Forget-Me-Not
This is the second installment of a trilogy and a part of the "Lucky in Love" universe. Mina is friends with Annie Caldwell, and Colter is Mason Blacksteele's big brother.
This is Mina and Colter Blacksteele's part of the story.
Forget-Me-Not
by
H. R. Harney
All rights reserved ©
11/15/2017
This one’s for you, Mum!
Colter
Images flashed before Colter’s eyes.
His life.
He saw his parents’ faces above him, smiling down at him through a haze of golden light. He saw a big dog bounding towards him across the lawn, tongue rippling happily in the breeze. Colter saw his first car, a fire-red Thunderbird that he tore all to hell joyriding with his brother one summer.
Then he was holding his college diploma in his hands and his parents were so proud.
Then a beautiful redheaded girl with eyes as deep as the sky was smiling up at him, holding a bouquet of forget-me-not flowers that he had given her.
Then everything went black.
###
Mina hurried across the hospital lobby floor as fast as she could in her heels, heart racing painfully somewhere in the region of her throat.
“Ma’am?” The nurse at the front desk looked up at her with equanimous eyes that softened when she saw the obvious panic written all over the redhead’s freckled face.
“I’m Mrs. Mina Blacksteele.” The woman said. “My husband-!”
“Oh yes, they told me to expect you, sweetie. Right this way, I’ll take you to him.”
###
The moment she saw her husband lying there, bandages wrapped around his head, bruises and lacerations all over his body, with his leg and his arm both set in casts, was the solitary worst moment of Mina’s life.
Her heart hitched and a dry sob caught in her throat.
Her husband was currently hooked up to machines that were keeping him alive, so why did she feel the rabid urge to rip the wires off him?
It all felt like a bad dream she just wished she could wake from.
###
Colter groaned as he came fading slowly back to consciousness.
The first thing he was aware of was the nausea, followed swiftly by pain. Then he managed to pry his eyes open and the disorientation hit.
Light pierced in at him from every angle.
Everything he saw was a stark, unrelenting white.
He groaned and even that hurt, creating a searing pain in his chest as he breathed in too deeply, too fast.
Colter blinked, then his vision cleared and refocused a bit.
Something moved into his field of vision; a blur of warm color to break up all the unforgiving white.
It was ginger red and soft yellow.
He blinked again and the woman hovering over him finally swam into focus before his eyes.
She was beautiful, like an angel come to save him from this hellish white world.
She moved her plump pink lips and he could hear her speaking, but the sound was distant, as though she were speaking through a heavy barrier of water.
Then she leaned down a little closer to him. Her face looked concerned. She was worried about him, but why was this beautiful woman worried about him?
Did he know her?
She seemed vaguely familiar, like someone he had seen once or twice before, but he couldn’t for the life of him remember what her name might be. He didn’t know her from Eve, despite the undeniable feeling of familiarity.
“Honey?” He could finally make out her words. “Colter, sweetie, can you hear me?”
Colter was only able to groan faintly, however, before he lost consciousness once again.