The persistent beeping is what I notice first. Steady and unstopping and entirely too loud.

That’s how I notice I’m awake. By becoming annoyed at the beeping.

My eyes crack open, instantly blinded by the harsh fluorescent lighting. I can hear low voices around me, but no distinct words or phrases penetrate through my groggy gaze.

“He’s awake,” my brothers face swims into view before me. Connor’s eyes are pinched with anxiety, and though he tries to give me a tight smile, he’s never been very good at masking his emotions. “How are you feeling?”

“Like I got mashed into the ground and scraped back off it,” I grumble, pushing myself up onto my forearms. “What happened? Where am I?”

Connor exchanges a look with someone out of my view. “You’re safe. You’re at the hospital.”

I roll my eyes. “Obviously I’m at the hospital. But which one? And why?”

He fiddles with a knob on my hospital bed, avoiding my eye.

“How much of last night do you remember?”

I pause, trying to silently shift through the blurry bits and pieces of memory that came to me. “We were at Duke’s - it was pinball Friday.” We’d been going to the dive bar every Friday for close to five years now, so I felt reasonably confident that my disjointed memories of the sticky bar top and PBR cans were accurate.

Connor nodded in confirmation. I continued, furrowing my brow in the effort to remember. “There were those two guys we were playing against - they thought we heckled them…” Flashes of angry faces, spit flying, sprang to mind. “Connor, what happened, why am I here?”

I went to rub my pounding head, but my hand caught. I looked down, taking in the handcuff attaching me to the hospital bed, slowly raising my gaze back to Connor.

He blew out a breath. “We fucked up.”