Chapter 10

Four and a Half

Beep… Beep… Beep…

Oh, goodness. What an annoying noise. I wonder if Dan left his coffee in the microwave again. Rude. I should get onto him about that. But this bed…it's so nice and soft…and I know, bed. I won't leave you, don't worry.

My eyes snapped open to harsh florescent light, making me squeeze them shut again. I lifted my hands to my face, but to my surprise, there was something on them. I opened my eyes against to what looked like white oven mitts taped all the way down to my wrists.

"Phil! Ohmigoodness!" I looked over at Bryony who was reclining in a chair. "You're awake."

"What happened?" I looked down at a hospital gown that ended at a machine that was slowly bending my braced and casted knee back and forth.

"Well, Mr. and Mrs. Langeston called the police. Apparently, you were held hostage and tortured by an evil creature child named Eden Van Coon, but somehow you escaped and don't worry they have Eden in cust-,"

"Dan!" I said, almost rolling out of bed, memories and pain and everything flooding back. "Where's Dan? Did he make it? Is he alright?"

Bry's eyes darted to her lap as she played with her hands. My heart sank into my stomach and I made some sort of inhuman noise as I managed to undo the straps on that blasted machine and bring my heavy leg around. I ripped off the heart monitors, making the machine behind me squeal. I had never been in a full leg cast before, and getting my feet was an adventure as I sat back down heavily on my bed, dizzy. I put my head in my hands.

"Maybe you shouldn't get up-,"

"Where's Dan?" I said through gritted teeth.

"He's on the Burn Unit."

I perked up. "So, he's alive?"

"Yes, but-,"

"But what?"

"Let me finish!" She yelled, putting her hands on my shoulders. "I don't think you're going to like what you see."

"But he is alive?"

"Generally, yes."

"What does that mean?"

She sighed and looked past my shoulder, out my window. "I guess it would be best just to show you." She got up and pulled a wheelchair that had been sitting in my private bathroom and helped me into it, sort of. This was the first time I got to look at myself since I woke up. My hands were bandaged and so was my leg. All the little scratches and bite marks had its own bandage or ace wrap, making me resemble a mummy.

"Dan's had a tough battle." Bry started to explain as she pushed me down the hall to a lift. "When he got to the hospital, they said that he should've been dead days ago, if not by his burns, then by the condition of his respiratory system. His wounds had gone gangrenous and he was fighting pneumonia." I thought of the way Eden threw a bucket of water on him and the way he was coughing up stuff and my chest burned with rage. "They're thinking that if they can't get the infection under control, he'll lose one, if not both of his legs. He's been in surgery multiple times and well, he's pretty much got a fifty-fifty chance now."

We rolled into the Burn Unit, passing nurses in minty scrubs, I looked at the faces in the big windows that made up the patients rooms, old and young and there was even a little girl not older than seven or eight, burnt straight up to her hairline. I didn't want to dwell on that though, I was looking for someone specific, someone…

"Dan." I breathed, putting both palms up to the window, tears choking me out. Multiple machines sang around him, beeping and chirping and sighing. A tube ran from his mouth to a specific machine that counted his breaths and another tube ran from under the sheets, filling a container up with yellowy-brown liquid. I watched the sporadic line of the heart monitor. Blankets were pulled up to his chin, so I could only imagine what damage lay beneath.

"I told you, you wouldn't like what you saw." Bry said solemnly as we both watched Dan fight for his life. I leaned over and opened the door, pushing myself in. He shivered hard, teeth rattling against the tube. I found his hand under the sheets, it was wrapped like mine. I gripped it, the best I could.

His eyes fluttered opened and he focused on me, squinting hard. The hand I wasn't holding came up and two out of five fingers lazily tugged at the line in his mouth, before he gave up and thumped his hand on his chest.

"Can he talk?" I turned to Bry, who was leaning on my wheelchair.

"No, the tube is breathing for him, so it's restricting his vocal cords."

"Can he write?" I asked and she shot me a look like he has four and a half fingers between two hands, you do the math. His hand patted mine and he tapped at a paper on the bedside table in front of him. On it was pictures of things like medicine and a cup of water and then there was an alphabet at the bottom. He started poking at letters as fast as he could go.

"Go slower." I said and his finger came down.

"G." I said.

"E." Bryony said.

"T."

"H."

"E."

"R."

"Get her? What does that mean?"

But I knew exactly what he meant.

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