The Wedding Dress by Dani Atkins

Author:Dani Atkins [Atkins, Dani]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781800246522
Publisher: Head of Zeus
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

13

Faces stared down at me; some I knew, some belonged to strangers. They floated on disembodied heads in and out of my field of vision. I struggled to move, but was powerless to do so, for I was still trapped. Only now it wasn’t just my legs, it was my whole body. I strained against immovable straps. Someone had tied me down, but I had no idea why. The next time my eyes fluttered open, they didn’t immediately close again. The faces were gone and I was alone.

Slowly, in sharp-edged fragments, the day began to return to me. The pink limousine… my first ride of the day, and the ambulance with the wailing sirens… my last one.

My eyes flitted from side to side, seeing the same blue fabric curtains to my left and right. From beyond them came a low drone of background noise and voices, which were occasionally punctuated by the squeak of rubber wheels on linoleum. I was in a cubicle, and logic told me it must be in a hospital, although I had no memory of being brought here.

A small oblong window set high in the wall revealed that what little light the day had left was fading fast, although I was sure the sun hadn’t yet set when they’d begun to cut me from the crushed carriage. It had taken them longer than they were expecting to extricate me. Mercifully, most of what had happened existed on a different plane of consciousness to the one I’d been on. Although only loosely tethered to the present, there had been moments when fear or pain had tugged me right back down into the thick of things. I could remember hearing Vince urgently insisting that it was time to call for a surgeon, which had made no sense at all to me. It was the fire chief, whose name I’d never been told, who’d urged him to wait. ‘Just give us ten more minutes. If we haven’t got her out by then… you can make the call.’

It was only now that I understood why a surgeon would have been summoned to the accident site. Had those ten minutes been enough? My terrified gaze flashed to the foot of the bed. There was a huge frame holding the blankets away from my lower limbs. I had no idea what was beneath it… was it the outline of my lower legs, or a dreadful void where they should have been?

The cry that escaped my throat didn’t sound entirely human, but there were people standing beyond the cubicle who recognised its timbre and inflection. They came running. The curtain rings screeched on the metal pole like angry barn owls as first my father and then my best friend surged into the tiny cubicle. As they approached, my first thought was that they both looked sick enough to warrant hospital beds of their own. I looked beyond the pair, searching for another face, but there was no one behind them.

My father has a ruddy complexion.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.