Chell wasn't sure where they were past the cornfield… but when she and Wheatley did reach an area that was more city and less rural, she was even more confused.
"Right… well, thankfully that big ol' Enrichment Center down there has excellent Wi-Fi even above the ground… and I can confirm that those things are cars, on those four grey I entered black wheels there… or tires, apparently…" Wheatley said as he briefly rolled his optic back to look at the nearby road, where cars were passing, their lights on as the sun was just beginning to dip below the horizon.
"Any idea… where we might be?" Chell asked, her voice croaky from going so long without a word being spoken… but Wheatley saw it as a sign that she was trusting him enough to talk.
"Texas, I think… maybe a little further up than that. Chell, you don't look alright." Wheatley responded.
"I just… I don't feel so good, Wheatley… my head hurts." Chell replied, Wheatley running his processors, 'thinking'.
"Hmm… could be exposure to the sun after so long underground… or it could be something far worse, after so long you might not have much of a resistance to the ol' coughs and sneezes." Wheatley responded a few moments later, before his optic glanced at the portal gun. "Possibly even too much exposure to that… not many people exactly survive long enough to record long term effects."
"Take time to build it back up…" Chell said as they saw a sign that read Laredo city limits. "Looks like you were right." She replied as they saw a poster advertising WWE Raw, Laredo Energy Arena, 9/21/15. "What's today's date?" She asked.
"September 19th 2015." Wheatley replied as they reached a nearby ER and walked in.
"I just lost my balance, it happens." Amanda said as Finn helped her sit back down on the gurney, Amanda having taken an overly stiff dropkick to her back at an NXT live event and had trouble getting back up at first.
"I know it happens but it doesn't mean the fall is any lighter." Finn responded, standing up off the gurney again after a moment.
"It would help if Liv knew how to properly use a dropkick against an opponent." Amanda muttered, Finn knowing that she was frustrated.
"Everyone learns it at different paces… but you seem rather upset." Finn said quietly, rubbing her left shoulder.
"Liv got in Dianne's face, not sure about what… I just saw her yelling at and hitting our friend and tried to stop it." Amanda answered.
"We all try to protect our friends, those close to us… sometimes it doesn't go so well. But hey… you did stop the fight, there's that to it." Finn replied.
"Yeah, I just wish Liv wasn't so high strung at times." Amanda said as Finn sat down and she leaned against him, his right arm wrapping around her as Wheatley watched them.
"Close people… they're right, you know. Things sometimes don't go to plan." Wheatley said with his volume turned down, Chell nodding as she was holding him most of the time, but as per his suggestion, had placed him down in a nearby chair to give her tired arms a rest, along with the ASHPD placed in the next chair beside him.
"You think she'll be okay?" Chell asked.
"I would think so… but I'm no psychiatric expert. I'm a maintenance core… apparently formerly an intelligence dampening unit, but I'm not sure how much of 'her' words we should believe." Wheatley answered, referring to when GLaDOS told them that she remembered Wheatley's voice from an intelligence dampening sphere she had attached to her before Chell had halfway destroyed her before.
Chell nodded and kept an eye on Amanda, who seemed not to notice… but Chell noticed that her legs were fidgeting slightly.
"Wheatley… she seems rather upset." Chell said quietly.
"From what I heard them talking about, someone hurt her for trying to protect her friend from being hurt. I'm no expert but I'm pretty sure that'd upset a few people, getting harmed for doing the right thing." Wheatley replied, turning his optic to look at her, offset a tiny bit as the large crack down the middle blurred the center, so he looked out of the area midway towards the side to see her clearly.
Chell turned to the reception desk and saw a tall man walk in, glancing back at Amanda and then back at the man… it was clear they had a lot of resemblance to each other except for Amanda's hazel eyes.
"You find her yet, John?!" Another man asked as he ran in, John turning to him.
"Not yet, Sami. Now you said the dropkick was right to the back?" John replied.
"It was hard to see exactly but it was to her back, whether it was to the sides of it or the spine area, I couldn't tell." Sami answered.
John and Sami found Amanda and walked into the room, both carefully hugging her as the doctor walked in.
"Well from what the MRI showed, there's no damage to the spine or neck… the X rays showed a few cracked ribs though, which should heal in a few weeks." The doctor explained.
"So she doesn't have to stay overnight?" John asked.
"For a few more hours while we process things and examine a couple more of the tests, the bloods and such. But she should be home possibly even by midnight." The doctor answered.
John nodded and the doctor left to check on Chell.
"You poor thing, you look like you haven't slept or eaten in a while." The doctor said as she helped Chell sit down, Chell seeing that she was around the same age as her but had light brown hair instead.
"I lost track of how long I was where I was…" Chell responded as the doctor examined her.
"Seems like it was hectic, wherever it was." The doctor said, as she found a long scratch across the back of Chell's shoulders which had already started on its natural healing path, caused when Chell had fallen through the floor in the old, overgrown chamber from the original course, when she'd gone to find the single portal device and the panels had collapsed.
"It was… I don't think I could ever bring myself to go back." Chell replied, before she hissed as the doctor found another wound, this one a bit deeper than simply a scratch, near her right hip from where she'd tripped over during one of the tests and cut herself on some broken glass, as the chambers were still only halfway repaired at that point. "I think there's a burn too, on my leg… acid…" She said, pointing out her left leg where she'd felt a sharp stinging as she'd been stood too close when a Weighted Storage Cube had splashed into an acid pool.
"It's gonna take some stitches to close up completely, are you allergic to any medicine, miss?" The doctor replied.
"Not that I know of." Chell answered, glancing at Wheatley, who had closed his optic guards to appear like he was merely some sort of damaged device and not a self-aware A.I construct.
Once the wound was closed up and Chell was on an IV and blood pressure machine, she started to feel sleepy.
And she leaned back and closed her eyes, the gurney being the most comfortable thing she'd slept on in a long time.
