A/N: Yay for two chapters in two days! I rocketh! Anyways, the next chapter will jump ahead a little bit. Also... I hope y'all appreciate my little plug about Tig's reactions to *ahem* certain events that many people are complaining about. Anyone who's seen the latest episodes, or been on the IMDB boards will know what I mean. :D
"Gemma, why don't you go in and see Alex while I talk to the doctor?" Nate suggested, stopping in front of the young boy's room.
"Is his mama still her?" Gemma asked angrily. " 'Cause elder or not, I wanna knock her teeth out, daddy."
Nate bit back a smile, forcing himself to give his daughter a stern look. "Gemma, Mrs. Trager is an elder, and she's a woman. And we don't settle arguments with our fists, remember? We settle them with our words, and our intelligence."
"But in answer to your question, Gemma," The doctor interrupted, "No, Mrs. Trager isn't in there. She went home a little while ago. Alex might be sleeping now, though. If he is, you need to let him rest."
Gemma nodded, and practically bolted into the room.
Nate sighed, as he sank into a chair. "Kids. Sometimes, I think we older folk could all take a lesson or two from them," He said with a chuckle.
The doctor smiled, and chuckled along. "True. That's a special girl you got there, Mr. Maddock."
"Don't I know it. How's the boy doing?"
The doctor sighed, folding his hands across his chest as he leaned back in the chair, a weary look on his face.
"It's not good, Mr. Maddock."
"Nate, please," Nate interrupted.
"Alright then, Nate. To put it simply? The boy's in bad shape. Oh, I'm not saying young Mr. Trager is going to die," He hurried, seeing the panicked look on Nate's face. "He will recover from this. But there will be lasting side effects. Again, to put it simply, the boy's skull was severely damaged. I would postulate that 'somebody' stomped on his head –repeatedly. From what we can tell, the boy's frontal lobe was seriously damaged in the process. The frontal lobe is the part of the brain that controls impulses, showed emotions, among various other lasting side effects.
"His right arm –his dominant arm –was broken in three different places. The end result of that is, his right arm will always be weaker, due to the stress placed on a bone that was injured so seriously. It will always be at risk for re-breaking. Four broken ribs are going to lay him up for quite a while; any more damage to those, and it could be fatal. With rib fractures, there's always a risk of a fragment of that bone hitting a vital organ.
"Also, due to what I would assume was a steel-toed boot to the hip, Alex's hip bone was chipped. We removed the bone fragment during surgery, but in my educated opinion, I would say the boy will probably have a limp from here on out."
Nate was frowning, as he asked, "What a minute; what do you mean by 'showed emotions'?"
The doctor sighed, rubbing one hand down his face. "Basically, Nate… It means that the boy will always have trouble expressing his emotions. He'll still feel them; those emotions won't 'go away'. But… For example. He may be happy, over the moon with joy, but he won't smile. As near as we can tell, the frontal lobe… connects, for lack of a better term, the emotions to the part of the brain that expresses those same emotions."
Alex was drifting. Almost floating. Or swimming. The pain was a distant memory, far away from his drifting.
"Alex?"
Drifting… Floating… Swimming…
"Alex, can you hear me?"
Gemma.
Gemma?
Floating…
Gemma scrubbed her face fiercely, trying to keep herself from crying, as she stared at the battered body of her best –her only –friend. He looked so… so fragile. So broken.
"Alex… I told the police what your step-daddy does to you. And… and you were right," She said angrily, as a new wave of tears struggled to escape. "They didn't listen to me. I don't know what to do, Alex. I don't know how to help you," She sobbed, unable to hold the tears back any longer. She grasped his unbroken hand, and laid her head on it. "I'm sorry, Alex. I thought… I thought maybe if I… if I had said something sooner? Maybe this wouldn't have happened. But it didn't matter. I'm trying to help you and… and you're right, nobody else cares. Everything I do just… it just seems to make it worse. I just don't know what to do anymore."