The Unseen by JL Bryan

But the leg break is not—”
    “I don’t have any insurance,” Cassidy said.
    “Then you came to the right hospital,” Dr. Spiegelman told her. “The leg break is not what concerns me, Cassidy.  I’m concerned about what we found in your blood work.”
    Cassidy felt a sinking, frightened feeling, immediately thinking of sexual transmitted diseases and every questionable encounter she might have had.
    “Your blood...” Dr. Spiegelman shook her head. “It looks like something scraped off the floor of the DEA crime lab.”
    “Oh.” Cassidy’s eyes dropped to her hands, which rested on her stomach.
    “Opioids, MDMA, cocaine, THC...I don’t even have time to read the list.” She closed the folder and looked up at Cassidy. “You need drug rehabilitation therapy, too.”
    “Are you calling the police?”
    “Not my job.  ”
    “How is Peyton?”
    “Who’s that?” Dr. Spiegelman riffled through her folders.
    “My boyfriend?  He came in with me.  Right?”
    “Oh.  I can’t divulge specific medical information if you’re not family, but he’s going to be fine.  Do you have any other questions?”
    Cassidy had tons, but couldn’t pick which one to ask.  The pocket of Dr. Spiegelman’s white coat buzzed gently, and the doctor glanced inside.
    “I’m sorry to rush, but we’re over capacity.  Friday night, lots of other people getting high and crashing their cars, too.” Dr. Spiegelman hurried out.
    Cassidy wondered how long she’d been unconscious and dreaming.  It sounded like they’d already done X-rays.  She looked at her right leg, suspended and useless, and wondered how long it would be before she could walk again.  There, that would have been a good question for the doctor , she thought.
    “You ready to see your family?” the nurse asked her.
    “Yeah.” Cassidy remembered seeing her mother and Kieran in her dream, out in the waiting room. Though she’d been knocked out, some part of her mind must have picked up on where she was.  She remembered the strange experience of floating bodiless through the hospital, drifting from floor to floor like a ghost.  Naturally, there had been monsters everywhere. 
    She shivered when she remembered the three thin, tall shadows leaning over her bed, though she couldn’t see them now, thankfully.  The worst days were when bits of nightmare followed her back to the waking world, as if some part of her brain believed she was still asleep and dreaming.
    Her mom and brother entered the room, and she was startled to see that they looked just as they had in her dream.  That was no surprise with her mom, who wore the same haircut she’d had for years and the usual powder-blue Pleasant Evening Inn blazer.  Her brother, though, had shaved the side of his head and hung a thin steel chain from his ear to his nose, a look she’d never seen on him before.  Even his clothes were identical to those in her dream.
    “Cassidy!” her mother said, the Irish accent nearly breaking through on the vowels.  She approached the bed and hugged her gingerly around the shoulders.  The familiar rosy scent of her perfume calmed Cassidy. “Are you all right?”
    “All right?” Kieran snorted. “Her leg’s all jacked up.”
    “It could have been much worse.” Tears glimmered for a moment in her mother’s dark green eyes, then she wiped them away and gave her a stern look. “Why were you out driving with that boy so late?  He was drinking, wasn’t he?  You both were.”
    “A little,” Cassidy said.
    “And God only knows what else.”
    “Yeah, what were you guys on?” Kieran asked, half-distracted by the phone in his hand.
    “I’ve said he was no good,” Cassidy’s mother went on.
    “Can you ask about his injuries?” Cassidy asked. “They wouldn’t tell me a thing.”
    “I don’t give one hair of a pig’s ass about the boy, honestly,” her mother said.
    “I know, but—”
    “The doctor told us you’ll be months in recovery,” she