Liquid Lucidity (A Novella)

Chapter Two

It was a forty-seven hour drive from Maine to Oregon and took Hannah four days to complete. As soon as she arrived, she sent out a group message on her phone saying only three words, 'just got here'. If she used words any longer than that, the voice option on her phone would have struggled to understand her, replacing the words from her brain into random words in text. She'd had issues with that enough times in the past to only use single syllable words. 

Once she arrived in Portland she changed the address on her GPS, a simple task for others but as she now struggled to spell, she read each letter one at a time from Meggie's text and entered it into the system, which took her roughly twenty minutes. Meggie would still be at work until two in the morning, working as a bartender at some dive bar not far from where she lived. Hannah was meant to go to the bar and grab Meggie's keys. 

The GPS took her through a scary part of town, but never led her out of it. Instead, she arrived at her destination when all she wanted was to drive passed it as quickly as possible. Sirens blared passed her vehicle as she parked on a side street, forcing Hannah to cover her ears over her auburn hair. A delivery truck beeped as it backed into an alleyway next to the bar and passerby's yelled obscenities to a group of woman across the street. 

This wasn't what she'd expected and wasn't something she prepared for. Her doctor's encouraged a calm environment and her symptoms got worse with chaos. Hannah couldn't help but wonder what the hell she was thinking. The chaos of this city, or at least this area of it, would set off the symptoms she rarely had to deal with. 

After getting out of her vehicle and setting the alarm, she placed her hands back over her ears and hummed a relaxing tune in an attempt to drown out the noise. Tears pricked at her eyes as she struggled with each step across the busy street, horns honking at her and driver's screaming for her to watch where she was going. She stumbled before landing on the dirty, cold pavement, small rocks embedding into her palms. 

She felt someone tugging at her body and looked up, seeing the face she hadn't seen in close to five years. Meggie's hair was now jet black, cut into a short bob. But her face still felt familiar and safe. 

"Loud," was the only word she could force out. Hannah shook her head and wiped the tears from her face before placing her hands back over her ears. "Too loud."

"Dammit, David! I need a little help over here!"

It only took a few moments before a man showed up at Meggie's side. His fingertips brushed the hair from her face as Hannah continued holding her palms against her ears for dear life. "What the hell happened to her?"

Meggie shook her head. "I don't know. She said it was too loud, so I guess she's sensitive to sound."

The man scrunched down beside Hannah and glared up at Meggie. "So you had her move to  Portland? What the fuck were you thinkin'?"

"I didn't know!"

Though he didn't appear very tall, he was strong enough to pick up Hannah's body with ease. She was tempted to fight it, but whenever Hannah felt heavily stressed, she became dizzy. Also, her motor skills were unpredictable, so maybe being carried was for the best. It was embarrassing, but so was running into something or having her leg give out on her. All Hannah knew was she had to sit down until her erratic pulse slowed and sitting down wasn't an option in the middle of the street. 

"I got you," he said to her. His strong southern accent surprised her given the part of the country they were in. With each easy step he took, his shoulder length brown hair swept against her face and Hannah did her best to concentrate on the rhythm of that.