I'm a horrible updater, I know. Before you hurt me, at least read the chapter. Please?
Disclaimer: I do not own the character Peter Pan or any of the characters created by J.M. Barrie. I only own the plot and any characters of my own that I have/may introduce.
Chapter Three: Scared
Peter Pan was scared. There. He admitted it. People kept prodding and poking his injured arm; people in white coats with a weird smell around them. The scent was odd; it smelled of sick and clean. Not the Darling type of clean – it was a type of clean that hung around "hospitals," as the Darlings referred to it. It made him wrinkle his nose along with flinching every five seconds because of some cursed "doctor" (as the Darlings called him; more formally Dr. Lawrence).
He was in a clean white bed with clean white walls and clean tiled floors. There was just so much…clean! And white. Whether it was white with a light blue tint or white in general or even an eggshell white, there was just too much white.
And his arm was ugly. It wasn't just a Neverland tan anymore; it was an ugly swollen color with a few red and blue bruises. He wanted the regular arm back; not this damaged one. The regular one did not make him flinch and wince and cry. Let's not forget that this was his right arm; his sword arm. How was he going to defend himself?
On top of all of that, he still had yet to completely figure out why he fell and couldn't fly and then…where was his shadow? Luckily no-one had questioned it; no raised eyebrows had yet to be seen or questions whispered into another's ear heard.
"Please hold still, Peter," Doctor Lawrence said, annoyance hinting at the very edge of his tone. Oh, if this leaf-clad boy would just stop fidgeting! Why was he wearing leaves anyway? And was there a dagger in that sheath?
"I would if it-" Peter cut off. He gritted his teeth as the Doctor Lawrence probed at it once more.
"Alright. Mr. Darling and Mrs. Darling, could I speak outside with you for a moment?" the doctor asked, drawing back from Peter's arm. His square glasses, much like Mr. Darling's except for a thicker black outline, were perched on the very end of his crooked nose. He pushed them up a bit before leaving the room, followed by the two parents.
"Are you okay, Peter?" Wendy hurriedly asked from her uncomfortable chair in the corner.
Only one child was allowed in the room besides Peter Pan, and Wendy was the only one Darling child there either way. Michael and John were watching the Lost Boys with Aunt Millicent back at the Darling house, much to the complaints of the boys.
"If they would stop POKING ME," he said the last bit louder than needed, "I might just BE OKAY."
Wendy shook her head, slightly giggling at his antics. Peter Pan still had yet to understand that Doctor Lawrence was there to help and not to cause any harm. Intentional harm, anyway. "Peter, he is not 'poking' you. He is trying to figure out what is wrong."
"It's broken, isn't it, Wendy?" he said, suddenly solemn. "Will they have to cut it off?" his voice reaching an octave higher as the thought occurred to him. Oh, how he would be teased and handicapped for forever! It would be horrid: having half of an arm. Or, dare he think it, a stump of an arm! It wouldn't even be an arm even more – it would be a stump. He would have one arm and a stump. The very thought made the a-bit-duller-now-but-still-there pain increase.
Wendy wanted to laugh, she really did. It was all just too humorous: Peter Pan being in a hospital with a broken arm, believing that the arm would have to be cut off with his lovely green eyes widened to the size of dinner plates. "Peter, they won't have to cut it off!"
The boy's wide eyes narrowed. "Swear on your life, Wendy! Swear it!"
Wendy shook her head, a giggle or two escaping against her will. Michael and John had broken a limb before; it was no big deal. Slightly had already broken a bone while playing in the park. What a nightmare that was…
"You won't swear! Will it hurt? Will they stop the bleeding? I'll have a stump, Wendy! A stump!" Peter panicked, his face going pale. Well, paler.
"Oh, no. Peter, I swear. I swear on my life that they won't cut off your arm. Honest!" Wendy rushed to assure the blonde who was now trying to escape the hospital bed. He gasped as his broken arm banged against the side of the bed.
He then paused, staring at the Wendy-lady who was now standing at the edge of the bed. Her hands were frozen in mid-air toward his as he spoke, "They won't?"
"No, not at all," she said, taking advantage of his pause. "They'll just put it in a splint or-"
"What's going on in here?" the doctor swiftly opened the door and his dark grey eyes took in the scene before him. "You, girl, away from him. He has a fracture-"
"You will not speak-" Mrs. Darling began but her husband shook his head 'no.' She stopped, trying to content herself with glaring at the doctor.
"-that needs to be treated. Go to the waiting room, now. Move along."
Peter began to protest. Wendy was the only person he trusted in that room. Even if she did swear on her life that they were not going to cut off his arm, he could never be too sure.
"You will be fine, Peter," she told him as she left the room, casting one comforting glance back at him.
I highly doubt that.
Peter shifted his right arm that was now in an uncomfortable splint, as the doctor and Darlings referred to it. What was more uncomfortable than the splint was the position his arm was in. The splint was bulky ("But not as bulky as a cast," Wendy had said) and laying down on what Mrs. Darling had referred to as a couch didn't really help. Couches were thin.
The doctor had done something they called an x-ray and then spoke of fractures and weeks and treatment. Peter had barely followed the conversation, or what was exactly going on. He was just tired and wanted to go home. Falling and breaking (or at least fracturing) a bone took a lot out of you.
Especially panicking over someone cutting off your arm. He resented that moment when he panicked. Absolutely detested it. As he picked at a loose thread on the pillow with his good hand that was connected to his good arm, he remembered Wendy laughing. She had laughed at his alarm – or, at least, giggled that cute little giggle that made him want to kick himself for finding it cute.
He wondered if that was how Hook had felt. Had he panicked when Peter had sliced off his hand and fed it to the crocodile without a single care? How had he stopped the bleeding? How had he even survived the pain? For that moment, just a little second mind you, Peter felt a bit of admiration for his fallen opponent.
Peter shifted some more, his brushed ashy blonde head sinking into the plush pillow. It was weird to be this clean. After he had arrived back from the "hospital," and after the reunion between him and his former Lost Boys, he took a bath. A bath in warm water that washed all of the grime away with a slippery bar of soap. Mr. Darling had helped him with the splint and such while Mrs. Darling had retrieved him some fresh clothes of John's.
She had said that the next morning, she would go shopping for some new clothes of his own. It felt weird without the skeletal leaves tickling his side; the rub of clean cotton taking their place.
As he drifted to sleep, one thought reached his mind:
They aren't so bad for grown-ups.
Apparently, Peter is having a change of mind about grown-ups. Or, at least, two exceptions. Anyway, I had fun writing this chapter (especially Peter panicking) and I hope you enjoyed it. Please do review or story-alert/favorite. Each one means an awful lot! -MythScavenger
