Page 8 of Bookish Girl’s Emergency Contact Is a Lycan King

Five-five-five…

That’s the area code. I know that. The area code is definitely five-five-five. Everyone’s area code is five-five-five around here.

…zero-one-nine-four…

Or is it nine-four-one-zero? Is the nine first or the zero? I can picture the numbers, but they keep swapping places, rearranging themselves like they’re playing musical chairs in my skull.

…two-seven-eight.

Or eight-seven-two.

Does it matter? It’s probably fine. Numbers are just numbers. Even if you mix up one or two, it’ll still go to Millie. Phone numbers don’t change that much when you transpose a digit.

I write the number in the boxes. Look at it. Squint at it. The numbers swim and blur, and I can’t tell anymore if they’re right or wrong or somewhere in between.

Close enough.

“There.” I let the clipboard clatter back onto the bed, suddenly exhausted in a way that goes beyond physical tiredness. “Done. Can I sleep now?”

“Rest is definitely encouraged.” Debra takes the paperwork, scanning it with practiced efficiency. “I’ll call your emergency contact and let them know you’re here. Shouldn’t be long.”

“Great. Perfect. Millie will come, and she’ll yell at me, and then she’ll take me home, and this whole day will be over.”

“That sounds like a solid plan.” Debra pats my shoulder in a way that’s probably supposed to be comforting. “Just rest. You’re safe now.”

I close my eyes.

Time goes weird after that.

Not weird in a dramatic, cinematic way, no trippy montages, no blurring clocks, no sense of reality fragmenting into artistic pieces. Just… syrupy. Thick. Like the minutes are wading through honey to get from one moment to the next.

I drift in and out of something that isn’t quite sleep. The hospital sounds become a kind of white noise: footsteps in the hallway, rhythmic and steady. The beep of monitors, mine and others, a whole symphony of heartbeats being tracked by machines. Soft voices at the nurse’s station, words I can almost catch but not quite.

…admitted around seven…

…lucky she wasn’t going faster…

…someone’s coming for her?

That last one makes me try to surface, to drag myself back to full consciousness, but the effort is enormous and the pillow is soft and the drugs they gave me are doing something lovely to the edges of my panic, smoothing them down like sand in a wave.

Millie’s coming. Millie will be here soon. You can rest.

I rest.

At some point, minutes later or maybe hours, I become aware that someone is talking about me.

About me, not at me. A conversation happening just outside the door, voices low but not quite low enough to miss.

“Is she okay?”

A man’s voice. Low, quiet, with a steadiness to it that feels familiar in a way I can’t place. Like I’ve heard it before. Like it was the last thing I heard before the dark swallowed me up.

“She’s stable.” That’s Debra. I recognize her voice now, the particular warmth of it. “Three stitches, mild concussion, some bruising. Very lucky, all things considered.”

Lucky. There’s that word again.

“Yes.” A pause, weighted with something I’m too fuzzy to interpret. The kind of pause that means more than the words around it. “She is.”