Dr. Darry the Patient
(Some basis on Chapter 13 by laurenbooks125 + one by another author of Darry dreaming of his own suicide)
"AAAAAA! PONYBOY! NO! PONYBOY, NO!"
Darry's bellows shook the house and reverberated throughout the whole neighborhood.
Soda and Ponyboy were both all but electrically shocked and bolted upright out of bed, charging across the floor to their big brother's bedroom.
Lights came on at houses throughout the street, as if it were the hour of rising for school/work instead of 1:00 A.M.
Darry lay in bed, sweating and sobbing.
"Darry? Darry!" exclaimed Ponyboy, and turned on the bedside lamp as Darry had done for him countless times to help dispel bad dreams.
Sodapop stood in shock.
Darry's eyes finally seemed to focus.
"PONYBOY? PONYBOY! Dear _ ! We need to get you straight back to the hospital! I found you unconscious in the garage, and there was the bottle with the skull and crossbones on it, lying next to you on the floor!"
Both Ponyboy and Soda gazed upon Darry, bewildered. What was the matter with Darry?
"Darry," responded Ponyboy as soothingly as he could.
"I wasn't really in the garage! I was sleeping with Soda in bed!"
Darry blinked several times and looked from one brother to the other, then gazed thoroughly on Ponyboy, who did not look like he had actually come near any poison.
"Ponyboy, whew! Thank goodness!" Darry said at last. "Don't you know if we lost you like that we'd die of broken hearts?!"
"Hey, Darry, what's up with your eye?" Ponyboy inquired. "It's all red!"
"Because he's been weeping, Ponyboy!" Soda stated.
"No, look more closely, see how one is a much more deep red than the other?" Ponyboy countered as he held a mirror to Darry's by then questioning face.
Soda strengthened his gaze and then stated "Oh yeah, you're right!"
Darry, meanwhile saw his mirror image and exclaimed "How did that occur? I must have gotten something in there. I'm going to need to wash that out."
He rose from his bed and flushed his eye in water out of the tap in the bathroom.
When he returned, his composure was regained, and he stood looking upon his younger brothers sternly.
"Why are you two still standing there? We all have to get up early tomorrow morning for school and work as you both well know. The show is over. Get yourselves back to bed, now."
Soda and Ponyboy, for once relieved over their big brother's frequent bossiness, quickly made haste to their beds, and Darry returned to his, with all their 'block companions' '(aka neighbors') lights going out again as well.
The next morning, though, Darry awakened with a sore throat, fluid in his ears and nose, and a throbbing right eye.
"I'm going to have to stay in today," he croaked wearily from his bed, calling in sick on the telephone.
Soda heard his voice and Ponyboy followed. With great concern, they both looked in, but Darry waved them off.
"I might be contagious," he rasped at them after he had placed the phone back in its cradle. "I don't want either of you getting this. Just get ready for work and school as usual and I should be okay after some rest."
Once Soda and Ponyboy were out of the house, however, Darry took a rare action: He called the doctor and scheduled a same day ill appointment.
"I just can't get myself going," he said wearily to the nurse once at the office. "I may have a fever but I must be exaggerating. It's like I'm really wimping out here," he added, embarrassed over his inability to tough it out as was typical for him when injured or under the weather. The nurse, however, looked at him as if to say he needed to take better care of himself in matters of rest and didn't think he was wimping out at all. Promptly, she took his temperature and looked at him even more firmly with the same resolve.
"You really do have a fever-101. You shouldn't be trying to exert yourself in a condition like that. We'll give you some eye drops for that bacterial conjunctivitis (pink eye) and antibiotics, but beyond that, you need to make certain not only to consume clear fluids, but also to get plenty of sleep." Darry knew from her demeanor it would be pointless to try to contradict. He was too fatigued anyway. After the wait for the medicine from the clinic pharmacy, he was only too eager to treat himself to a hot bath and head back to bed.
Once asleep, Darry had a strange and horrible daymare (nightmare in a daytime sleep)
First, gargantuan ants crawled in and out of his infected eye, stinging with their spit every time they passed.
Then, giant fire breathing chimpanzees chased him.
Finally, worst of all, he dreamt that both Soda and Ponyboy were dead along with both their parents and that they are all being tortured in an underground dungeon. He saw it from the precipice of a red rock cliff high above, heard their cries of pain, tried to reach them, but the distance was too great and there was no way he can climb down to them.
Gasping and thrashing, he woke with great relief to peace and calm. Or was it something more?
It seemed to him that the spirits of his deceased parents were in the room, which indeed they were.
He then felt an unseen hand-his mother's-caress his own, and then his father's invisible hand gently wiping his face. Finally, his mother's low contralto voice pervaded the room in song, soothing him back to sleep, this time to dream of riding a sky blue unicorn on a beach with sand of the same color
to a rainbow cottage, where an angel like being dressed in gold rubbed soothing cream into his sore eye.
Within 2 hours, Darry awoke, stronger than before, to see a painting of a golden unicorn with a silver spire that Ponyboy had quietly placed on the wall in his room. With a turn of his head, he saw Soda standing in the doorway.
"I told you not to get to close to me now," Darry stated.
"Ponyboy and I went out for ice cream. We heard you say you have a sore throat and we brought some back to you."
In spite of himself, Darry, after he took some and ate, murmured "Um Um Um Delicious!"
as the strawberry ice cream soothed his sore throat.
He managed to sleep peacefully through the night, and the fever was gone the next morning.
He did still need to take the drops for his eye until the drops were all gone within 2 weeks time. By that time, however, much to everyone's relief, his eye was as good as new.