he did. I hate him for it, I want him to get stuck under a bus, but I know what he did.

He made me feel something, anything. He did it in the best way he could.

“Phia, oh God, Phia,” Olivia cries, hobbling over and wrapped her arms around me as gently as possible. I recoil from her touch, from any kind of contact, and the hurt in her eyes is so visible I want to keel over right then and there.

Daz puts an arm around Olivia, and out of the corner of my eye I can see Liam holding Harry up against the wall, Tack backing him up with deadly glares. Harsh words are thrown back and forth, the new boys torn between defending their friend or smacking him upside the head.

“Easy there, mate, no need to get physical. We’re all on the same side here.” Louis calmly urges, as if his words could work magic.

“Did you hear what he said to her? Did you fucking hear it? How the hell am I supposed to stay calm!? What the fuck makes you think you can talk to her like that? She’s practically my little sister!” Liam’s voice is rough and anguished and I can’t bear it, I can’t bear any of it, knowing I’m hurting everyone so badly.

“STOP IT!” I screech, and the room falls silent. “Just… stop it. Liam, don’t kill Harry.” I cut my eyes to him and give him a slight nod, the only acknowledgement he’ll get for what he did. “I’ll do that later. Just. Everyone. I need quiet.” I shut my eyes and lean back, the beeping from my heart monitor accelerated to an insane rate.

A nurse rushes in, blinking in surprise when she takes in the scene, and immediately goes to put something in my IV and to prick me with another needle.

“Honey, you need to calm down.” She says sweetly, pressing the syringe into the crook of my elbow. “And you all need to leave,” she orders everyone else, and they file out with their heads hung low.

In a raw moment of honesty, I stare up at the nurse with all of my fear and pain displayed on my face like a flat screen. “Will I be okay? When can I leave?” I hate the weakness in my voice, but there’s nothing I can do about it.

The nurse smiles empathetically, her eyes crinkling at the corners and tufts of graying hair sticking out of her bun. “You’ll be fine, sweetie. A few days more they’ll keep you, and then you’ll be back to whatever you were doing before, I promise.”

I know she means it to be reassuring but it’s not, no way in hell will it ever be assuring, but I muster a painful smile.

As the syringe is emptied, I begin to fall asleep.

Before I do, I can feel the nurse clean the tear tracks from my cheeks.