The Outside Series - Complete Trilogy: Books 1-3

by Kristina Renee

  Despite my instincts telling me not to even look, I glanced around the room for any sign of them, but I was completely alone.

  I wasn’t sure what time it was, but it had been dark when Austin and I got to my house, and it was still dark now. I’d probably only lost a few hours at most.

  The dull pain in my head was still there but the incessant headache was finally gone. At least there was one good thing that came with my extended vacation.

  As much fun as sitting around in the dark was, I was awake, and I was thirsty. I knew better than to try to get up on my own, but I wasn’t sure if I should call out for assistance.

  It took a second for me to locate the remote control that was hooked to my hospital bed. I hit the call button and then tried to figure out which button controlled the lights. It had been a while since my last trip to the hospital. That was my one real act of defiance, avoiding my parents’ place of work at all costs. When I was little, I actually enjoyed spending my free time roaming the halls, but it had long ago lost its charm for me.

  The door slowly creaked open, and a nurse stuck her head in to check on me. “Oh good, you’re awake,” she said when she saw me fumbling in the dark. “Here, let’s brighten things up a bit.” She gently took the remote from me and turned up the lights bright enough for me to see without being blinded.

  The nurse was a pleasant looking, middle-aged woman who seemed genuinely happy to see me awake.

  “I’m gonna just check some things really quick, and then we’ll get the doctor to come take a look at you.” She grinned and fiddled with a computer nearby. All the monitors I was hooked up to seemed to feed into that machine.

  I cleared my throat and coughed. “Um, okay.”

  “Why don’t you answer a few questions for me, okay?” she asked me as she worked. “Let’s start with something easy. What’s your name?”

  “Kim.” My throat was dry and my voice sounded more like a croak than anything else. I tried to swallow away the dryness, but it didn’t do much. “Kimberly Curtner.”

  “Let’s do a few more questions, and then I’ll get you some ice chips.” The nurse typed something into the computer then turned to me cheerfully. “Do you know where you are?”

  “El Camino?” I gave her the name of the hospital I was sure I’d been taken to. Given the fact that it was close to home and both of my parents worked there, it was the only logical choice.

  “Very good,” she said, clearly impressed. “I was mostly just looking for whether or not you realized you were in the hospital.”

  “Aren’t these the kind of questions you ask someone who’s had head trauma?” I cocked my head and looked at her. “Did I hit my head when I fell?”

  “So you do remember falling.” The nurse quickly made some notes in the computer. “Do you remember anything after that?”

  “Just flashes.” I squinted and tried recall some of the images from earlier, but they were all so disjointed. I couldn’t tell what was real or imagined. “Everything’s fuzzy.”

  “That’s not uncommon,” the nurse reassured me. “Your vitals look just fine right now, which is a big improvement. Let me go find the doctor so he can examine you and make sure there’s nothing else to be concerned about. Oh, and I’ll get you those ice chips I promised.”

  I nodded slowly as I sank back against my pillows with solemn sense of loneliness settling into me.

  “Do you know where my parents are?” I asked as the nurse turned to leave. “Or Maddie.”

  “I believe both of your parents are here in the hospital.” The nurse looked over at me and offered a sad smile. “I’ll page them once I get back to the nurse’s station. As for the woman who came in with you, your father sent her home a few hours ago to get some food and rest.”

  I frowned as she spoke, beginning to get the feeling I’d lost more time than I’d realized. “How long was I asleep?”

  The nurse checked her watch. “According to your chart, your accident happened almost twenty-three hours ago.” She watched me carefully as I processed her words. “You lost consciousness during the ride to the hospital, and you’ve been asleep ever since.”

  “Really?” Disbelief didn’t come close to describing how I felt. “Is that even possible?”

  “It is.” The nurse pulled back the curtain to shield me from the door when she opened it. “Now, just sit tight, and I’ll be right back with your ice, okay?”

  I nodded but didn’t look at her, still shocked I’d been out for that long. I’d heard stories about people hitting their heads and passing out, but I didn’t think it actually happened like that in real life. At least, not for an entire day.

  Taking a deep breath, I reached up and touched the back of my head where it hurt the most. There was a bandage in place with gauze wrapped around my head. I must have split open the skin when I fell.

  This was so surreal.

  When the nurse returned, she was followed by a doctor.

  “Ms. Curtner, glad to see you’re awake.”

  “Yeah, finally.” I shifted my weight so I was sitting in a more comfortable position. Those hospital beds were awful.

  “I’m just going to do a quick examination so I have something to report back to your parents.” He shined a light in my eyes, looked over my vitals, asked me a few more questions, and then took a deep breath.

  Before he could say anything, the door opened and my mother slipped inside. She was dressed in her hospital scrubs. Her hair was thrown into a messy bun and she seemed almost dead on her feet. There was an air of disheveled comfort around her that was completely foreign to me. This was my mother the trauma surgeon, not the high class, completely put together, perfect in every way socialite I’d come to know. This woman was a stranger to me.

  “Darling, you’re up!” She approached the bed quickly and greeted the doctor. To my surprise, she spoke to him with respect and not with the thinly veiled aura of elitism I’d grown accustomed to hearing from her.

  “Hi, Mom.”

  “How’re you feeling?” she said softly, holding my hand in hers.

  “My head hurts a little, but I feel fine.” I was still trying to process everything that had happened. Was this what my mother was like when she wasn’t at home?

  “As I was about to say…” The doctor cleared his throat and stepped to the other side of the bed. “From what we can tell, there doesn’t seem to be any lasting trauma to your head. Of course, we’ll want to get a CT scan just to make sure, but for now, I’m fairly confident you got away with a mild concussion and nothing more.”

  My mother breathed an audible sigh of relief as she cradled my hand to her chest in the most loving gesture I’d ever witnessed from her. “Thank God!”

  “Unfortunately, there are some other issues we need to address.” He tapped on the screen of his tablet as if looking for something else. “Dr. Curtner, Kim was severely dehydrated when she was brought in. Now, we’ve corrected a lot of that just by having her hooked up to an IV for the last past twenty-four hours. The larger issue is an electrolyte imbalance. Her blood work came back with depleted levels of potassium which, on top of the dehydration, is likely responsible for the headache your friends said you were complaining of. That, and the frequent, long trips to the bathroom, lead me to a very specific conclusion.”

  Apparently, whatever conclusion the doctor had reached, my mother had reached it too. Her head immediately swiveled toward me, and her eyes locked with mine. “Where are they?”

  “What are you talking about?” I asked, sticking to my lies even though I knew I’d been caught.

  “Kimberly, don’t play dumb with me.” My mother’s loving tone was gone and her pissed off voice was back. “You’re in the hospital, and if it wasn’t for the fact that you got dizzy and tripped, we might not have learned about this until the damage was much worse. Dehydration and an electrolyte imbalance are easy to fix, but other things...not so much.”

  “You don’t understand...” I could feel myself getting
defensive and whiny but I couldn’t think straight. “I wasn’t going to take them long term. Just until I lost the weight from our ski trip. Then with all the junk food we had this weekend, I needed something to help me keep it from getting out of control. I have it all under control.”

  “Kimberly.” The doctor gently spoke up, edging closer to the side of the bed. “You’re nearly fifteen pounds under what we’d consider a healthy weight for someone with your build.”

  “N-no.” I shook my head in disbelief. “What about the fat rolls? My pants are tight. Nothing looks good...” I started rambling as I tried to list all the factors I’d used as a metric for my physical fitness.

  “Maddie got a call from one of the gym trainers yesterday to confirm your schedule for the week.” My mother’s voice was strangely calm, more like the normal, disinterested tone she used with me. “You’ve been doing yoga seven days a week—morning and night? And now you’re planning on adding lifting to the mix?”

  “I just...” I shrugged and my vision blurred as I looked away from my mother. “You wouldn’t understand.”

  My mother exchanged looks with the doctor and he quickly made his exit, leaving the two of us alone.

  “Why don’t you explain it to me?” My mother sat beside me on the bed and rested her hand on my thigh over the blankets.

  “Why do you even care?” I snapped at her, crossing my arms over my chest to create a barrier between us. “You’ve barely looked at me over the past twelve years. Why would you start caring about whether I lived or died now?”

  “Kim, honey... Is that how you really feel?” She seemed stunned by my words, and for the first time in a long time, she looked like she might cry.

  “Please, don’t pretend to be hurt. You’re just insulting me.” I rolled my eyes and turned to face the opposite wall. “You’ve blamed me for Kiley’s death my entire life. That’s why you’ve barely been involved in anything I’ve done. It’s why you lavish me with presents in lieu of actual affection. It’s why you and Dad are hardly ever home. I get it. It should have been me, and sometimes I’m sorry it wasn’t. But Maddie can only do so much, despite being paid to care about me.”

  “If you were unhappy, why didn’t you say anything?” Mom’s expression was unreadable, but there was something in her eyes I’d never seen before.

  “You’re my mom. You’re supposed to notice stuff like that.” I took a deep breath and tried to compose myself. “But since you’re barely around, I guess it was to be expected.”

  “Honey, I’m not a mind-reader.” My mother clearly took offense to me laying all my problems at her feet. “Everything your father and I have done has been for your sake. We gave you space so you could grow up without feeling like we were controlling you. We both worked long hours to make sure all your wants and desires were met. We gave you everything you wanted and more. And now you’re blaming me for all your problems? You never gave us any reason to believe you weren’t happy.”

  “You never asked.” My eyes were fixed on a blank spot on the wall.

  I could feel my mother’s indignation and anger boiling beside me, and it was probably the most emotion she’d shown toward me since we lost my sister.

  And then it disappeared.

  A moment later, my mother took a deep breath and stowed her anger away. “I love you, Kim. I love you with all my heart. It hurts me to know you’ve been in pain all this time. Maybe your father and I made some mistakes in how we chose to raise you, and we probably do bear some of the blame for what you’ve gone through, but you need to take responsibility for your part in this too.”

  I looked at her with tears forming in my eyes, surprised to hear those words spoken so sincerely.

  “At any point, you could have come to us and told us how you were feeling. We always made sure you knew we would listen to whatever you had to say without judgment. You need to realize that the only one who truly knows what you’re feeling is you. You’re the only one who can say what you need, honey. Relying on others to notice what you’re going through so they can address your problems on their own is selfish.”

  My blood boiled, and I grit my teeth. After the years of neglect and disinterest they’d put me through, she had the audacity to call me selfish? “I don’t want to talk to you anymore.” I barely managed to get the words out without screaming. “I don’t even want to look at you.”

  She sighed and backed away from the bed. “I’ll leave you alone for now,” she said as she shook her head in disappointment. “But please think about what I said.”

  I refused to acknowledge I’d heard her. I honestly didn’t trust myself to speak just then. I’d never lost my temper in public before, and I wasn’t going to start now.

  After a moment of staring at me, my mother cleared her throat and stepped away. “Fine. Have it your way. But I hope you’ll be kinder to your father when he comes in to visit.”

  23

  Despite feeling a hundred percent better, the doctor didn’t seem to be in any hurry to release me. Since I was still a minor, I couldn’t exactly check myself out either. They said they were still observing me because of my head injury, but I suspected my parents weren’t ready for me to go home. It was easier for them to let strangers take care of me than having to deal with me themselves.

  Logan brought Liz to see me first thing in the morning before school. She didn’t say anything about the diet pills, so I assumed that either my mother didn’t tell her, or she was trying to spare my feelings. Either way, I felt guilty for not reaching out to her when she asked me to be honest.

  Honestly, I didn’t do anything wrong, but I had introduced more drama into Liz’s life and that was selfish of me. She didn’t need to ever be inside a hospital again. Thankfully, she just thought that gravity and my inner klutz had conspired to give me a concussion. After filling me in on what was happening with her, she promised to get my homework for me so that I wouldn’t fall behind in any of my classes.

  The last thing I needed was to start flunking out of high school on top of everything else.

  Other than the occasional visit by a nurse, I spent the rest of the day pretty much alone. At first, I just lounged in bed, watched TV, and perused Facebook on my phone. Allie had already posted a bunch of pictures from our weekend adventure so a few hours were spent studying how happy everyone looked. Everyone except me.

  I wasn’t in very many shots, and the ones I was in, I looked miserable.

  I’d been a dark rain cloud during everyone’s perfect weekend getaway and that guilt weighed heavily on me. I shouldn’t have gone at all.

  It was just after five p.m. when they rolled in my dinner tray. I hadn’t even filled out an order slip which meant my mom was probably interfering again. Refusing to give in to her demands, I didn’t bother looking at the tray. I wasn’t going to let her bully me into doing what she wanted. She couldn’t keep me locked up in this hospital room forever. Hopefully, this small act of defiance would get my message through to her.

  About an hour later, they took the tray away. I knew word would get back to my mom pretty quickly after that. In fact, I fully expected her to come storming down the hall within the next thirty minutes.

  But she never came.

  In fact, the next person to darken my door was someone I’d managed to avoid thinking about all day. Austin.

  “Liz sent your homework with me.” He dropped a duffle bag on the table by the door and stepped inside. “And I still had your clothes in my trunk, so I figured I’d just bring it all.”

  I nodded but said nothing. It was a struggle to maintain my façade around him. My heart felt like it was going to burst out of my chest at the sight of him, and the sound of his voice made my stomach flutter and my mouth go dry. I caught myself wondering why I’d been so angry at him. It all seemed so distant now.

  “Kim...listen.” Austin sighed and leaned against the wall across from the foot of the bed. “I respect you a lot, but...after you fell, everyone was freaking out. Someone m
entioned you might have taken something since you’d been acting so strange…and so, I went through your bag.”

  I felt a lump the size of Texas form in my throat. Trying to swallow it away made my eyes water and I shook my head, not wanting to have this conversation with him.

  The confusion in his eyes was obvious, along with the questions, the worry. He wanted to know the truth, but he didn’t know how to ask.

  Yesterday, I probably would’ve snapped at him and accused him of invading my privacy. I would’ve made this entirely about him and his misdeeds. But today, I was too tired to keep fighting with him. I didn’t have the energy or the will to keep lying. I’d already used up what little determination I had left to defy my mother, and even that was quickly dissipating. “What do you want to ask me?”

  Austin shook his head and knit his brow. “Just one thing. Why? You’re already one of the hottest girls on campus. Every single guy at school has you at the top of his list. You don’t need to take pills. Why did you do it?”

  “You wouldn’t understand,” I said, holding his gaze and trying to answer him but not having the words. “Hell, the fact that you’re even asking me that proves it.”

  “What are you talking about? What don’t I understand?” he stepped closer to the bed with determination in his eyes.

  “You ruined me, Austin!” I blurted out the words I swore I’d never say out loud. “No one wants me anymore. Before the winter formal, I had guys lining up in droves for the chance to take me out. Now that I’m single again, there hasn’t been a single person interested in me. Definitely not the guy I actually like.” I sighed and shook my head. “I had to do something to get back into shape again.”

  “So thought taking laxatives and diuretics was the answer? You know that neither of those actually help with weight loss, right?” He folded his arms and looked at me critically.