AN: Okay, this chapter goes out to the one and the only FeistyFeist, because she kicked my ass and told me to write another chapter. Thanks, Feisty. I owe you one. So give props where they are due, Kats and Kittens. And enjoy this second-to-last chapter!!
Chapter Ten:
The first sensation assaulting Ponyboy's senses upon awakening is the cotton of the hospital-issue sheets rubbing against his pale skin. It irritates him, and he shifts uncomfortably, grunting and turning onto his side.
"Pony?" Soda's voice is soft, timid -- scared.
This time couldn't be nearly as bad as the last. Why does his brother sound like he had just been drowned yesterday?
"So-" He coughs violently, his entire body trembling with the action.
"Shh, shh." A comforting hand rests in the crook of his side, the other stringing fingers through his hair and massaging his scalp gently. "It's all right, baby. You need to rest. The doctor says you'll be fine, but you have to take it easy. Lots of sleep, you hear?"
Ponyboy swallows painfully and nods, squeezing his eyes shut tightly.
"Pony?"
He sucks in a breath and swallows again but opens his eyes, slowly and carefully. His eyelids feel heavy, swollen, and he whimpers as light seeps into the welcome darkness, but he manages to open them halfway to stare into the worried blues of his brother, Sodapop.
"H-Hurts, S'da," he whispers, tears forming and spilling down his cheeks. Soda wraps his arms around his younger brother gently, cautiously sidling himself into the hospital bed and pressing himself against Ponyboy's back.
"It's gonna be all right, Ponyboy. Everything's going to get better soon. You'll see," he comforts, stroking the young teen's hair and cheek, wiping the tears away. The door on the opposite end of the room opens and closes, and Darry stares at his younger brothers. He and Soda share a worried look before the eldest Curtis clears his throat, rubbing his sweaty palms on his dirty pants and forcing one foot after the other.
"Ponyboy?" He asks softly, tilting his head slightly. "You doin' okay?"
Pony takes in a wheezing breath before rasping, "W-Water?" Darry immediately grasps a paper cup beside the bed, filling it from a pitcher, and sticking a straw in it, carefully guiding the thin piece of plastic between Ponyboy's lips. The young Curtis sips at the water a few times before exhaling with satisfaction, resting back against Soda with a little more ease.
"Better?" Darry asks with raised eyebrows. Pony nods and sighs contently, his eyes falling closed as sleep overtakes him once more.
0 o 0 o 0
Darry gently shuts the door to his youngest brother's hospital room, running a trembling hand over his exhausted-looking face. His eyes are outlined in a soft purple, the skin puffy and weathered. He swallows hard and takes a deep breath, releasing it in a swift gust before making his way toward the waiting room, where his friends await.
As he enters the white-laced room -- white walls, white chairs, white fucking tables with white fucking magazines -- they stand, staring at him anxiously.
"How's he doin?" Johnny is the first to ask. "How's Pony? Is he all right?"
"He was awake," Darry replies with a nod of his head. "Sleepin' again. But he's hurtin'." A silence falls over them before he voices his own question. "Any word on that Soc?"
"He lost a lot of blood," Two-Bit says. "Paramedics nearly lost him on the way over here. Heart stopped. Almost didn't get it started again. He's in surgery. A lot of broken bones, reconstructive shit . . . Fucker's damn lucky we came along when we did."
"Damn lucky that Ponyboy sent you all after him," Darry corrects. "Lord knows he doesn't deserve it." He grinds his teeth and clenches his fists, glaring at the white floor tiles placed neatly beside each other. One after the other in columns and rows. Columns and rows. Columns and rows. He shakes his head and looks back up at the few men surrounding him.
"Ya'll don't need to be here. You can go home, get some rest. He'll be fine. If anything changes, I'll call."
"Nuh uh." Johnny shakes his head. "I'm stayin' right here. I don't leave till Pony does."
"Johnny, they aren't gonna let you stay here all night," the eldest Curtis tries to reason with him.
"Well, let them try and stop me."
"Yea, Johnny and I'll kick their asses," Dally smirks from behind his cigarette, a puff of smoke swirling its way upward and curling lazily across the ceiling.
"Ain't no one gonna kick us out of here, Darry. Don't you worry about us," Two-Bit nods sagely, his hands tucked away deep within his jacket pockets. Steve offers no more than a nod, and Darry sighs in defeat.
"All right," he says with a shake of his head. "Just don't start nothin'." He points a finger at each of them, stopping at Dally and narrowing his eyes. "I mean it." Dally holds his hands up in mock surrender, his eyebrows shooting high on his forehead as if to say Who, me?
"You just worry about Pony," Johnny says.
0 o 0 o 0
Soda watches the steady rhythm of his younger brother's chest as he sleeps. Things could not be worse. Ponyboy sick, that Bob guy nearly dying because he had stuck up for his younger brother . . . All Soda really wants is for things to be like they were before the night Darry had hit Pony. Things used to be simple. Darry and he would work while Pony went to school and got an education so he could do something with his life.
This isn't how it was supposed to pan out.
0 o 0 o 0
Pony awakens to the feeling of a warm arm wrapped around his abdomen.
"Soda?" He asks softly. The body behind him does not rouse, and Pony turns his head slightly to find his brother fast asleep. He smiles sadly, seeing the dark circles beneath Soda's eyes and the drawn-in look about him. His brothers don't deserve this. He doesn't deserve them. He shifts carefully, turning so that he and Soda are face to face (nearly nose to nose) and stares at his brother for a long while. He raises a tentative hand and begins to trace Soda's face softly. His eyebrows, the bridge of his nose, his nearly transparent eyelids. He smiles as he runs the pads of his fingers along his brother's chin, feeling the stubble there. Ponyboy can't wait until he's able to grow hair there. He wants to shave so badly.
Soda stirs, and Ponyboy reluctantly pulls back as the older of the two lazily opens his eyes and yawns.
"Soda?" Pony repeats quietly, receiving a sleepy "Mmhm?" in return. "Do . . . Do you know when I can go home again?"
Soda shifts, his forehead resting against his younger brother's as he replies, "Dunno, little buddy. Soon as you get better, I s'pose."
"Can I go home now?"
"Nuh uh. Not till you get better, Pony." The younger boy pouts his lips, and Soda chuckles. "Aw, don't look like that. It'll be yawn sooner than you think. See? You're already feeling better, right?"
"I feel fine. I want to go home," Ponyboy whines, sighing as Sodapop merely strings his fingers through his dark, annoyingly grease-free locks and kisses his forehead.
"Try and get some sleep, honey. The doc will make you better, then we can all go home."
Ponyboy isn't happy with the answer, but he obediently closes his eyes and presses himself further into his brother's comforting embrace. Exhaustion soon catches up with him, and he finds himself sleeping deeper and calmer than ever before.
0 o 0 o 0
Two Weeks Later:
Bob slowly opens his eyes to a soft, white light. His immediate reaction to the tube running down his throat is to gag -- which he does -- and to flail his arms -- which he tries to do. He finds his wrists bound by a soft leather and begins to panic.
"Bob?" A gentle voice asks from his right, and he turns, drawing in a sharp breath -- not easy with the tube trying to breath for him -- at the pain the movement elicits. "Bob? It's okay. You're all right." The Soc's vision slowly begins to focus on a young man, a familiar teen . . . Curtis! Ponyboy Curtis! His eyes plead with the younger man, beg him to tell him what is going on.
"It's okay, Bob. You're in the hospital," Ponyboy says, setting aside the book he had been reading. Bob barely catches the bold title. Gone With the Wind. "Do you remember what happened?" The Soc stares into the boy's reassuring eyes for a moment, wracking his brain for any semblance of a memory. All that surfaces is pain. A lot of pain . . . and that jerk from school.
He nods slowly, feeling the tube irritate his throat. He squints his eyes and yanks on the wrist bonds once or twice roughly.
"Oh! Just a minute. I'll go get your doc. He'll take that stuff off." Ponyboy disappears from his line of vision, and he panics again, moving restlessly and glancing around the room frantically. Less than a minute later, a tall man in a white coat enters the room, followed closely by Ponyboy and a nurse.
"Ah. Mister Sheldon," the deep-voiced doctor says quietly but firmly. He seems like one of those people that can say anything he wants and just about anyone will believe it. He just has one of those looks -- rough but handsome. "We were worried about you for a while. Do you know where you are?" Bob nods again and makes a face when the same tingling, tickling sensation fills his throat. "All right. Well, you seem to be fighting the ventilator we have you on, so I'm going to remove the tube, okay?" The Soc resists the urge to roll his eyes, wondering if the man treats all his patients like three-year-olds or just the stupid teens.
Several minutes later, after much coughing and eye-watering, Bob sits comfortably against his pillows in a semi-upright position, sipping at the water that the nurse is holding up to him.
"Thanks," he croaks as she sets it aside. She nods without looking him in the eyes and makes her way from the room behind the doctor.
"Just call if you need anything. Another nurse will be in shortly to check your vitals."
With that, only Bob and Ponyboy are left. The younger man sits in the plastic chair beside the bed. There is an awkward silence as the two lock eyes and avert their gazes several times before Pony, finally, clears his throat and takes a breath to speak. But Bob beats him to it.
"How . . . How long have I been in here?"
Ponyboy watches him carefully for a moment before replying, "Couple of weeks." Bob nods, looking around at the cards and flowers littering his room. "Cherry's been here nearly everyday . . . She's been real worried."
Bob says nothing.
"Um . . . Your mom and dad have been here every other day. They'd talk to you and tell you about stuff . . ."
"How come you're here?" The Soc demands quietly, wincing as the words come out more harshly than he intended. "I-I mean . . . You didn't have to."
"Well . . ." Ponyboy hesitates, his fingers fumbling with one another in his lap. "I-I . . . I didn't want you to . . . What I mean is . . . It just sorta seems like it's my fault, you bein' in the hospital and all." Bob's eyebrows rise slightly.
"Your fault?" He asks with surprise. "How is this your fault? It was Ricky and his friends who did this to me . . . not you."
"But you stood up against him at school . . . for me," the Greaser shrugs. "I just . . . If you hadn't, then you wouldn't have made them angry, and they wouldn't have come after you."
"But they might have come after you instead."
Ponyboy shrugs. "I can take care of myself."
Bob offers a wheezing chuckle, which ends in a grunt of pain. "Take care of yourself, huh?"
The younger teen smiles for the first time in a long time, laughing slightly.
"Well, sorta."
Bob looks the kid up and down. "You're looking better."
"Yea," Ponyboy nods. "Doc says the pneumonia's pretty much gone. A few more days of pills, and I should be good as new."
"'S good," the older slurs. "Two weeks, huh? What'd I miss?"
"Football team lost state," Ponyboy shrugs with a sympathetic look, "but it was close. Couple of points, and we would've won for sure." Bob scoffs his disappointment. "Oh! The Dallas Cowboys want Cherry to cheerlead for them! I guess one of the players is cousins with one of their cheerleaders, and she was at the game and saw Cherry. Said she was gonna recommend her to the squad, and if she ever wants to try out, there'd be an open spot for her for sure."
"No kiddin'?" The Soc looks proud, smiling from ear to ear (or as far as he can with stitches lacing his left cheekbone).
"Yea," the younger teen smiles back. "And that gas station up near the school almost exploded. Some gasoline caught fire, but they got it out before it caused any real damage."
"Aw, shoot. Would've been interesting to see it go up, huh?"
"Probably would have blew up half the school," Ponyboy laughs. "Uh . . . I guess that's it, really. Nothin' too exciting, I s'pose."
"I guess the school exploding was just too much to ask for."
There is another silence between the two.
"Well . . . I should really get going. I just stopped by for a bit to see how you were doing . . . and to, uh . . . give you this." Ponyboy stands from his chair, reaching to the bedside table and extracting a newspaper.
Bob reaches for it with his right hand, finding the wrist in a cast and deciding to use his other hand, which has a couple taped fingers but nothing too horrific. He takes a moment to catalogue all his injuries. The doctor had run through them briefly before leaving, but there were quite a few more aches and pains then what the man had mentioned.
Several of his ribs are fractured, two broken, and his left knee is currently a mixture of metal pins and plates. Stitches adorn the many gashes on his body -- his abdomen, his face and head, arms and legs. His left ankle is in a cast, covered in signatures from his friends and family. His right eye is patched, the doctor having said that the possibility of regaining his 20/20 vision is slim to none -- a pair of wire-rimmed glasses are sure to be in his near future. And to add to his many injuries are several yellowish-brown bruises, their deep purple color having faded after the first week. Thankfully anything that had been swollen is down to a considerable size, and the morphine seems to be working just fine in keeping his pain bearable.
"The school paper?" Bob asks in confusion as he glances the object over. "This is from three days ago."
"Here," Ponyboy reaches over and points out a rather long article on the front page, his face smiling up at him from the picture underneath the title.
"Oh," the Soc says with some surprise, glancing through it quickly. The bottom of the article says that it continues on to another page. "Wow! You really did it!"
"Yea. The editor of the Tulsa World newspaper read it, and they're offering me a scholarship. He's talking to a friend of his in Nebraska, seeing if he can't get me a full scholarship to someplace out there."
"That's great!" Bob smiles, looking from Ponyboy back to the paper.
"Well, I really should get going. Darry and Soda'll be home from work soon. Don't want to worry them." Pony grins and raises a hand while walking towards the door.
"I'll see ya around, Kid," Bob nods, holding up the newspaper. "And I'm gonna read this."
Ponyboy smiles. "You do that. And get better. I'll see you tomorrow or the day after." And then he is gone, and Bob is left alone with the article and the beeping of the surrounding medical machines. He glances at the bold title of the article above Ponyboy's picture.
Heart Stopper, Breath Taker, Fate Maker
AN: Questions? Comments? Vague disregard for any or all words written and established in the mind of one who has no sanity?
Okay, honest opinions, now. How was it? Only one more chapter to go, so you better get your two cents in now. I love you all for reviewing! I'm so very sorry that it's taken me so long to update this fic. I've been worried about school and busy with my other stories. Oi!
Again, FeistyFeist, I love you. You are my Outsiders muse. Thanks for getting me back on this fic!! Lots of props to ya!!
Later, Gators! Catch you all on that oh-so flippy side of life.