Russell blinked his bleary eyes open, feeling like he had just woken up from a nightmare. His mind fell into a confusing, disjointed mess as dream and reality blended together.

He drew in a sharp breath. Traces of soap and lavender filled the air, and the unexpected scents threw him for a loop. Something soft cushioned him from underneath, while a coarse, heavy blanket covered him up to his neck.

Lights flashed in the corner of his vision. He squeezed his eyes shut, willing the blinking lights to go away. His surroundings blurred and focused, and it took him a few seconds to realize why. A flickering glow illuminated his surroundings, basking the dim room in a warm light. As his sight cleared, he found himself staring at the moldings on the ceiling—with a shadowed figure sitting beside him.

Russell made out a woman’s long, flowing blonde hair and her matching pair of jacket and pantsuit. Even under the dim lighting, her beautiful green eyes shone bright like emeralds. And they were filled with worry.

"Serena?" he croaked out.

“I’m here,” she said, her voice low and soothing as she bent down closer to him.

Serena Solace. He would never be able to forget that face. Such a beauty was the last thing he expected at his bedside, but who was he to complain?

“Didn’t expect to wake up in a room so dark and mysterious,” he said. “I almost thought we were in that infamous family manor of yours.”

“This is just the staff lounge. A locker room, basically.” Serena gave him a faint smile. “If you ever found yourself in Solace Manor, you'd know.”

“Really?"

She nodded. “But we've abandoned that place for years now. Converted it into a museum only a year ago.”

His sister had never mentioned it to him. It got him curious, but he didn't pry any further. He could tell it was a sore topic for Serena.

“So what are you doing here?” he asked instead. “Wait, did you just say this was a locker room? What am I doing here?”

“For privacy, of course,” Serena said. “Best place for you to recover in the meantime.”

Recover? Tilting his head, he examined the rest of the room. A flat bench sat in the middle of an aisle of standing lockers, and the short aisle led to a wall of showerheads. But before he could look around any further, his head pulsed with a dull ache.

He laid his head back down and groaned. Little by little, things got back to him. He remembered returning to his hometown. He recalled attending some kind of get-together. A restaurant. A few shots on the table…

“Did I pass out drinking?” he asked as the world spun around him. “Tell me. What's the damage?”

“What are you talking about?” Serena asked. “You’ve got a few scrapes on your back and scratches around your torso that needed to be disinfected. You might have a bruised rib as well, possibly two. Good thing none of your cuts were deep.” She paused. “Even a single, serious laceration would’ve required rushing you to the ER, which is obviously impossible given the current circumstances.”

“Head injury? Laceration? What—” Confused at what she was going on about, he turned his head to face her, but his sudden movement sent his surroundings spinning a second time, forcing him to stop in place and squint his eyes at her.

“From the looks of it, you suffered no serious head injury. Though you might be showing signs of mild concussion,” Serena continued. “I’m surprised it wasn't that bad. You're either lucky or thickheaded.” She wrinkled her nose. “I’m betting on the latter."

His temple throbbed, and he failed to follow a word she was saying. “Wha—I don’t—What concussion?"

Serena pressed her lips together, her expression hesitant. “Uhm, are you alright?”

“I will be once you start making sense,” he said. The pounding only got worse. He took his hand out of the blanket to reach for his head, revealing his left palm wrapped in a bandage. “What the…What the hell happened to my hand?”

“What do you mean, what happened?” she asked.

"I was wondering if I drank myself to unconsciousness or something. But now?” He grunted and slowly got up.

“Stay down!” Serena said, pushing him to his makeshift bed. “What’s wrong with you? Don't you remember anything?”

He placed his elbows beside him and struggled to rise one more time. “Remember what? Didn’t I just—” He touched something cold and solid lying next to him. He raised the long object over his head to see it better, and a robust tube of black metal glimmered in the faint candlelight.

“Is this my flashlight?” he asked. It was the same one he had kept in his truck for emergencies. The flashlight looked exactly like the one he owned, bigger than the tactical kind popular for their portability, except multiple dents and scratches marred this one’s surface.

“Thought you might need it again,” Serena said. “In case you need to save other damsels in distress.”

“With a flashlight?” he asked.

Her expression turned serious. “Russ, we were attacked by something, remember? The parking lot? The old man with an oxygen tank? The escape back to your truck? The—“

"The crash..." he muttered in disbelief, and his head dropped back on the cushion.

Serena gave him a somber nod. “The crash.”

Like bubbles surfacing from the bottom of a calm lake, the memories came rushing back to him in bits and pieces, bursting the tranquility he had deluded himself into believing.

“Fudge me,” he breathed out, and his headache threatened to split his head open. "I assumed it was all just a bad dream. A nightmare.”

“It wasn’t a dream, Russ,” Serena said. “It was real. It happened.”

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“How long was I even out for?” he asked as he covered his eyes, willing the headache to stop, for the returning memories to stop.

“Couldn't have been ten minutes ever since we administered first aid,” she said beside him. “Had to call for help first since you needed to be carried out from the truck.”

“Just a few minutes?” His body was telling him he had been bedridden for hours, not minutes.

“We were worried you'd end up with a concussion or even go into a coma with a head injury like that, but…” He heard Serena blow out a breath. “I guess you really are hardheaded.”

Russell snorted.

“And then you woke up and made me think you were suffering amnesia,” Serena said, and something slugged him hard on the shoulder. “Prick.”

He popped eyes open as he gasped in pain. “Easy on the patient, doc!"

“Oh, don't worry. I didn't hit you anywhere near your head.” Serena rolled her eyes. “Or whatever's left of it anyway."

“So considerate of you,” he mumbled He touched a hand to his head, grimacing as he felt the bandage wrapped around his forehead. Aside from a small bruise below her lip, Serena looked completely fine compared to him. “I get why I’m all banged up,” he said, “but how come you’re…uhm…“

“How come I look fine while you turned out to be a complete wreck?” She arched an eyebrow at him. “What do you think?”

He narrowed his eyes. Serena looked way too good to have been through the same nightmare he had experienced. But if he was being honest with himself, she always did look good in his eyes…

He banished the random thought from his mind as the realization finally struck him. “I should've worn my seatbelt, huh?”

Serena scoffed. “Oh, jeez. You think so?”

Wow. Snarky Barbie. Then again, they did have a few close calls tonight. Even now, comfortably lying down in relative safety, he was still unsure how they made it out alive in one piece. And there was their last near-death experience with the crash—which had been his own doing.

Maybe he did deserve some snark.

Serena leaned back in her seat and rubbed her forearm, her eyes looking elsewhere.

Russell didn’t know what to say. He ended up staring upwards once again, but the ceiling didn’t hold any secrets. Neither did it hold the answers to the riddles boggling his mind.

“How do I make any sense of it, Serena?” he asked, turning his lost gaze back to her. “How is any of this even real?"

“You're seriously asking me how any of this is real?” Serena asked back, and the fragile mask of her calm demeanor crumbled. “Russ, how can I have the time to think about anything else when I was too busy worrying about you?!”

“Me?” he asked.

“For a moment there I thought you were a goner. Dead. Half your body flew right through the windshield, Russ! Through. The. Windshield.” She grabbed him by his arm and shook him as she spoke. “Did you know that? Did you? Of course, you didn't know. How could you possibly know? You were—“

“Okay! Okay!” he cut in, and this time he was able to sit up without a problem. “I got it. I hear you loud and clear,” he said in a calm tone, trying to appease the distraught woman beside him before she shook him to death.

Serena leaned away from him, the anger in her expression unabated. Her breaths came in deep and slow as she fought to calm herself down, but the grip she had on his arm remained tight like a vice.

He had no idea what to do to ease her worries. His head ached. Sharp pains stabbed from his neck. Both his legs weighed heavy, and his torso felt as if he had been used as a training dummy. He felt like he had stayed behind on a job site to suffer through a double shift, doing back-breaking labor for sixteen hours straight.

Yet given all that, an odd, refreshing sensation held him in its embrace. It felt like he had a good night's sleep, his batteries fully recharged, and his veins filled with liters of coffee.

He gazed down and examined himself. His clothing was in poor condition. Small holes filled his flannel shirt, and the woven fabric was torn in multiple areas. Even the white undershirt he wore underneath hadn’t been left unscathed. How serious were his injuries? How come he was barely feeling any pain?

“What's wrong?” Serena asked.

“Nothing. I just…” He squeezed his hands. “I feel fine for some reason.” He stretched his neck from side to side and rolled his shoulders, trying to get a full range of motion and loosen the kinks in his back. “Better than fine, even. What kind of pain meds am I on?”

“We didn’t give you any.” Serena took another deep and calming breath. “I would suggest you lay back down, but given that we've already established how annoyingly thick your skull is, I guess staying seated is the best I can ask from you, huh?"

He sighed. “Look, I'm sorry, okay?”

Serena snorted.

“Honest. I really am,” he said. “I admit I wasn't thinking. Hell, there wasn't any time to think. I know it wasn’t my brightest moment…”

She snorted louder.

He ran his fingers through his hair, feeling the guilt weighing him down even now. “I’m sorry for even putting you in danger, Serena,” he said. “I shouldn’t’ve done that. I never, never meant to put your life in danger.”

“You crashed the damn truck, Russ,” she said.

He hung his head in defeat. "I know.”

“Straight into a half-ton monster."

"I know."

Serena let out a long, sufferable sigh. “But you might've ended up saving many lives tonight.”

“I—uh, I guess so…?” he said, taking a peek at her expression.

The frown on her face was gone. Instead, she gave him the biggest eye roll he had ever seen come from a woman.

“Look, I only remember a few things…” He began as he leaned his back against the wall. He recalled out loud what happened, trying to remain as chronologically accurate as possible. Whatever he could remember he enumerated, from the point they met in front of the parking lot to the moment he pancaked that monster against a brick column.

Serena stood up and drew closer to him. She added a few missing details of her own as she proceeded to peel off the bandage wrapped around his head. “Huh,” she muttered as she removed the last layer with a look of wonder. “Your wound’s dry already…”

Russell furrowed his brows. She had mentioned that he had flown through the windshield headfirst, and yet the bandage barely had any bloodstain on it.

Did I heal my wound without thinking? he pondered before blinking his eyes in confusion. Where the hell did that question come from?

He needed to focus on what’s important. They were only able to take down the monster because he had gotten his truck to work. And it may just be the last working vehicle in the country club. After all the delays and mishaps, he could finally return home.

“By the way, how is Big Bertha doing?” he asked.

"We may have a bigger problem than that,” Serena said, discarding the used dressings in a nearby trash bin.

"What? Why?” he asked. “Is that beast-thing still alive?"

“No, no, I don't think it is,” she muttered.

Russell sagged in relief. “So, what's the problem then? What could be worse than the nightmare we've just been through?"

“Nothing,” Serena said, slumping back down to her seat. "Nothing is worse, and that's the problem.”

“What do you mean?”

Loud banging echoed in the quiet locker room, causing Russell’s heart rate to spike.

"Ms. Solace?" a muffled voice asked as something struck the door of the locker room a second time, and Serena shot to her feet.

With a pinched expression, she headed for the door as it creaked open. Someone jutted their head halfway through the gap, their face hidden from the candlelight, and Serena exchanged a quiet conversation with the person waiting on the other side.

Russell let out a long breath to regain his calm. Get a freakin’ grip, man!

“I see,” Serena said. “Thank you, Hallie."

The other person nodded before disappearing back into the hallway.

On her way back to his bedside, Serena grabbed the crisp white dress shirt hanging in front of a nearby locker and offered it to him. “Here. Try this on.”

“I’m good,” he said.

Serena let out a sigh. “Suit yourself.” After popping the locker open and storing the shirt inside, she turned around and bent down to pick up the scented candle from the floor.

He averted his gaze, and his eyes landed on his makeshift bed. He had been lying on a padded bench with a large bath towel as his blanket.

“C’mon, up you go.” With a grunt, Serena helped him to his feet, and she kept her arm wrapped around his like earlier that evening.

“Thanks.” He could stand and walk on his own, but he was grateful nonetheless.

“I guess it’s time to face the music,” she said as they passed through locker after locker, making their way down the aisle. “The others must be tired of waiting.”

“Others?” he asked. “Who's waiting for you?"

“For you, Russ.” Serena pushed the door wide open for what was apparently the next part of his nightmare. “Everyone is waiting for you.”