Numinous

Fifteen

Avery's throat was throbbing.

She reached her arm up, but that shot excruciating pain throughout her body and she cried out, only to discover that her throat was swollen, her cry sounding low and strained to her own ears. She had no idea where she was and could barely open her eyes, feeling panic settle in.

She didn’t remember going to bed and yet she lay in an uncomfortable bed on her back. Her limbs felt heavy and there was a feeling of pins and needles in her toes as she tried to move them. Her head was pounding as she tried and failed to turn her head. Her neck hurt, as did her mouth, and it felt better just to stop attempting to move.

“Avery,” She heard her name. It was a low, soft voice, riddled with worry, and Avery knew immediately whose voice it was—although it made no sense. She had no idea why Benj would be with her. Perhaps she was dead and this was purgatory. The final stage before her inevitably infinite stint in hell. Perhaps the universe aligned to let her have one last daydream about him before she left it forever.

“Av, I…I don’t know if you can hear me, or if you’re still under, but I’m right here for you. I’m right here. I promise you I’m not leaving you.”

She tried to speak—to ask him what happened and where they were or if she were dead, but there was a sharp pain in her jaw when she tried to open her mouth, noticing that there was a wrap around her head to keep her mouth shut. She cried out, but mostly in fear of what had happened to her. She couldn’t remember a thing and that was never good.

Avery tried to sit up, but was met with pain and weakness all throughout her body, her ribs feeling broken. Breathing hurt more than she remembered. She let out a labored gasp and gave up trying to pull herself upright as she felt a hand on her forearm. “You’re hurt, Avery. Moving is just going to be painful right now. But you’re safe, and you’re in the hospital. You were brought in last night to the emergency room. I saw them bring you in…I was worried about you, so I stayed. I-I hope that’s okay. I…I just…I just want you to get better, sweet girl. You need to rest. Let your body heal.” Avery wanted to know just how long she had been here, how she was found, why everything hurt, but didn’t dare speak again. Instead she felt incredibly exhausted and tried to fight it, but sleep won out in the end.

***

It had been two days since Avery first woke up in the hospital.

She had been in and out of consciousness for the first half of it, but by the second day, she was fully cognitive with a bit of short term memory loss. She said she didn’t remember anything of the day they found her half alive and laying out in the middle of the street, naked and close to freezing to death, much to Benj’s dismay. Benj wanted her memory to come back more than anyone else, it seemed. Avery was trying to actively forget it and he knew it, but he needed answers. He had questions. He was worried that this wasn’t an isolated incident. The coincidences lined up too perfectly. She hadn’t shown up for their date the same night the diner had closed early and had turned up half a mile down the street from her apartment and the diner, completely naked and suffering severe hypothermia.

Between leaving for their date and now, there had been an assault. He knew that. The markings on her body didn’t lie. Someone had beaten her. The hospital wasn’t doing its job of investigating her injuries. She had been brought in before, for similar injuries. Always to this same hospital. He had finished reading her file after he had come to sit with her and learned that Avery was in the hospital a lot. He wondered how he had never seen her. He wondered how he had never crossed paths with her.

Benj knew there was a piece of the story that he was missing—but he didn’t know what. He just knew that it had something to do with that diner. He didn’t like how that place made him feel after Avery had arrived at the bar with a hand print across her cheek. He knew that was where it had happened. That was the only logical explanation. Avery hadn’t talked about it then, but it hadn’t been this bad. Perhaps when she got her memory back, she could get whoever it was that was doing this to her arrested so that she could be safe.

He didn’t know if it was an ex-boyfriend or perhaps a coworker, but he was going to find out one way or another. Especially since it was so easy to spot the fallacies of what had transpired that night. For example; that night had been warm. That night had been warm and he knew it had been warm because he hadn’t brought a jacket with him like he usually did. He didn’t know how they could have found her with a core body temperature of under eighty-six degrees when it was barely thirty degrees out all night.

The discrepancies in what happened to her and how they found her were grating on him and making his brain tired, but he couldn’t stop it from reeling as he tried to solve a mystery that would remain a mystery until Avery remembered the events that led her to the hospital in the first place.

He heard Avery groan in pain and turned his attention to her. She was trying to sit up in bed, limbs weak as she lifted herself into a seated position. Benj stood and took the pillow laying at her feet and stuffed it back behind her carefully, wordlessly.

Avery hadn’t been very talkative since she awoke. Her throat was still swollen from her strangulation and her voice only came out raspy and broken. Benj wished he could take her pain for her so she didn’t have to feel it. He wished he could do something to make her feel safe, but they barely even knew each other. He had even cried in private for her because he didn’t know if it was acceptable to cry in front of her. He didn’t want to burden her more than she was already burdened.

He just wanted her to get better.

“Benj,” She croaked out. He raised his eyebrow as his eyes met hers. She had just barely been able to open her eyes now that the swelling had gone down. The left eye was red and filled up with blood the doctor said would drain on its own. He didn’t like seeing her like this.

“Help me,” She continued. He frowned. “With what, Avery?” He asked her. He didn’t want her to speak any more than she should, in case she damaged her throat even more, but she was going to do what she wanted to do. “Can’t stay here,” She whispered to him in a mangled voice. Hearing her try to speak was painful.

“What does that mean? You need medical attention, Avery, you can’t even get out of bed,” She shook her head slowly, wincing in pain and pressing her hand to her jaw. “I need help. I need to get home.” She repeated.

“You need to stay here and take the help they’re offering you, Avery. You almost died; you have to stay here.” He tried to reason with her. She wasn’t having it. “No. If…if you won’t help me, I’ll leave anyway, without your help.”

“So you’re baiting me into taking you home?” He asked her, frowning and sitting back in his seat. Avery was showing a side of herself that he didn’t really understand. She was holding her safety over his head, but the kicker was, she was most likely going to be in more pain than she would be if he somehow convinced her to stay in the hospital until they discharged her. He knew that she didn’t technically have to stay in the hospital, especially since she didn’t have insurance and she was accruing debt by being here—he felt awful for knowing all of this without her knowledge, but he digressed—he just thought it was better than suffering at home by herself. 

“Please, Benj. I—I’ve never asked you for anything.” She reasoned with him. He leaned forward with his elbows on his knees as he thought of ways around helping her do this very stupid thing. “Why?” He asked her. “Why do you want to leave? What do you need to get back to, your job? I mean, that’s not as important as you being alive, right?” She snorted and then groaned as she hurt herself with the effort.

“You wouldn’t understand,”

“Make me understand, Avery. I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t want to understand. I want to help you in every way I can, but I don’t think that leaving before you’re discharged is going to help you. It seems like you might be in trouble.”

“I’m not in trouble, Benj, don’t be dramatic.”

“You lost your spleen! You’re immunocompromised as of this moment. If you leave the hospital and get an infection in one of your very open, very fresh wounds, you could get deathly ill, Avery. You could even go septic. Do you understand the gravity of your condition?” Avery could tell that Benj was freaking out.

His eyes were wide and his hands were shaking as he tried to get her to see things his way, but that didn’t matter to Avery. It couldn’t matter to her. She didn’t know why he cared this much for her, but she had obligations.

She couldn’t just stay here. Tomorrow was Monday, and she had to show up at the diner or Allen would be pissed at her. He would find her here at the hospital and drag her back himself if he didn’t end up finishing the job. She couldn’t remember much from that day, but she knew it was Allen. She knew it was Allen because she knew that he found out about Benj.

It was payback. It was a warning. He didn’t want her seeing Benj. He didn’t want her gaining hope and seeing potential in herself because that would mean that she could start to see right through his bullshit. Avery already saw through it, but he used the fear he put in her to control her, and she couldn’t just pretend like he didn’t know how to make her weak.

She couldn’t pretend like what he thought about her mattered any less. She couldn’t pretend that he wasn’t the one person in this world who had truly known her as she was now, and he saw absolutely nothing in her. He saw her as broken and useless. Stupid and weak.

“I appreciate you so much, Benji. For…for staying with me and not—not being mad at me for not showing up at the restaurant…I know you’re coming from a good place, but…I need to get back. I’m sorry, but I have to. If I stay, I don’t know what’s going to happen to me.”

“Is someone threatening you?” He asked. Avery sighed. “Benj, please,”

“You also called me Benji. Did you mean to?” He added, off-handedly. Avery blushed. She was on a lot of pain meds and that might be the reason for the slip, but she was also trying to convince him to do her a favor she didn’t deserve. He wasn’t sure if it was a nickname or manipulation.

“I don’t know; does it bother you?” She asked him. He shook his head. “No. I—I like it. My sister calls me Benji. I just…if I do this. If I take you home, you have to promise me you’ll let me come and check on you. I have medical training, and I can make sure everything is healing well, and if it isn’t I’m dragging you back here myself.”

“I can take care of myself,” She told him indignantly.

“I literally just agreed to take you home—which is what you wanted—under one condition and you’re against it? If you could take such good care of yourself, why even ask for my help in the first place?” Benj didn’t mean to sound so snappy. He hadn’t slept in days and he was anxious now that he had sort of agreed to take her home early.

“I don’t mean to sound like a d**k, I’m just worried about you.” He added afterward.

“I—I’m sorry, I appreciate you for worrying. I just need to leave and I would like your help.” Her voice was raspy and strained. It hurt to speak, but she needed him to understand that she couldn’t just stay in the hospital. She needed to leave and go back home.

Allen was going to be upset with her if she didn’t show up, and the longer she stayed in here, the more his anger got to stir up and become something big and ugly. He would get as close to killing her as he could and then leave her to suffer. There were many instances in which he had hurt her for disobeying him, and she really didn’t think she could take another beating. She doubted her body could handle that.

“And you believe you’ll be safe? Or safer? If you go home?” He asked her. She nodded meekly. “I do.” Benj didn’t like it. He didn’t want to help her do something he disapproved of her doing, but he also knew that he had no right to tell her what to do. He had no right to impose his wants and beliefs on her just because he cared about her. He knew that if he wanted to show he cared, he would have to care for her the way that she needed him to.

Her own way.

Perhaps he could convince her that she could be safe staying with him while she healed, or perhaps he could get something out of her if they weren’t still in the hospital and surrounded by people she didn’t know and didn’t trust. He knew that Avery was particular about that sort of thing.

“Okay. I guess we’ll call the doctor in and get you discharged.” He told her, reaching down to press the nurses call button on her bed remote. Avery smiled at him, despite herself and the split in her lip. “I know it’s crazy…thank you.” He smiled tightly back at her and decided to turn on the small television in the corner as they waited for someone to answer the call. Avery sat back and felt a bit better than she had when she woke up. She was relieved that Benj was so understanding.