Post by Brytain Montgomery on Jun 19, 2013 22:57:55 GMT -5
Jessica Witter
hotel maid
I wasn't trying to overhear or I guess oversee what I did. Okay, maybe that's not totally true. I guess I was... it's just that there isn't a whole ton of excitement in this job and one of the only perks, is that I get to collect stories about the crazy things I see and hear, while I clean up the messes that the usually affluent hotel guests leave behind. It's like the more money these people have, the dirtier they are.
So when I saw him walking down the hallway... when I recognized who he was... I knew I had to follow him. I knew that it was Syn because my boyfriend followed PCW the way that some people followed church. I'd gotten into it, at first, just to have something to talk about with him but then I'd gotten hooked. I loved the drama and the stories more than anything but sometimes I couldn’t help but wonder how much of it was fake. How many of the relationships and the feuds were just made up? Were the fights just as real and bloody as they looked or were they well crafted stage fights starring impeccable actors?
When I saw him walking down the hallway, I knew who he was immediately. Dark wash jeans, dark hoodie with the hood pulled up over his hair and those fucking green eyes. Guhhhh. I was dying to know if my favorite wrestling relationship was real. There was never much about the two of them on PCW shows but the little bits and pieces that did show up were always my absolute favorite parts. And well, for the parts that I couldn’t see... there was always fanfiction.
I’m not gonna lie, I’m a little obsessed with the BrySyn message boards. “The Prince of Anarchy and the Fallen Angel”, that’s what my favorite one was called. We wanted to call it “The Lion and the Lamb” but the stupid Twihards got all pissy and started an online war with us because they’d already called that title for one of their stupid Team Edward sites.
I did my best to memorize everything because I knew the girls on the BrySyn message boards would grill me for every last detail. None of us had ever had the chance to see them up close and in person and as far as I knew, I was the first. When I’d heard that PCW was going to have a few shows in the area, I’d immediately started hoping against hope that maybe they would stay at the hotel. We’d had some celebrity guests before so it wasn’t too much of a stretch. Mentally, I was already figuring out how I could work this scene into a fanfiction. Okay, maybe it was kind of embarrassing to be twenty-two and writing fanfiction but I don’t really care. Everyone has that one hobby that embarrasses them. My boyfriend spends more time raiding shit in World of Warcraft than he spends in bed with me, so... there was that.
I followed far enough behind him that maybe I wouldn’t draw his attention. He was kind of terrifying, to be honest. Terrifying and hot as hell, a pretty lethal combination. He had a takeout bag in one hand, his room key in the other. I was close enough that I could see the tattoo on his left hand: her name in black script winding around his left ring finger. It must be real, then, I thought to myself. There were dissenting opinions on the BrySyn boards about whether or not the ink was fake and only for the show.
He pushed open the thick, oak door to the hotel room and loitering around outside, I could hear his soft voice calling her name. The door closed behind him but not all of the way. These doors were so heavy that unless you remembered to pull them all the way shut they lost momentum about halfway through and just kind of stopped. It was working in my favor, though, because I could just barely make out the dim insides of the room from where I was standing.
Through the slim crack in the door, I could see him put the take out cup of soup on the table and glide softly over to the bed, where I assumed Brytain must have been sleeping somewhere under the pile of blankets.
I couldn’t see much as he moved towards the bed, pulling back the layers of blankets to get to her but I could hear what sounded like some slight concern when he called her name again.
I watched his back as he shook her slightly, then his voice took on a slightly panicked edge when she didn’t move. He called her name again and this time I could hear the razor sharpness of panic palpably. He shook her, softly at first and then a little harder. Each time he called her name he sounded less and less calm.
I realized suddenly that I was holding my breath and my heart was pounding in my throat. I didn’t know what was going on but whatever it was, it wasn’t good. Taking a huge chance, I nudged the door open with the toe of my shoe. He was on his knees beside the bed, pulling her limp body into his lap. I couldn't see his face from my vantage point but I could hear the panic in his voice.
Her long, pink hair spilled over onto the floor and I realized with a startled gasp that her lips were blue. Syn obviously realized it too, because suddenly he had her on the floor with his head pressed to her chest. He frantically tilted her head back and covered her mouth with his, breathing into her. I could see her chest rising, slowly. He clasped his hands and pressed them into her chest, forcing the breath back out of her body in little gasps.
With a sudden rush of adrenaline I realized I should go call an ambulance. The last thing I heard as I sprinted down the hallway was, “No, Brytain. No. You don’t get to do this to me.”
When I came back, breathing hard and with a painful stitch in my side, to tell him that I’d called and EMTs were on their way, they were both gone.
Ada Heveraux
ER nurse
I’ve been workin’ this job for damn near forty years. It ain’t exactly what I pictured myself doin’ in life, I guess... When I started out there weren’t too many options for women. In the late sixties and early seventies it was still a real hard world for women in the workforce. We could be a secretary or we could be a nurse or a housekeeper, maybe. But there weren’t too many women CEO’s of big fortune five hundred companies. Women weren’t in senate or congress and they sure as hell weren’t running for president.
I chose nurse on account of I like to help people. Always had some of that motherly instinct in me, even before I raised my three children up. I’d been just past retirement age for a year but I guess when my husband died last Fall it just became a little less important to me. Weren’t really much to go home to so I just kept on keepin’ on.
I’d been in the ER for a good few hours... my shift was pretty quiet so far and I liked it that way. Meant there was less bad things happenin’ out there in the world. Even if it were just for one night.
Had a little boy who fell off a swing and broke his wrist... a college age boy who was having an allergic reaction to a bee sting... a few other little things. I stitched up the lip of a toddler who was learning to walk and had taken a bump on a coffee table’s sharp edge... did more comfortin’ of his poor mama than him. I remembered real clear what that was like... the first time you see your baby bleedin’ and know it’s more than just a scraped up knee.
So, it’d been a quiet night until the door crashed open. It got my attention immediately ‘cause it’d nearly scared the bejeesus outta me. The young man caught my attention first just because of the look of pure panic on his face. His vibrant, almost unnaturally green eyes were wild with it. The second thing that caught my attention was the petite, pink haired young woman in his arms. He carried her bridal style, cradling her limp body carefully to his chest. I could see immediately that she was in respiratory distress. When you been doin’ this job for as long as I have you learn to pick up these things from a distance.
“Please...” the young man said, his voice so ragged that it almost hurt to hear it. “Please... she’s not breathing.”
I was already gesturing for one of the other nurses to bring over a gurney and call a code. It only took seconds for two of our best doctors to leave their non-critical patients and swarm over to the girl. When the male orderly went to pull her out of the young man’s arms, he was met with an almost feral growl.
“C’mon now, son,” I said softly, reaching up to pat the intimidating young man’s shoulder. “They’re gonna help her but you gotta let her go first.”
He reluctantly let them take her, put her on the gurney and start CPR.
“How long has she been down?” one of the doctors demanded, not even bothering to look up from his work.
“I... I don’t know,” the young man said. “I got back to the hotel and she wasn’t breathing... I... I got her to breath again but she stopped in the car...”
“How long?” the doctor demanded again.
I glanced down, saw the ring on the young girl’s hand that was hanging limply over the side of the stretcher. It was a beautiful ring in a metal that I’d never really seen before with the most beautiful pink stones set in it. Left hand... I realized with a sigh. His fiance more than likely.
I felt my heart breaking for the poor boy. They were both so young, probably so excited for the life and love that lay ahead of them. But I knew the signs well enough to know that no matter what these doctors did now... their story was over.
Her pupils were blown out, dilated until you almost couldn’t tell that her eyes were a vibrant, bright blue. They weren’t responding to the light that the doctors shone down into her eyes.
If she survived this, the girl wasn’t going to breath again without a respirator. She’d never walk down the aisle on their wedding day. If the girl survived... she’d be-- well, for lack of a better, nicer term-- a vegetable.
I think I was the only one who heard the young man when he whispered one word under his breath. “Please.”
“Pulse is thready,” Dr. Morgan called out, shoving a lock of her cornsilk blonde hair behind one ear. “She’s going tachycardic.”
“C’mon, son,” I said softly, “You don’t want to watch this...” I said. I put out a hand, trying to guide the young man to a waiting room. I knew what was going to come next. They were going to try to shock her heart into beating a normal rhythm again. It was hard enough to watch a stranger’s body arch and jerk with the electricity and unfortunately, I knew all too well what it was like watchin’ the body of someone you loved take that kind of punishment. Even if logically, you knew they couldn’t feel it anymore. Even if you knew it was necessary.
He shrunk away from my touch, “No,” he growled out. “I want to stay.”
I sighed and left him be, watching him out of the corner of my eye to make sure he didn’t do nothin’ crazy. The boy looked like he could be a dangerous one, there was just something about him that struck me that way.
They shocked her three times, two sets each time. I watched him flinch every time they pressed the paddles down on the bare skin of her chest. Every time her small body shook under the current.
But there was nothin’ to be done.
They called her time of death not even half an hour later. I went looking for the young man after it was all over but I couldn’t find him anywhere...
Brytain Montgomery
plucky protagonist
I woke up with a jerk and a scream. My body flying up, fighting out of the covers that wrapped me up tight like ropes. Coiled around my wrists, pinning me underneath of their suddenly oppressive weight.
Each ragged breath was almost painful and I was covered in a sheen of cold, clammy sweat. I crawled out from under the blankets, my body shivering as though it weren’t almost the middle of summer in southern California.
When my eyes adjusted, I was grateful to realize that I was alone in the room. It would give me a chance to calm down, slow my heartbeat and maybe what it was like to breath normally instead of in frantic gasps.
I slid to the edge of the bed, throwing my legs over the side. I was in nothing but one of Syn’s t-shirts, what I usually wore to bed, but it clung damply to my body. Slipping it off, I threw it to the side and when I thought I could stand up without falling back down, I padded over to our suitcases and dug out another one, slipping it on over my head.
The dream had felt real. Too fucking real. I couldn’t ever remember having a dream-- no, nightmare-- quite like it. I could see everything but I couldn’t do a fucking thing to stop it. All I remembered was feeling awful, my body burning up with fever, when I’d laid down for a nap. Then I wasn’t inside of my own body anymore.
I was a hotel maid. I was an old nurse.
I was dead.
My hands pressed against my pounding heart, feeling it race reassuringly against my palms.
Alive, I told myself, you’re alive and everything is fine. But I wasn’t an idiot. I knew what it meant. I knew what my subconscious was trying to tell me. It was trying to tell me that I’d put it off for too fucking long. I’d put off the tests, the potential treatment... I’d put off knowing if I’d damaged my body in the ring so badly that another bump to the head would end my life.
Sighing, I raked a hand through my sweat damp hair, still breathing raggedly. My subconscious had a sick, twisted way of putting things into perspective for me.
Leaning back against the plush pillows again, I tried to stop the shaking that was working it’s way through my bones. A side effect of the adrenaline.
I would do it soon. I’d go get the goddamn tests out of the way soon. But when? I couldn’t do it before Slamathon. There was too little time and too much at stake. I couldn’t risk not being able to compete. The Broadcast championship was a good place to start.
It was a good place to get a foothold in, to put myself on the PCW map, so to speak. It was a good place to step out from behind the shadow of my amazingly talented, World Champion fiancee. I loved him dearly, but something inside of me chafed at the idea of being seen as a glorified valet. I had bled and torn my body to pieces to get where I was today. It was hard enough being on the smallish size and being female in a sport that was still very much male dominated.
Thinking about business had always had a strangely calming effect for me and as my thoughts flickered over to my opponent, Brian Stryker, I could feel my body calming down. My heart and my mind both racing just a little less. The adrenaline fueled shaking slowly stopping.
Stryker was decent. I’d give him that. I’d watched enough of his old tape to know what the kid was capable of. But could I take that title from around his waist?
Could I end his title run just like I’d ended Curtis Wilkes’s winning streak. A six month long winning streak. I couldn’t lie, I took a bit of perverse pride in doing it. Someone had once said that when people discounted me, overlooked me, I pulled them down to my level and stared them right in the eyes. It’s what I’d done to Wilkes. I’d pulled him down and stared right into his eyes. He’d been weighed, measured and found wanting.
Could I do the same to Stryker?
I knew I could. But at what cost? I knew myself well enough to know that I would go out there and do what I did every time I stepped into a wrestling ring.
Forget.
Forget about safety and forget about caring about my own body. Forget about anything but a ruthless, single-minded determination to win. To prove something. To prove something to myself, first and foremost. To prove something to the world, second.
But would this be it?
Would this be the match that made that terrifying nightmare I’d just woken up from reality? I shook my head to clear out the thoughts when I felt my heart beat speed up again.
I just needed to make it through this match. I just needed to take the championship from around Stryker’s waist. Once I’d done that, I could step back for a minute, worry about the tests and cat scans and all that stupid bullshit that would tell me whether or not my brain was a ticking time bomb.
But for now, all I could let myself worry about was winning.
Being the next PCW broadcast champion.
hotel maid
I wasn't trying to overhear or I guess oversee what I did. Okay, maybe that's not totally true. I guess I was... it's just that there isn't a whole ton of excitement in this job and one of the only perks, is that I get to collect stories about the crazy things I see and hear, while I clean up the messes that the usually affluent hotel guests leave behind. It's like the more money these people have, the dirtier they are.
So when I saw him walking down the hallway... when I recognized who he was... I knew I had to follow him. I knew that it was Syn because my boyfriend followed PCW the way that some people followed church. I'd gotten into it, at first, just to have something to talk about with him but then I'd gotten hooked. I loved the drama and the stories more than anything but sometimes I couldn’t help but wonder how much of it was fake. How many of the relationships and the feuds were just made up? Were the fights just as real and bloody as they looked or were they well crafted stage fights starring impeccable actors?
When I saw him walking down the hallway, I knew who he was immediately. Dark wash jeans, dark hoodie with the hood pulled up over his hair and those fucking green eyes. Guhhhh. I was dying to know if my favorite wrestling relationship was real. There was never much about the two of them on PCW shows but the little bits and pieces that did show up were always my absolute favorite parts. And well, for the parts that I couldn’t see... there was always fanfiction.
I’m not gonna lie, I’m a little obsessed with the BrySyn message boards. “The Prince of Anarchy and the Fallen Angel”, that’s what my favorite one was called. We wanted to call it “The Lion and the Lamb” but the stupid Twihards got all pissy and started an online war with us because they’d already called that title for one of their stupid Team Edward sites.
I did my best to memorize everything because I knew the girls on the BrySyn message boards would grill me for every last detail. None of us had ever had the chance to see them up close and in person and as far as I knew, I was the first. When I’d heard that PCW was going to have a few shows in the area, I’d immediately started hoping against hope that maybe they would stay at the hotel. We’d had some celebrity guests before so it wasn’t too much of a stretch. Mentally, I was already figuring out how I could work this scene into a fanfiction. Okay, maybe it was kind of embarrassing to be twenty-two and writing fanfiction but I don’t really care. Everyone has that one hobby that embarrasses them. My boyfriend spends more time raiding shit in World of Warcraft than he spends in bed with me, so... there was that.
I followed far enough behind him that maybe I wouldn’t draw his attention. He was kind of terrifying, to be honest. Terrifying and hot as hell, a pretty lethal combination. He had a takeout bag in one hand, his room key in the other. I was close enough that I could see the tattoo on his left hand: her name in black script winding around his left ring finger. It must be real, then, I thought to myself. There were dissenting opinions on the BrySyn boards about whether or not the ink was fake and only for the show.
He pushed open the thick, oak door to the hotel room and loitering around outside, I could hear his soft voice calling her name. The door closed behind him but not all of the way. These doors were so heavy that unless you remembered to pull them all the way shut they lost momentum about halfway through and just kind of stopped. It was working in my favor, though, because I could just barely make out the dim insides of the room from where I was standing.
Through the slim crack in the door, I could see him put the take out cup of soup on the table and glide softly over to the bed, where I assumed Brytain must have been sleeping somewhere under the pile of blankets.
I couldn’t see much as he moved towards the bed, pulling back the layers of blankets to get to her but I could hear what sounded like some slight concern when he called her name again.
I watched his back as he shook her slightly, then his voice took on a slightly panicked edge when she didn’t move. He called her name again and this time I could hear the razor sharpness of panic palpably. He shook her, softly at first and then a little harder. Each time he called her name he sounded less and less calm.
I realized suddenly that I was holding my breath and my heart was pounding in my throat. I didn’t know what was going on but whatever it was, it wasn’t good. Taking a huge chance, I nudged the door open with the toe of my shoe. He was on his knees beside the bed, pulling her limp body into his lap. I couldn't see his face from my vantage point but I could hear the panic in his voice.
Her long, pink hair spilled over onto the floor and I realized with a startled gasp that her lips were blue. Syn obviously realized it too, because suddenly he had her on the floor with his head pressed to her chest. He frantically tilted her head back and covered her mouth with his, breathing into her. I could see her chest rising, slowly. He clasped his hands and pressed them into her chest, forcing the breath back out of her body in little gasps.
With a sudden rush of adrenaline I realized I should go call an ambulance. The last thing I heard as I sprinted down the hallway was, “No, Brytain. No. You don’t get to do this to me.”
When I came back, breathing hard and with a painful stitch in my side, to tell him that I’d called and EMTs were on their way, they were both gone.
xxx
Ada Heveraux
ER nurse
I’ve been workin’ this job for damn near forty years. It ain’t exactly what I pictured myself doin’ in life, I guess... When I started out there weren’t too many options for women. In the late sixties and early seventies it was still a real hard world for women in the workforce. We could be a secretary or we could be a nurse or a housekeeper, maybe. But there weren’t too many women CEO’s of big fortune five hundred companies. Women weren’t in senate or congress and they sure as hell weren’t running for president.
I chose nurse on account of I like to help people. Always had some of that motherly instinct in me, even before I raised my three children up. I’d been just past retirement age for a year but I guess when my husband died last Fall it just became a little less important to me. Weren’t really much to go home to so I just kept on keepin’ on.
I’d been in the ER for a good few hours... my shift was pretty quiet so far and I liked it that way. Meant there was less bad things happenin’ out there in the world. Even if it were just for one night.
Had a little boy who fell off a swing and broke his wrist... a college age boy who was having an allergic reaction to a bee sting... a few other little things. I stitched up the lip of a toddler who was learning to walk and had taken a bump on a coffee table’s sharp edge... did more comfortin’ of his poor mama than him. I remembered real clear what that was like... the first time you see your baby bleedin’ and know it’s more than just a scraped up knee.
So, it’d been a quiet night until the door crashed open. It got my attention immediately ‘cause it’d nearly scared the bejeesus outta me. The young man caught my attention first just because of the look of pure panic on his face. His vibrant, almost unnaturally green eyes were wild with it. The second thing that caught my attention was the petite, pink haired young woman in his arms. He carried her bridal style, cradling her limp body carefully to his chest. I could see immediately that she was in respiratory distress. When you been doin’ this job for as long as I have you learn to pick up these things from a distance.
“Please...” the young man said, his voice so ragged that it almost hurt to hear it. “Please... she’s not breathing.”
I was already gesturing for one of the other nurses to bring over a gurney and call a code. It only took seconds for two of our best doctors to leave their non-critical patients and swarm over to the girl. When the male orderly went to pull her out of the young man’s arms, he was met with an almost feral growl.
“C’mon now, son,” I said softly, reaching up to pat the intimidating young man’s shoulder. “They’re gonna help her but you gotta let her go first.”
He reluctantly let them take her, put her on the gurney and start CPR.
“How long has she been down?” one of the doctors demanded, not even bothering to look up from his work.
“I... I don’t know,” the young man said. “I got back to the hotel and she wasn’t breathing... I... I got her to breath again but she stopped in the car...”
“How long?” the doctor demanded again.
I glanced down, saw the ring on the young girl’s hand that was hanging limply over the side of the stretcher. It was a beautiful ring in a metal that I’d never really seen before with the most beautiful pink stones set in it. Left hand... I realized with a sigh. His fiance more than likely.
I felt my heart breaking for the poor boy. They were both so young, probably so excited for the life and love that lay ahead of them. But I knew the signs well enough to know that no matter what these doctors did now... their story was over.
Her pupils were blown out, dilated until you almost couldn’t tell that her eyes were a vibrant, bright blue. They weren’t responding to the light that the doctors shone down into her eyes.
If she survived this, the girl wasn’t going to breath again without a respirator. She’d never walk down the aisle on their wedding day. If the girl survived... she’d be-- well, for lack of a better, nicer term-- a vegetable.
I think I was the only one who heard the young man when he whispered one word under his breath. “Please.”
“Pulse is thready,” Dr. Morgan called out, shoving a lock of her cornsilk blonde hair behind one ear. “She’s going tachycardic.”
“C’mon, son,” I said softly, “You don’t want to watch this...” I said. I put out a hand, trying to guide the young man to a waiting room. I knew what was going to come next. They were going to try to shock her heart into beating a normal rhythm again. It was hard enough to watch a stranger’s body arch and jerk with the electricity and unfortunately, I knew all too well what it was like watchin’ the body of someone you loved take that kind of punishment. Even if logically, you knew they couldn’t feel it anymore. Even if you knew it was necessary.
He shrunk away from my touch, “No,” he growled out. “I want to stay.”
I sighed and left him be, watching him out of the corner of my eye to make sure he didn’t do nothin’ crazy. The boy looked like he could be a dangerous one, there was just something about him that struck me that way.
They shocked her three times, two sets each time. I watched him flinch every time they pressed the paddles down on the bare skin of her chest. Every time her small body shook under the current.
But there was nothin’ to be done.
They called her time of death not even half an hour later. I went looking for the young man after it was all over but I couldn’t find him anywhere...
xxx
Brytain Montgomery
plucky protagonist
I woke up with a jerk and a scream. My body flying up, fighting out of the covers that wrapped me up tight like ropes. Coiled around my wrists, pinning me underneath of their suddenly oppressive weight.
Each ragged breath was almost painful and I was covered in a sheen of cold, clammy sweat. I crawled out from under the blankets, my body shivering as though it weren’t almost the middle of summer in southern California.
When my eyes adjusted, I was grateful to realize that I was alone in the room. It would give me a chance to calm down, slow my heartbeat and maybe what it was like to breath normally instead of in frantic gasps.
I slid to the edge of the bed, throwing my legs over the side. I was in nothing but one of Syn’s t-shirts, what I usually wore to bed, but it clung damply to my body. Slipping it off, I threw it to the side and when I thought I could stand up without falling back down, I padded over to our suitcases and dug out another one, slipping it on over my head.
The dream had felt real. Too fucking real. I couldn’t ever remember having a dream-- no, nightmare-- quite like it. I could see everything but I couldn’t do a fucking thing to stop it. All I remembered was feeling awful, my body burning up with fever, when I’d laid down for a nap. Then I wasn’t inside of my own body anymore.
I was a hotel maid. I was an old nurse.
I was dead.
My hands pressed against my pounding heart, feeling it race reassuringly against my palms.
Alive, I told myself, you’re alive and everything is fine. But I wasn’t an idiot. I knew what it meant. I knew what my subconscious was trying to tell me. It was trying to tell me that I’d put it off for too fucking long. I’d put off the tests, the potential treatment... I’d put off knowing if I’d damaged my body in the ring so badly that another bump to the head would end my life.
Sighing, I raked a hand through my sweat damp hair, still breathing raggedly. My subconscious had a sick, twisted way of putting things into perspective for me.
Leaning back against the plush pillows again, I tried to stop the shaking that was working it’s way through my bones. A side effect of the adrenaline.
I would do it soon. I’d go get the goddamn tests out of the way soon. But when? I couldn’t do it before Slamathon. There was too little time and too much at stake. I couldn’t risk not being able to compete. The Broadcast championship was a good place to start.
It was a good place to get a foothold in, to put myself on the PCW map, so to speak. It was a good place to step out from behind the shadow of my amazingly talented, World Champion fiancee. I loved him dearly, but something inside of me chafed at the idea of being seen as a glorified valet. I had bled and torn my body to pieces to get where I was today. It was hard enough being on the smallish size and being female in a sport that was still very much male dominated.
Thinking about business had always had a strangely calming effect for me and as my thoughts flickered over to my opponent, Brian Stryker, I could feel my body calming down. My heart and my mind both racing just a little less. The adrenaline fueled shaking slowly stopping.
Stryker was decent. I’d give him that. I’d watched enough of his old tape to know what the kid was capable of. But could I take that title from around his waist?
Could I end his title run just like I’d ended Curtis Wilkes’s winning streak. A six month long winning streak. I couldn’t lie, I took a bit of perverse pride in doing it. Someone had once said that when people discounted me, overlooked me, I pulled them down to my level and stared them right in the eyes. It’s what I’d done to Wilkes. I’d pulled him down and stared right into his eyes. He’d been weighed, measured and found wanting.
Could I do the same to Stryker?
I knew I could. But at what cost? I knew myself well enough to know that I would go out there and do what I did every time I stepped into a wrestling ring.
Forget.
Forget about safety and forget about caring about my own body. Forget about anything but a ruthless, single-minded determination to win. To prove something. To prove something to myself, first and foremost. To prove something to the world, second.
But would this be it?
Would this be the match that made that terrifying nightmare I’d just woken up from reality? I shook my head to clear out the thoughts when I felt my heart beat speed up again.
I just needed to make it through this match. I just needed to take the championship from around Stryker’s waist. Once I’d done that, I could step back for a minute, worry about the tests and cat scans and all that stupid bullshit that would tell me whether or not my brain was a ticking time bomb.
But for now, all I could let myself worry about was winning.
Being the next PCW broadcast champion.
