This story is M Rated for suggested sexual content and violence, but none will actually be graphicly shown here. Also, be noted that I am not a native english speaker and I don't have a beta reader, so any corrections or weird passages that you notice please comment on it so I can correct it for the future. This is a very simple introduction to the story, I will be posting the next chapters later on this comming week as I go finishing them. I hope you all like it! :)
The first day of the month - or how they chose to call it since none of them actually knew what day it was - was always the most waited for all the boys on the Glade, each for their own reasons. Frypan awaited for the supplies for his cooking, Zart was always intrigued if he would receive any new seeds among the ones he always requested - a surprise that happened from time to time -, Gally would be anxious to see who would be the lucky Greenbean that would come this time and how they could initiate him into their little society, Ben, Jeff and Winston were always looking forward to which beverages would be sent their way and the rest of the boys was usually excited for the welcome celebration that was always held by the end of the night.
In general it was always one of the few fun days they all were allowed on that hell whole. That day, however, ended up being a very big exception.
Alby was in the Big House discussing with Gally and Frypan the plans for the construction of their usual bonfire and what meals they could get ready for everyone until, running away from the usual routine, one of the younger Gladers busted in through the door.
"ALBY!" He shouted, panting violently, making the three guys jump in surprise.
"Whoa! Hey greannie, hold your horses. You are not supposed to-..." Frypan started to scold him, but the ghostly pale expression on the ginger boy's face made his voice die on his throat.
"What is happened?" Alby asked immediately in his place, stepping forward towards the skinny boy as he saw the grave expression on his eyes.
"Minho brought Newt back from the Maze." the boy said still a bit breathless, his face pale in dread despite his sweating. "...He is in bad shape."
Those words seemed to wash away all the joy that was once filling the room, replacing it with a dooming silence. After exchanging a worried glance amongst each other for a split second The three of them were already running towards the sick bay faster than ever. A great mass of Gladers already seemed to be gathered around the place where they could hear Jeff and Clint screaming orders around to each other, with Minho asking them to back away angrily but with not much success. The chaos was evident as the boys all shouted questions and answers confusingly at each other.
"Is that Newt?"
"Was he stung?!"
"Wow! Did you see that?"
"What is going on in there? Is he ok?"
"Shuck I think I'm going to throw up..."
"Make way! Let me through!" Alby ordered severely, his worry increasing each moment more as he saw the dead expression of the Gladers as he passed by.
After getting past the crown with Gally's help, however, what he saw inside the med wing made his blood rush away from his face and his stomach give a unpleasant flip towards his throat.
"Holly Sh-..." He heard Gally gasp behind him, his voice just as terrified and speechless as he was.
In front of them lying unconscious on the table between the hurried efforts of Clint and Jeff to work through the staggering amount of blood all around them was Newt - or, at least, what was left of him. His skin was paler than usual, his forehead and blonde hair stained with blood gushing out of his hairline. Above his stomach his left arm was carefully placed while Clint made a tourniquet around it to stop the bleeding gushing out of an unnatural white protuberance sticking out through his skin, close to his wrist, and right bellow one of his leg was bent in four different directions, grotesquely broken in the shape that loosely resembled a "Z".
Alby snapped to his senses after a long shocked moment of silence that seemed to last forever.
"Is he alive?"
"Barely." Jeff said in a severe tone as he finished the tie on the tourniquet on Newt's leg.
"How did this happen?" Gally asked anxiously.
"We don't know, Minho hasn't said a word yet." Clint answered as Jeff made himself busy examining the cut on Newt's forehead.
"Gally, bring that crate here! Put it under his leg, we need to stop the blood flow." Jeff said pointing across the room.
"Ok, out with you. Get out!" Alby demanded, turning around as he remembered the mass of Gladers still blocking the doors behind them and watching all the show. "Go back to your duties, there is nothing else to see here. Move it! NOW!"
After a few moments trying to take their angst spectators out of the way not to create even more of a scene than that was already being, he turned back to the few that kept inside with him and the broken Runner still unconscious on the table.
"Minho, what happened?" Alby asked.
Minho, who was now sitting on the bench beside the bed with his hands over his face, let his hands slide down over his lap and locked eyes with Alby for a long moment before going back into staring the limp body of their friend on the table, who was now having his shirt tattered open by Jeff while Clint monitored carefully if his life signs.
"Come on, spit it." Gally then joined him while Clint and Jeff prepared bandages and something they could use as a splint for his arm and leg, his worry projected on his voice and expression as rage as usual. He charged to grab Minho as he said so, but Alby held him on place before he could pass through him.
"He jumped." he finally said on a vague voice.
"Jumped from where? What do you mean?" Alby inquired, in an almost threatening tone, barely recognizing his own voice. His impatience however had apparently managed to turn the hollow shock Minho seemed to be into rage.
"The Wall! He climbed up the ivy and jumped off from the freaking Maze wall!" Minho snapped, standing up from his seat and pushing Alby away from him in clearly irrational rage. "This stupid, plongfaced shank tried..." his turned his back on them swallowing heavily as he voice cracked, hands back on his face.
The silence that crashed down over the room was thick enough to be cut with a knife. Outside the sickbay the ruckus from the other Gladers, who was still clearly present even though they had closed themselves in, faded out completely.
Newt was like a founding base for all their small society inside the Glade. He was always there, always seemed to know how to deal with the Gladers a lot better than Alby himself, both on the horrible first days and through the deaths of so many friends they had already buried out on the Deadheads. That being said, Alby was sure he wasn't the only one ready to lash out on the runner. It didn't make sense, seemed like some sort of sick and absurd joke... But they all could see, written in Minho's eyes, in the angry, shocked sorrow on his face and the moistness gathering on his eyes - which none of them had ever seen before, Minho had always been so unwavering - and that was almost leaking through his cheek... It was true.
"Bullshit" Gally spitted while no one had yet managed to say anything else. Minho just turned back around facing the wall and took his hand back on his face, trying to wipe it, but Gally charged up on him before he could and grabbed him by his collar. "That's bullshit!"
"Gally, easy, calm down! Calm down…" Jeff intervened, trying to get a hold of Gally as Minho pushed his hands away from him.
"What, you think I am making this up?!" He yelled back at him, his slanted eyes unusually wide in offense.
Jeff had managed to get Gally away from Minho with the help of Clint, while the Runner just glared at the three emotionless and went back into turning away from them to get a hold of his emotions.
"Start from the beginning." Alby then started talking again, his voice lower and hollower than before. His shock was clearly still there, but the reality of the situation was kicking in.
Minho looked at him and sighed tiredly, sitting down.
"He was acting weird since last night, talking nonstop about splitting up to cover more ground on the outer rings," he started, his eyes hidden behind his hand. "When he didn't show up after ten minutes on the intersection we agreed on coming back to, so I went looking for him. Found him two miles into the maze, on the top of the wall, and before I could even shout out to him the shank was already splatted on the ground in the middle of a shucking blood puddle."
Silence suddenly filled up the room. Alby tried to think it through, suddenly recapping how things had been during those past weeks in his mind as precisely as he could.
It was undeniable that Newt had been kind of weird these past few days, especially after the incident with Nick. They all were. The rebellious actions of Sam, the former head of the builders and his followers had almost destroyed all they had been working so hard with Nick to build up, and ended up taking away nearly half of all the boys they had been living with daily those past two years; their eldest Glader included. Nick had been the only Glader Alby had ever seen Newt open up to aside from himself about his worries, and being so worried with all the responsibilities that now fell over his shoulders since he took his friend's place as leader, he had not given the weight of that loss much thought up until that moment. But Newt probably would have. He always did care and felt all that happened to them far more than himself or anyone else. However revolting it seemed for him, it made sense. He could clearly see; and, by the expressions on the faces of the med jacks and the other two boys staring in haunting horror Newt's broken body, so could they.
Alby's expression distorted from shock into a mix of rage and guilt before his hands went to his face, trying to steady the shiver running down his spine. He could feel how impossibly pale he was, despite his dark skin. How could have been so blind? So careless?
Noticing the mutual state of shock they all appeared to be going into inside their own thoughts though, Jeff broke the silence.
"Look no matter how it happened he is still alive, that is what matters." he said, his voice in an unrecognizable broken tone, so much lower than usual. "And if we don't help him now, he won't be for much longer."
"What do you need?" Alby was the first, after still another moment of stupor, to come forward and get back into the task at hand. He was right, they needed to act. And fast. Despite all the emotional crack that all would obviously have on them Newt's should be their top priority right now, and he above all should know that.
"We need to put his limbs back in place before I can bandage them and release the tourniquet." Clint intervened, approaching his arm and examining the grotesque state of his leg. "We will need help to hold him still though, or we might end up making it worse. Even with him unconscious this won't be easy."
"Ok, let's do it. No time to waste," Alby commanded sharply. "give us the directions."
His face, as impossible as it might seem since he was already a very pale boy, managed to turn even paler and in a slight green shade as he looked at it. Gally didn't seem that in control of his own horror at the sight as he approached the table. Alby did all his best to try and keep it together, but he could feel his own legs weaken and the acid taste of bile come up his throat.
Minho and Gally exchanged worried expressions as the runner joined them where Newt lied, frowning deeply.
Jeff took the lead with a long breath to steady himself. "Minho, stay here and make sure his hand and arm stay down." He said motioning to Newt's right arm, then went to the shelf and came back with a piece of what seemed to be a worn out leather belt, handing it to Gally. "Gally stay here over shoulders, and put this inside his mouth so he doesn't bite his tongue off. Alby hold back his legs."
They positioned themselves as commanded, Minho steading Newt's arm and abdomen and Alby right beside him. As Gally folded the leather piece and carefully placed it between his unconscious friend's teeth, Jeff and Clint stepped over to his left side and straightened his left arm beside him, Jeff pressing it firmly against the table as Clint positioned himself to make the necessary movement.
"Ok. All good?" After a short moment they exchanged a look and turned to them. They all nodded, gripping tighter. "On three. One, two… Three."
Clint moved his arm downwards and forward at the same time, and it made a horrible clacking sound that made them all flinch in pain along with the twisting Glader bellow them. The movement was met with a hauling, guttural scream that they took a moment to realize it came from Newt, muffled up by the binding inside his mouth.
"Ok, ok, easy now buddy!" Jeff said in a soothing but tense tone, holding back Newt's head as Clint ran behind him to get the tally and bandages to wrap up his now properly straightened arm. "It's done, it's done! Breathe deep!"
"Hang in there Newt, come on!" Gally tried to say unsure if to calm the agonizing runner or himself, still holding him tightly in place.
Although still clearly unconscious, the runner was still strong enough to give the four boys some trouble to keep him steady in his pain. They all tried to calm him down worriedly. Newt only started to calm down after a few minutes, breathing heavily in between his clenched teeth. Clint and Jeff then moved down to his leg, each putting their hands carefully on two different places and planning out their movement.
"This will be the worst part. Ready?"
"Will he be able to handle it?" Gally asked, gazing at Newt's pale face; he was still biting deep into the leather, his breathing heavy.
"He needs to," Alby interjected. "Count it."
They all tensed up, setting themselves in the same position aside from Gally, who put up a hand over his now fixed up arm to keep it steady instead of on both his shoulders.
"One, two…" He quickly looked at Clint and they both nodded. "Three!"