The psychological pain from the accident had taken much longer to heal than the physical pain.
Henry Peyton couldn’t quite remember why he was thinking of his deceased wife. He didn’t think about her much anymore. Not because he didn’t still love and care about her, but because it was still too painful. He still loved her just as much today as he did the day he’d met her, the day he’d asked her to be his wife, the day he’d married her. She was the light of his life, and his life had been a dark, dull place since she had left it. He had never remarried, he couldn’t, it felt like betraying his wife.
But in this moment, he felt so close to her.
Like she was hovering just beside him.
He wasn't sure that was a good thing.
Again, he tried to focus, he was no stranger to debilitating pain, but this was like nothing else. This was the kind of pain that gripped your body and your brain in a vice and squeezed it till you wanted to give in and die.
Maybe he was dying.
Maybe that was why he was thinking about his wife because after more than twenty years, he was about to join her.
If he was dying, he had no memory of how or why.
He had to focus.
He had to figure it out.
He had to find a way to compartmentalize the pain and concentrate.
Summoning every ounce of energy he possessed, he dragged himself out of the haze that consumed him.
As he inched closer to the real world, he became aware of things. The place where he was was quiet. His head throbbed. His face felt sticky. He was lying on something hard. One of his hands felt odd.
He didn’t like the picture that was forming in his head.
Henry tried hard to recall the last thing he remembered. His memory was foggy, but he searched his way through it until he found something he could grab hold of.
Coming home from work. A man in his neighbor’s garden. He’d spoken with the man because of the shooting.
Was that what this was about?
The shooting?
Had whoever shot up his neighbor’s house come after him next?
Had he been shot?
Perhaps he was in a hospital.
No, that felt wrong. This didn’t feel like a hospital, and he had spent a lot of time in them so he knew what they felt like.
This felt different. Cold and dangerous.
Now that he was more awake and aware, he felt a driving need for answers. So tentatively he cracked open one eye. It was dark, a single light emanated from the ceiling above him casting eerie shadows everywhere. He was in a room. There was a huge fireplace that took up most of the adjacent wall. There was a large bed against the other wall and a large wooden box near the bed. A table and four chairs in the middle of the room. Against the fourth wall was a small kitchenette containing nothing but a small sink, an oven, a mini-fridge, and a small pantry.
A cabin.
There was a door next to him—he could feel the icy winter air creeping underneath it—and only three windows that he could see, one above him, another on the other side of the door, and a third on the opposite wall above the kitchen sink. Besides the exterior door, there was one other on the wall beside the bed, he was guessing that led to a bathroom.
Being reminded of a bathroom reminded him that he desperately needed to pee.
Although logically he knew that since he had been brought to this cabin against his will that he was most likely restrained, that didn’t click in his brain—which was mercifully still half stuck in a blessed shock-protected bubble—and he tried to stand.
It was only when he tried to move that he suddenly became more aware of the stabbing pain in his hand.