She awoke to the bright lights of a hospital room. Squinting against the onslaught, Nora tried to lift a hand to shield her eyes, only to find that her wrists were bound by leather straps. Tugging at them with a frantic jerk, she kicked with her feet. But they, too, were strapped down to the railing of her bed.
“What?” Nora’s struggling caught the attention of Logan, who had been asleep in a chair in the corner. Sitting upright, he hurried to the bed once he realized she was awake.
“Nora, shhh . . . it’s okay. You’re going to be okay.” His hand smoothed through her hair while his other pressed to her chest, trying to push her back down against the bed.
“Lo?” His name came out of her broken. She was so glad to see him again. “What's going on?” Why was she bound to a hospital bed?
“You had a mental break at your apartment and collapsed in the lobby.” His voice was soft, patient, tentative. It was his bedside doctor voice.
“Wh-what?” That wasn’t right. She had been haunted by a psychotic demon and pulled into another realm. “That’s not—”
“Shh.” Logan soothed her once again. “It’s going to be okay, I promise.” He leaned down to press a kiss to her forehead.
“Why am I in these?” Nora pulled at her wrist again, feeling a sense of claustrophobia tightening at her neck and shoulders. Teasing her mind with panic that made the darkness laugh.
“They thought it was for the best,” he said, voice soft.
“But—” Once again he silenced her, this time with a gentle hand to the top of her head, stroking her hair back.
“Let me go get your parents, they’ll want to know you’re awake.” Logan left then without waiting for her to respond.
When he returned, her mother and father were with him. Their skin was pale, and both seemed to have red rimming their eyes. They looked like they had been through a hell as terrible as the one Kosmaras had put her through.
“Hi, sweet pea,” her dad greeted, smoothing a hand over her hair as he came to stand at the head of her hospital bed.
“Hi, Dad.” Her throat ached, raw and piercing. Was that from screaming, or an actual lasting effect of the lava?
Nora’s mother stayed down at the foot of the bed, arms wrapped around herself as she gazed at her with a look Nora just couldn’t quite place. Revulsion? Relief? Anger?
Moving up beside her on the other side of the bed, Logan took her hand, giving it a gentle squeeze.
“How long was I out?” she asked finally.
“It’s been a couple of days,” Logan was the one to respond.
Her father continued to stroke her hair while her mother just stared. Had her collapse really hit them this hard? Nora wasn’t used to her parents being so subdued with their reactions.
“A couple of days? But . . . how?” It hadn’t been that long in the Duhsvapna. It had only felt like hours. Nora looked around the room at her harried-looking mother and her broken-looking father. Logan still held her hand. “Where’s Sara?” It was odd for her sister not to be here. “She didn’t think this was my way of trying to get out of wedding planning, did she?” Nora tried for a joke, hoping to break the tension that filled the room.
Her mother let out a sob, her hand rising to cover her mouth. Nora’s father moved over to her. Pulling her mother into his arms, he held his distraught wife against his chest, trying to console her as he, too, shed tears.
A chill began to tingle its way up Nora’s body, filling her with a sense of dread.
“Nora . . .” Logan began slowly. “When your reality broke, you fled the apartment and Sara, but she chased after you.” Logan paused, as if searching for the right words, and Nora began to tremble. “Down in the lobby, when she tried to get you to come back upstairs with her—”
Nora began to shake her head, denial and resistance filling her. She didn’t want to hear the rest of this. “No.”
But Logan continued. "You attacked her with a lamp . . .”
Nora didn’t need to hear the rest of it. With her hands still tied down and unable to cover her face, she turned her head toward the pillow to muffle her own cries. Anger rose inside her, filling her with a fury that was devastating. The nightmare had been real, real enough to steal away her sister. A scream built up inside of her chest, clawing at her throat until it forced its way past her lips.
Yanking at the restraints around her wrists and ankles, Nora thrashed against the hospital bed, fighting with everything inside her to be free of the true nightmare.
The waking nightmare.