*TRIGGER WARNING!!!*
~ this chapter contains blood, broken limbs, bruises, and all that accompanies those things ~
When Evan finally opened his eyes, he was laying , half of his body propped up against a metal stair, the other half laying on the cold, concrete floor of the apartment building.
His head hurt, but beyond that, he couldn't feel anything, and a sharp pang of fear that he'd been paralyzed shot through him, blacking out his vision for a moment.
He tried to sit up, and the pain that shot through his head was enough to send him spinning back into unconsciousness.
By the time he woke up again, the sun had gone down.
Where's Jared?
He wondered muddily as he tried to assess the damage done to him.
He still couldn't feel much, other than his head, but even As he laid there thinking about it, it started slowly seeping back in.
The various bruises he could see on his arms and the ones he could feel on his legs ached as if he'd been kicked repeatedly by several people and then thrown into a dryer filled with rocks.
His right ankle, in particular, was throbbing, but he could feel it which he hoped meant it was just badly bruised and not broken.
Blood was slowly trickling from a series of scrapes along his arms and hands, and
his left arm was numb, dangling at an angle that sent him reeling with nausea every time he looked at it.
With his functional arm, he reached up and touched his face, which was sticky with blood from a gash above his eyebrow.
His nose didn't feel broken, which was a small blessing, but he could feel a large bruise on his jaw.
He closed his eyes, and took a deep breath, which hurt so badly that he gasped, which in turn sent him back into oblivion with the only thought,
This is probably really bad.
He weaved in and out of consciousness for the next several hours, once being awoken as someone's laughter drifted near to and then stopped abruptly as it reached him, to be replaced by yelling and several pair of footsteps.
He felt someone touch his throat and then he existed only in flashes of the world around him.
Once, he was laying flat on some kind of bed in a moving room, two or three people bustling around him. Someone noticed his eyes were open and pointed this out to someone else, and then his world exploded in pain and he started screaming.
Someone else was yelling, and then he felt a prick in his arm and the world went black again.
The next was in a metal room surrounded by screens and green people carrying metal tools, a seemed hilarious to Evan, green dragons carrying forks and spoons.
One flash was a delicate hand touching his cheek and his name being softly whispered as he was kissed on the forehead.
When he finally came to, he was surrounded by pillows in the middle of a room painted the color of someone who's been working at a job they hate for forty years.
It was also filled with beds, most of them empty save for a few, but the other people were all fast asleep.
There were vases everywhere filled with any combination of flowers you could imagine.
Remembering the events that had placed him there, he looked down to see how hurt he was.
His legs and right arms were covered in bandages of various sizes, and his arm was wrapped heavily in a large cast.
He had a hospital gown, but he could feel the bandages wrapped around his chest, and a deep breath told him that he'd probably broken a rib or two.
He was attached via rubber tubes, to several machine and bags slowly leaking fluid into him.
Reaching up to his face, he felt around, fingers resting on a bandage above his eye, and he guessed by the numbness that it had been stitched up.
He was surprised by a movement at his side, and looked down to see that
lying next to him, cheeks wet, fast asleep, was Zoe.
He smiled to himself, wincing at the pain, and gently poked her in the arm.
Nothing.
"Zoe?"
He whispered, poking her again.
She slowly opened her eyes and gasped at him, promptly falling off the bed.
"EVAN!!"
She yelled, hugging him softly, careful of his chest and arm.
A nurse came rushing in, slightly out of breath, eyes wide with fear.
"Is everything okay?"
She asked, rushing to Evan's side to check the machine and bags.
Zoe nodded her head, giving the nurse a look of sympathy.
"Yeah he's fine, he's just... awake."
The nurse put her hands on her hips.
"Then I'd thank you not to tell in the middle of the ICU."
She said in the tone of a mother chastising her children.
"Of course, I'm so sorry."
Zoe replied.
The nurse nodded and smiled, apparently satisfied with that. She walked away to check on the other patients.
"I thought that only family was allowed in the ICU?"
Evan whispered to Zoe.
She nodded solemnly.
"If anyone asks, we're married, but you couldn't afford a ring because of your gambling addiction."
He snorted, the pain blacking out his vision and making him groan.
Zoe called the nurse back over, who nodded and injected something into Evan that pulled him slowly back into oblivion.