|
Chapter Three.
He awoke from a disorienting series of flashing images and a lot of yelling, to a soft click-click-click. He recognized the sound to be that of nurses' shoes, which surprised him. That he would make that kind of a connection was odd, especially since he was back for another year at prep school. They had a nurse, but she usually made very different sounds than click-click-click, and they usually involved Dr. Grayson, the creepy chemistry teacher. And the only time he'd ever been in the hospital was when he'd been in that fight with - what was his name again? - and ended up with several stitches in his lip, internal bleeding, and several other bruises and contusions. He didn't remember any nurses even being there. As a matter of fact, all he distinctly remembered about that adventure was being alone in his bed... for minutes that dragged into hours, and hours that dragged into lifetimes.
Yet somehow, this clicking, which was slowly getting louder, registered as being a pair of nurse's shoes on a hard floor. This also struck him as odd - Pency Prep's floors were wood, and most of it had given way to dead spots, except for the library and a few places in the cafeteria. He tried to open his eyes, but discovered something textile prevented this. His whole body felt like it was made of lead. Summoning strength, he slowly lifted an arm and his pale hand clumsily explored the gauze above his face.
After a few minutes of this, he decided it was not a blanket, as he originally percieved, but something attached to his face that probably had a good reason for being there. Almost his whole head had been covered, like his nose, which he had tried to breath through and discovered that, too, was impossible. He took a few deep breaths through his mouth, inhaling the musty air. His throat was dry and scratchy, and he coughed. This triggered a shooting pain in the right side of his chest. He then remembered that something had been stuck into him after he felt like he was drowning. Was it still there? He couldn't tell, and decided he didn't really want to know, either.
He dropped his hand back above his head and it met cold metal. He was on a counter of some kind that probably was not originally meant to accomodate a body. He was cold. He felt strangely naked. He dragged his other hand over to his torso, and touched skin - something he was not expecting in the least. The needle in his elbow prevented further exploration with that hand. As near as he could tell, he still had his pants on. Or, the right leg of them, anyway. His left leg was achy and felt more like lead than the rest of him combined. He tried to move his toes and was greeted with a shooting pain.
The clicking noise drew very near and then stopped. Two willowy hands wound themselves around the forearm above his head. They were colder than the metal on which he lay, yet much, much softer. He resisted as best he could out of sheer surprise, but his strength seemed to extend little past remaining conscious. As the hands repositioned his arm at his side, a female voice floated through the gauze.
"You need to remain immoble in order for your lung to heal properly, and you need to recover."
The voice was of a fairly high pitch, quiet, and his brain combined this with the small hands to produce a picture of a very vulnerable little girl. This somehow didn't make much sense to him. He supposed it was the words she said (what little girl did he know that spoke like that?), or the dull sensation that he was in some kind of hospital. Or dead. Was he dead? He couldn't tell. He didn't feel quite alive, yet he was feeling... did the dead feel? He was struck by an idea. A rather obvious one, came the immediate afterthought. He would ask this disembodied voice.
"Do the dead feel?"
His voice made the familiar gear-shift into audibility as best it could through the fluid in his lungs. There was a pause in which he strained to hear any sound of this mysterious "little girl" in the nurse's shoes. Finally, her voice met his ears again.
"Why ask me? I'm not."
"Dead?"
She offered a noncommittal "Hmm." that only just registered as an agreement. Breathing, he noticed, was something of an undertakng, and so he concentrated on this for a few moments while the cold hands changed the needle in his arm.
"Am I?" he managed, finally.
"You're not that lucky."
With that, the clicking of the shoes began again, receding as he contemplated what she said. They stopped a fairly good distance from him, it seemed... it was hard to tell with this gauze over his ears. From much farther away came moans of pain. Thoughts aligned in his head, and he suddenly knew exactly where he was. He was in one of those facilities he'd heard about. Where boys like him went in injured and came out dead. Dead... like.... oh, no.... he's gone! He's gone!! No...! Panic had only just secured its grip on him, when his IV kicked in and he sank once again into unconsciousness.
|
