Nadine Ross knew Rafe Adler was similar than the kind of men she dealt with in the past, but not entirely the same. When most had common sense of duck out and collect what gains they could when all seemed lost, Rafe was on a suicide mission now in the face of inevitable death. He might look the same on the outside, but he was simply cut from a different cloth. She knew it when the first wisps of smoke curled out of The Fancy's bow before full thick billowing streamers that poured into the cave's sheltering cathedral stone ceiling. She knew it when she saw him between the Drake brothers in the treasure hold, staring them down with his Colt and near-delirious with being surrounded in the wealth he spent his adult life searching for. He looked utterly mad, half his usually meticulously-kempt face coated with his own blood, hair askew, and nearly foaming at the mouth as he spat orders. Nadine thought, by some fucking miracle, the jarring reality of being locked in a burning ship unarmed would snap Rafe out of it. She knew if the Drakes were still alive, he had a good chance of getting out alive himself, if he had the sense to cooperate. A mighty-big 'if'. Rafe might have worked with the Drakes in the past, but much has changed in those fifteen years. Adler's own sanity might be called into question if it already was not on shaky ground.
Only one of her men survived that long and seemingly has not shaken in his loyalty, Knot he called himself. Orca was blasted on the ship after foolishly following Rafe, wounded but escaping. Now she stood on their inflatable motorized boat, a pair of binoculars to her squinting eyes as he desperately tried to determine a change. There was a bone-rattling explosion and a hole blew into the side of the hull of The Fancy, water pouring in. Moments later, both Drakes were seen almost bobbing away as they swam to safety. No Rafe.
Fuck.
Going to The Fancy now might mean certain death, but leaving that rich American trust fund brat to die did not sit well on her conscience. "Stupid, stupid, stupid," she hissed under her breath, hopping to the motor and gunning it directly to the burning, sinking ship. Knot's first hints of uneasiness began to show, actually going to vocalize out loud his questions on their motives.
"Uh, ma'am?" Knot called out hesitantly over the roar of the motor and the sound of chaos as the cave began to show signs of instability. "He's good as dead."
"Drake would not kill him," she growled out stubbornly, one stern glare was all it took to keep her last soldier quiet. "He's alive." For now.
Getting onto the ship was relatively simple, the door she left blocked as partially giving away. Another shove, and the men she purposely trapped could have escaped. But would men ever take the simple way out? No. Would Rafe? Probably not. The treasure hold was almost how she left it, only now standing in two feet of water with a hole in the hull of the ship.
"Rafe?!" Nadine shouted out, not seeing his body in immediate view and feeling a flush of panic. What if he did get out? Is she just ensuring her own foolish death? She was debating turning around when she saw it. A bundle of fallen loot and treasure, most of it solid gold, the rope sack mostly burst upon impact with the floor. There was a vague halo of blood in the water around it.
"Fuck… Rafe, hold on!" Nadine snarled out, wading through the water and hauling arm-loads of loose coins and heavy trinkets off the bundle. It was hard to tell there was anyone underneath it at all until her fingers grazed wet cloth and skin. Her hand came away partially bloody, the sea water leeching it from her palms. He was drowning, that was certain. If he could even get a breath in from being crushed. Her arms burning from the strain and effort and panic, clawing almost mindlessly as more water flooded in, there was a spark of triumph when she finally hauled his upper body up out of the seafoam and blood and gold. There was no time to check him over yet. They needed to get out.
It was hard to ignore the grinding sensation of broken, fractured bones or the unnatural hanging crook of his lifeless arms, but another two harsh pulls freed Rafe Adler's limp, unresponsive body out of the wealth that he sought so dearly. As small as he might appear compared to other men, he was a solid dead weight in her arms. Hauling him out from under the arms, she finally had to paddle out to the boat where Knot restlessly waited with the motor at ready, hoping Rafe's head remained above water but not wasting much time to look. If she delayed, they were all dead. Knot's firm grasp helped heft her into the boat, but it took their combined effort to drag Rafe out, there was no consciousness at all. Laying him out on the floor of the boat, Knot already at the motor, Nadine sat down finally, trembling with the exertion.
As the boat roared and skimmed through the water, the main entrance mostly collapsed but the back channels still intact for their escape into the fresh air outside, Nadine felt her heart nearly stop when the sun struck Rafe Adler's motionless body.
The usually unflappable and disciplined Rafe Adler was nearly unrecognizable. The sea water had washed much of the blood from his wounds but only temporarily, much of it was already springing back to the surface of multiple, immeasurable injuries. His once aloof face was almost a mask of blood, eyes swollen from the impact of the weight crushing down. His finely-muscled and trim body was broken, hideously so. Both arms were terribly fractured, the bend on both forearms uncanny and disturbing. His legs fared better, but not by much as they were still undoubtedly broken. There was a large slit across his abdomen, cut through the dark cotton of his shirt. Nadine almost felt a cynical smile curl her lip, almost. A sword fight. Only Rafe would choose to be that dramatic. He was cut up bad from the spar, clearly not as skilled as he believed himself at fencing. Some of the treasure that fell on him was sharp, some of it heavy and blunt. Nadine was no doctor, but she knew the real injuries were internal. The worst of the damage cannot be easily seen from the surface. But Rafe's battered, broken chest was not moving. He was not breathing.
"Shit," Nadine whispered, already feeling for a pulse at his bruised throat. It was there, weak, ebbing to fade. Pumping at his chest made her gruesomely aware of the fractured ribs grinding under the pressure, but this was far more important. The first two lung-blasts of air expelled into him brought nothing, only a stab of dread in Nadine's heart. "Shit, Rafe, don't do this. Come on. Breathe. You stupid American bastard, just breathe…"
Maybe for the sake of response or just needing the coaxing, Rafe rattled in a soft, spluttering breath before he coughed spasmodically, sea-foam and water and blood expelling with each writhing choke. As horrible as it was instead of calm breathing, it was still appreciated. Nadine slumped back against the wall of the boat as he skimmed over waves, to an evacuation point already set up for their escape.
"Rafe, you thick rich bastard," Nadine panted softly, uncaring if he was unconscious and unable to dignify a word back. "You almost ended up as the man killed by Avery's treasure."
If there was ever a man Rafe Adler had tried to impress, aspire to be, idolize, and consistently and frustratingly fail in the task, it was Magnus Adler, his father and patriarch of the Adler fortune. Magnus was a force of nature himself, a man to be both feared and respected, a man that demanded loyalty in money and blood. Rafe's relationship with his father was always murky at best despite his efforts to change that. He loved his father. What kid did not? But try as he might, his father never gave him a hint of approval. All his blood, sweat and tears only amounted to 'why is that all you can achieve', 'why not better', 'you need to improve'. When his achievements in physical prowess were simply discarded, he tried for bigger, better goals. There was one thing his father seemed to adore, it was history and relics of the past, treasure one might call it. Avery's treasure, the holy grail of wealth, was the pinnacle of treasure-hunts.
Rafe's dislike for Nathan Drake was not a sudden occurrence. Like an illness or an infection, it sets in gradually like a fever. One day, after being scolded on missing the Olympic qualifiers in swimming and being beaten by a man only freakishly propelling himself through the pool like a fucking dolphin, Rafe overheard his father almost relishing the achievements of someone else. How bizarre, that a man that achieved everything he attained for himself and got it, would congratulate someone else or gossip about those achievements among friends? Not Magnus Adler. But lo and behold, he was.
"The lost city of El Dorado. Not a city at all, but a single sarcophagus. Discovered by a kid my son's age. Drake, they say he calls himself. A descendent of Francis Drake himself, supposedly."
Rafe had worked with Nathan in the past, trying to find Avery's treasure with his brother Samuel. His brother was definitely the easier to talk to among the pair, the youngest reminded him too much of himself, but a much poorer, weaker-bred version perhaps. But Samuel's supposed death proved too much for Nathan to cope. They went in their own directions from that point, but apparently Drake was keeping busy. As Rafe languished for years, struggling to find even clues about the treasure his father thirsted for since his youth, Drake was basically falling into long-lost cities and discoveries. Of all the sheer fucking luck. It happened again, a few years later, his father even more excited over a street-kid's achievements rather his own son's efforts to appease him.
"Imagine that. Marco Polo's lost fleet unveils the path to the lost city of Shambhala and the Tree of Life itself. All the while, dogging his turned allies and a warlord. The balls on that boy. Done more than most have in their lives."
The last jab was pointedly in his direction, but Rafe kept his cool, aloof expression neutral. Dealing with his father's verbal abuses was hardly new, since he got strong enough to defend himself from physical blows, words were all the weapons he truly had. And he made them all count. Despite Rafe's ravenous dealings in learning the business, or primarily, maintaining a viable business to act as a front for illegal black-market trade that made them their fortune, none of it was to his father's satisfaction. The screw-up in Panama was seen as a loss of capital. All that bribery in the end was wasted, considering Rafe ended up murdering the warden out of a moment of blind rage. Not only did one of the Drakes disappear out of action for 13 years due to his own indiscretions, but his father lost his hope in Avery's treasure with that failure. It weighed on him heavily. The next two to three years were avidly studying his father's efforts to teach him the business. But the more he tried, the more his father was disgruntled with his lack of visible talents or knacks for this sort of employment.
The last Nathan Drake discovery was enough for Rafe to finally lose his cool. But considering the stressors at the time, he could hardly discredit himself. His mother was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer weeks before. She was in hospice care now, unable to recognize him as the disease consumed what used to be her every day. His father's foul temper was coming to a head, her illness was weighing on him. But he overheard the conversation outside his father's office, most likely on the phone to one of his business partners.
"You don't say? Nathan Drake at it again? You know, I heard there was some strange suited types sniffing around our circles for him a while back. Something about the Francis Drake ring he carried. A key? To the Atlantis of the Sands? What is to be found there? Fascinating. Perhaps it is best it fell into the earth. Imagine that. That Drake boy is truly incredible. Any man would be proud to be his father."
Balling his fists tight enough for the manicured nails to bite into his palms, he had to chew down on his tongue to stop from screaming. Try as he might to win his father's graces, it never came. They were only granted to other men his age that done nothing for Magnus Adler, especially when Drake himself did not make these discoveries for status, or greed, or renown, or simply approval. He done it because he could. He done it, came back with nothing to show for it, and was still treated leagues better. It was when Rafe tasted blood when he forced himself to go outside the mansion to the hillside and howl to his heart's content. To scream, rage, curse, even bellowing wordlessly, just to get the anger out. His mother died that night. The funeral was a blur. He hardly remembered it, it was a fog of grief and services.
It was coming back briefly from his clashing with the Drakes in Madagascar that Rafe was cornered by his father, his fast and loose spending of the family wealth was becoming too much to ignore even though his father technically retired from his position as CEO. He was close enough to the treasure to taste it now, Magnus was not stupid enough to ignore this. It was the closest they have ever been to Avery's wealth. Rafe was rummaging through his pack and ensuring he was ready to leave when his father stepped out from behind the door, surely waiting for him. Magnus was tall even in his sixties, almost six feet and Rafe still felt so small compared to him. He inherited his mother's stature and colouring. His father's thick blonde hair had greyed, slicked back, ice-blue eyes boring into his own that contained both parents' colours. His father's blue, his mother's brown. The man rarely smiled. Rafe never earned one, just the deep scowls like he saw now.
"This better be the last time," his father nearly growled, a warning tone of itself. "You have already spent through your inheritance. After this, you're cut off."
"Cut off?" Rafe repeated, incredulous and disbelieving. "I'm your only heir. Your only child."
"Imagine if I had two," Magnus snapped irritably. "I would be as poor as the rest, the rate of spending from you alone is enough. This is it. No more."
Fucking impossible. This old man has gone senile. "I'm your fucking CEO, I'm running it—"
A surprisingly strong, firm hand collided open-palmed across his cheek before he could react, it was lightning fast with a sound like a thunder clap in the silence. He barely had time to cup his stinging face before his father already began to hiss venomous words into his personal bubble, hot breathing reeking of scotch wafting into his nostrils enough to make him feel sick. "Watch your language, you are better than the scum you associate with. You are nothing without my say-so. I made you CEO. I can just as easily unmake that decision. I can see you won't back down. Good. Maybe after all these years, you decided to be a man and grow a pair. Stop getting others to do your dirty work. If you don't have the guts to do it yourself, then you have no business issuing the order. But you walk out those doors after that treasure, you better come back with it, or don't bother coming back at all."
Cheek stinging, Rafe forbid any tears to gather, he refused to dignify anymore damn tears for this man. He shed much too many over the hellish existence that became his life as Magnus Adler's son. But all the while he heard the words, it was impossible to swallow. He spent a lifetime being groomed for this fucking job. And now, he was out? Just like that? "Dad, come on—"
Another strike, this one Rafe was able to flinch away from and it only cuffed the side of his head in a glancing blow, just enough to daze. He was drinking again. Magnus stopped drinking when Rafe was young, when his mother Dolores begged his father to stop when the physical abuse on their son was too much for her to bear. He did, for ten years. The death of his mother was a blow to them both, causing fractures to both their personalities. Magnus took to drinking again. It was the first time that night being struck in over a decade, one that Rafe noticed was triggered by this discussion of the treasure they both wanted for different reasons.
"You will address me as Father, I thought I made that clear?" Magnus snapped agitatedly. "Understand me, Rafael? You walk out those doors, you are done if you don't secure Avery's treasure. You over-spent your limits. You took advantage of my generosity time and time again. I had hopes you can run our company, but all you've done was run it into the ground. This is your final chance."
The words cut deep. If there was one thing Rafe depended on, it was the fact he was Magnus' son and his blood relations might keep him unscathed by the end of his father's life and free to indulge in the wealth he was raised in. But his father never bluffed. He meant every word he said, they might as well be written in stone. Gaze tilted downwards at knowing his father might misinterpret anything else but submission, Rafe shouldered his pack. He liked to travel light, it ensured less hassle. Face still burning, he let his hand drop from his cheek.
"So this is it, then. Treasure, or adios," Rafe murmured tonelessly. "And if I choose to stay?"
The scowl on his father's face became a cruel, mocking sneer. "Then you were a bigger failure than I thought," Magnus almost huffed. "You stay, it only proves you are spineless. You can't earn greatness from behind a desk, boy."
The building rage only steeled his decision. Fuck his father. He was going to get the treasure, alright. He was going to keep it for his own damn self, none of this family legacy bullshit. "Then I guess this is goodbye, Father." Any sarcasm, snippy tone, anything at all might earn him another beating but he honestly could not control how betrayed he felt. "See you on the other side of this."
As he turned to walk away, he could hear his father almost hissing after him. The final words were all he needed to remember about his father. Nothing else mattered, a sum of experiences bore nothing on the weight of the last words almost shouted at his back.
"If your mother could see you now. Maybe God was kind to kill her before she saw you ruin us. Earn the name Adler, boy. Or start looking for a new one."
The last conscious memory Rafe Adler had on The Fancy was full of jumbled confusion and madness, but the strongest sense to pinpoint was the smell of smoke. It came with a sense of triumph, of accomplishment. He was inches from finally killing the persistent pain in his ass for fifteen fucking years, Nathan goddamn Drake himself. The treasure was so close, he could reach out and lovingly caress the golden doubloons that piled in heaps around them. The heat from the fire surrounding them was making his head foggy, it was hard to concentrate on anything else but the man sprawled beneath him. Sam's voice. A split-second of regret, and that was it. Rafe could not remember anything else. Just black.
If Rafe could go back and change it, he could. It was always easy to say if given a second chance to repeat the encounter, he would have listened to Nathan and worked together to escape. The fact was, he knew where the treasure was located. He saw it. It would not take much to convince his father to throw more funds to excavate the collapsed cave, divers to haul up the treasure. But there was no point crying over spilt blood. What was done is done. There was no going back.
There were only brief flickers of consciousness, small clips before he finally was able to have full, intact episodes of memory. The first one was the sensation of being cold and wet with wind whistling across him, stirring his eyelashes enough to want to open them. The hell? Is this the afterlife? I can't breathe. Fuck, it hurts to fucking breathe. If this is Hell, why is it so cold? Cracking open his eyelids hesitantly, nervous by what sight could await him, Rafe only saw the endless blue sky. There were scant puffs of clouds dispersed over the azure expanse. There was a rumbling beneath it all, a slight rattling underneath him that jarred his whole body enough to ache. One particular nasty bump lurched him upwards, eliciting a pained, exhausted groan. Please, cut it out. This hurts enough without you bouncing me on a fucking trampoline. Someone was calling his name at his side but it was fogged, distant. He wondered how bad the damage to his head was, his hearing made everything muffled and an indescribable hum. Rafe was afraid to move. Breathing was agonizing, but he hardly had a choice in that. What could he do, stop breathing? Palm trees skimmed by. He was moving. Hands were on his face, tilting his head faintly before Nadine's face came into a blurry focus. "Rafe? Can you hear me?" she was shouting, but it sounded like she was miles away. A sluggish blink was all he could do. His strength was drained out of him, he could not move. It was impossible to gauge his faculties right now. Nothing was responding, too deeply overwhelmed by excruciating agony. There was an abrupt turn that made the mild bumps into jarring, crashing turbulence. That was all he could gather from that recollection, it cut off after a final, throat-wrenching scream as his whole-body ache shot into oblivion, but only after the worst pain Rafe felt in his entire life. This is it. I'm dead. All that potential, the wealth, the fucking opportunity, wasted.
The next brief moment of consciousness was a steady, hard vibration that rattled deep into his core, but oddly enough, no pain. Just a bizarre numbness. Just when he thought he was dead, opening his eyes brought him only the steel ceiling and nylon mesh, one of Nadine's evacuation helicopters by the familiarity of the multitude of straps dangling down. No fucking way. I pulled through. I could hardly breathe, but it doesn't hurt anymore. That could be a good thing, or a really, really bad thing. I hope it's the former. I might be a scoundrel, but if there is a God up there, please let me live through this. I never cared for morals, they just bind men into restrictions. But I swear, I will reconsider if I live. He could not move his head. It took him a moment to realize he was on a back-board in a stretcher, someone had taken the time to secure his head in restraints and a head brace to minimize possible spinal injuries. His broken, ruined arms were folded to his chest and wrapped in layers of gauze, bound together to keep stabilized. Nadine does not just have these serious medical supplies just laying around. This was a medic's doing, possibly paramedics. The drip of saline hanging above him only confirmed his suspicions. Someone loomed over him abruptly, his eyes barely had time to focus before they jerked away for a few seconds and returning with another. Nadine. He could recognize that lush mane anywhere. And one of her men, the one that was reluctant in submitting to his cause, Knot. They did not try speaking to him. It would be almost impossible to be heard over the helicopter's roar. So if these two are here, I might got a chance. Might. Something's not good. I… can't feel my legs. My arms, barely. I'm hoping this is temporary. Just my fucking luck. An unfamiliar face came into view with the others, most likely a paramedic. There was a quick injection into his IV line and he did not remember anything else. That was a mercy of itself.
After that, no more flickers of clips, no tiny glimmers of consciousness. It could have been an hour, it could have been weeks. All time is relative when a body is struggling to survive near-impossible odds and recover. The first sensation, he was not sure when he fully became aware of it as it set in gradually, was a dire, cloying thirst that parched his throat and felt like his tongue was cracking. Along with it, a splitting headache that felt his skull was rupturing at the seams. It throbbed in tune with a soft rhythmic beeping, a mechanical drone attuned to his pulse. Try as he might, Rafe could not physically move. Something was binding his body in an uncomfortable position. His back hurt, the mattress felt like it was a bed of nails. Fuck. This is bad. This is more than waking up in the barracks on a cot with a headache. I'm in serious shit here. Fuck, now what? Nadine? Is she still here? He tried to physically speak out loud too, but a weak, soft groan was all he could work out of his vocal cords. No one answered him. He could be alone.
Fuck, now what? Is anyone listening? Is anyone here? What kind of shit hospital is this? His eyelids felt like they were shutters of lead, but forcing them open took significant strength and effort on his behalf. The lights were thankfully dimmed, but Rafe was clueless on why, his bed was the only one in the room and he was out cold moments before. The room was small, but just beyond his bed was a well-lit corridor through a glass wall, pleated curtains stopping much of the light from blinding him. There was bustling in the hall outside, doctors, nurses, stretchers, beds, wheelchairs. But yet, it was so quiet in the room. It might as well have been a world away instead of on the other side of a layer of glass.
Rafe was lucky he did not have to move his head to scan the room, it was small enough that simply shifting his eyes was enough. Any attempts to move at all, he found he was immobile and essentially restrained. There was what felt to be a crown around his skull, forbidding his neck to twist with steel bars to stabilize. Both arms were suspended to stretch above his head but were encased in plaster, leaving only bruised fingers to wiggle as his upper limbs were supported by a steel frame above his bed by cotton slings. Everything else was hidden under baby-blue blankets and starchy hospital sheets. But efforts to wiggle his toes was met with nothing. In fact, he could not feel his toes. He could not feel anything under his waist. It was a dawning dread Rafe Adler had never felt in his entire life, something that shook him physically to the core. He felt sick. He would have thrown up if he had the energy.
Oh. Oh no. Oh, fuck, please, no. No, no, no, no. NO! This can't be happening. This is a dream. A fucking nightmare. Rafe, wake up. Come on, you asshole, do it! Please! Just wake up, I don't care if I'm back at home or not, hell, let it be prison in Panama again. Anything, just let me have my fucking legs. There was no mistaking that his legs were physically there. He could see them as solid unmoving lumps under the bedding. That was the problem. No matter how hard he was struggling to kick, nothing was responding. He could not feel anything below his waist at all, everything else was sore and aching from the top of his head that royally throbbed to his mid-spine that was a knot of agony against the mattress. The anxiety was building. The dread he felt earlier magnified into utter panic. Being unable to move was terrifying. Rafe always was about control, it was one of the few things he could depend on. There was nothing as horrible as this for someone that thrived on control. His heart was hammering in his chest, his breathing heightening to a soft pant. The monitor at his bedside was speeding up to his pulse, the rhythm ramping up. All the while, his efforts to scream and rage failed, he could barely grunt at all now, his throat was cramping closed with the frustrated, angry sobs building. It had been a while since he wept. Since his mother's death. The funeral he spent dry-eyed but in a daze. Please. Please let this not be real. I'd rather have died on that fucking ship.
Struggling to thrash his body pointlessly other than to simply rage, Rafe heard the door abruptly open and the barrier of silence was broken, the noisy corridor outside was loud and clear for a few seconds however long it took for his visitor to come in. His eyes were so tightly closed, he did not care who it was. No visitor could make this right. Nothing could change this.
"Mr. Adler?" a soft voice called out, disrupting his self-pitying inner-monologue. Eyes burning but furiously opening them, he found himself glaring at a middle-aged male nurse in scrubs. There was a look of concern there, but Rafe was so utterly enraged and scared, he honestly did not give two fucks if it was the damn Pope. "Mr. Adler, you've been very hurt," the nurse stated gently, as if he did not know what had just occurred to get him there in that position. There was a weak accent, South African. "There was an accident, I was told. You've been in a medically induced coma for a week and a half now. There was swelling on your brain, it was not certain if there would be lasting damage if you would live at all. You almost died. Are you in pain?"
Holy shit, how many years of medical school did it take to figure that out, genius? Christ, if I could move, I'd kick your ass out the fucking door. Rafe grimaced in every foul bit of hateful emotion that surged through him, the very fury which often could have been his weakness. Before The Fancy, Rafe was not against smacking a bitch or two if his temper got a hold of him. Hell, he killed people that pissed him off too severely, shallow graves if they were dignified a burial at all. But no amount of willpower and hate and loathing could make his legs move. Or his arms. Or even his fucking head. He could not even speak. His throat refused to cooperate. His tongue felt too thick to shape a word. The only meagre sound he could vocalize was a pathetic groan, one that made him more agitated. Fuck! I can't even talk?! Is this what my life is now? I want out. I'm fucking opting out. Drake ended me, just finish it.
The wince of sympathy creased the older nurse's features, already ducking out briefly before returning mere seconds later with a loaded syringe at last. Rafe could only watch as it was injected into his IV line, followed by a pleasant blooming warmth and numbness. The hysteria calmed down considerably. It was no mystery on what was in the needle, morphine most likely. Rafe might have dabbled in recreational drugs in the past, this one was something he avoided after seeing what it turned the habitual users into. It did not stop himself from actually relaxing despite his anxieties. It was why junkies kept using, to go numb. The cramping of his throat relaxed. Despite his thirst, he could find it easier to speak, or at least attempt. The unknown nurse was still at his bedside, observing him silently, when Rafe decided he had to know. He needed to know. "H-…h-how…. B-bad?" came a weak whisper, his voice hoarse and rough as sandpaper.
"You had to be air-lifted directly here to the major hospitals in the city, they said this happened in Madagascar? You were near death, Mr. Adler. It appeared as if you were in a high-speed car-accident. The level of crushing injuries was barely survivable. Mild skull fracture, some broken facial bones, both femurs snapped, both arms we were barely able to save but you should be able to use them eventually. Many ribs were fractured, as well as the spine just at your lower lumbar. You needed three blood transfusions before surgery alone. I'm sorry, Mr. Adler. The damage was catastrophic. You will have no likely chance of walking again."
There it was. The statement he was waiting for and dreading at the same time, yet the anticipation was worse. The final truth was so plain, so insensitively explained, it was like being physically stabbed while being helpless to move from its path. Hot tears finally slipped free from his eyes, burning at the puffy bruises and healing wounds along his face. If he had movement, he would be more animated in his dismay and distress. He chewed on his bottom lip hard, forbidding a sob to escape. Rafe refused to let it happen. But he was so very deeply shaken by his body's condition. He basically took his physique and health, his very strength and athletic skill all for granted. Having it taken from him was a level of depression and hopelessness he never thought capable of experiencing himself. This is it. My life is fucking over. I'm a cripple. I'm not even a goddamn rich cripple. I'm fucking poor as the rest of these people. I'm not an Adler. I'm just Rafe now. Father will never take me back. Never.
"Kill m-me…" Rafe hissed wearily, hoping this nurse was one of the rare ghoulish sort that might take mercy killings as a hobby. There had to be at least someone in the hospital willing to grant him that, at least. "F-fucking… k-kill me… Do it."
That little flicker of hope extinguished fast, the look that washed over the nurse's compassion was something he come to know from the doctor's resigned yet rehearsed lectures about his own mother's condition. The cool, meticulous but relentless medical provider dead-pan stare came on before he could get another word out. They heard it all before. All the begging, pleading, the sad, ugly truths of hospitals and caring for the sick and injured and dying. The nurse was already putting up that wall, that emotional barrier. "Mr. Adler, you are expressing troubling matters. If you have further suicidal thoughts or ideations, measures will be taken. You will be okay, sir. Your doctor will be in shortly."
And just like that, the nurse retreated, the unspoken contract gone too far. Rafe felt his hope die out, closing his eyes tightly again with a weak, tiny hiccup of grief working its way out of him. Fuck. This is so much worse than death. Nadine, why did you drag me out? Why? Fuck! What am I going to do? I won't be able to afford these fucking medical bills. My life is over.