"I know, right? Who knew someone as cold as the professor could arrange for something like this?"
Did she just say the professor?
As Nia starts heaping food on an empty plate, Keia walks in along with a pair of nurses. One's to give me my next dose of painkillers while the other's to clean my bandage.
"If you need anything else, just use the service button."
"Do all patients get this kind of treatment here?" Nia asks curiously.
"Nope." The glee in the redhead doctor's tone makes me a little suspicious, and when I see Nia's eyes start to sparkle—-
Oh no. Not again.
"It's the professor, isn't it?"
"Nia!"
But both Nia and Keia are already snickering while the two nurses with us are looking at me with a mixture of envy and curiosity.
"You should've seen him last night," Keia tells us as soon as the nurses leave. "He was furious for not being informed the moment you were admitted, and before leaving the infirmary, he had the entire staff rounded up, just to let everyone know that your recovery is everyone's first priority."
"Do you have security cameras working here?" Nia asks eagerly. "I wanna watch, please!"
"I've never seen him show this much concern for any other girl," Keia says in a marveling tone. "The professor's known Isabella for years and years, but even if that woman was on her deathbed, I'm betting all the professor would ask is what kind of flowers she'd like—-"
That's still a little too sweet, I can't help thinking.
"—-for her funeral."
There's a moment of silence, and then all three of us are cackling like three catty Circe-trained witches.
The rest of the morning flies by pretty quickly, with Keia - also at the professor's insistence - requiring me to undergo several blood tests and scans. I also take the time to phone my parents and somehow manage to make up an excuse for not being able to come home like I promised.
While waiting for my test results to come in, I ask Keia about how I can report last night's incident to the police, and she tells me that the professor's already been taken care of it.
"The professor also requested that you be given sufficient time to recover," Keia explains, "and that's why you'll only be speaking to the detectives tomorrow instead of today."
Nia's back in the infirmary a few minutes before noon, and lunch turns out to be another gastronomically extravagant affair, courtesy of the professor. The same also went for dinner, which so far proved to be the fanciest since the meal also come with a fresh bouquet of roses and a handwritten card.
Don't get stabbed again or I'll kill you myself.
Professor Lucious
The message has Nia and Keia snickering again, and I feel a grudging smile forming over my own lips. Now this is definitely the professor I know and like hate.
While the hours between the professor's expensive meal deliveries are spent with Nia and me reviewing for next week's tests, time eventually slows down to a snail's pace when the lights go out, and the moon reclaims its place in the skies.
I've just been given another painkiller, but this time I don't even feel the slightest bit drowsy, and I end up stirring restlessly in bed.
"Can't sleep?"
I turn to my side and see Nia also lying similarly on the other bed, with one hand tucked under her pillow while facing me. "I want to ask you something," I hear myself say, "but it's going to be completely embarrassing, so can you promise me that you'll at least give me a week before you start teasing me about it?"
Nia's brows shoot up. "It's that bad?"
"Kinda."
"Pinky swear then," she says. "So what is it?"
"How do I summon a god...if I don't know what his name is?"
Chapter Fourteen
The world is bouncing.
From the shadowy ceilings to the entire length of moonlit hallways, everything's bobbing up and down gently, like a boat cradled by rolling foamy waves—-
Up. Down. Up. Down. Up. Down.
And so it goes until the haze in my mind lessens just enough, and I gradually realize it's not the world that's moving...but me.
A man is carrying me in his arms, and the bouncing motion comes from the stairsteps he's treading silently under the cover of darkness.
Up. Down. Up. Down. Up. Down.
His arms are wiry but strong, and the chest I'm leaning against mirrors its traits. If I want to see his face, I'll have to move...but there's this faint whisper inside of my head that warns me against it. I mustn’t let this man know I'm awake. The reason escapes me. I just know it's true.
Up. Down. Up. Down. Up. Down.
It's a struggle just to keep my breathing even, and an even bigger struggle to keep my heart from racing. Tendrils of memories tease my consciousness, but every time I strain myself to get a hold of them, they float away, always just an inch further than what I can reach.