Yoo hoo! Read my new chapter! Let me know if you like it! Happy Sunday!
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Jesus sits at his desk, focused. He's studying a video intently, a wrestler at a school he'll soon play against.
Mariana knocks on the doorway and winces, trying to cover a sudden sharp pain.
"Hey, Mari. You alright?"
She pauses, "It's nothing. What are you up to?"
"Well, we have a duel next week… You're coming, right?" He asks.
"Duh! We'll never miss you win." She says, smiling.
Jesus looks down and sees a fairly large bandage on Mariana's hand. He goes to hold it and she immediately pulls it away.
"What-" Jesus is cut off.
"I can't tell you. Mom told me I can't tell you." She says, the words barely get out.
Is she smiling?, Jesus thinks.
"Mom? Mom is involved with this?" Jesus can't keep his thoughts straight.
"She's not involved with this, just in this? I guess?" Her voice fades.
She glances at him; he keeps the eye contact a moment longer.
"I'm going to tell you a secret. It's not serious-not a big deal, okay? Seriously, you can't tell Moms."
She stares at him, undivided attention.
"Yeah, yeah! Okay! Promise, just tell me." He laughs.
"So…" she waits.
"So?" Jesus questions, getting more and more impatient.
"I was at the station. Today, at the station." Jesus nods, listening. "And so was Liam…"
His eyes widen. His imagination starts to run wild.
Reading his mind, Mariana responds, "No, I actually started it."
"Oh." He says, surprised.
"So, yeah. We were both bleeding." She can't contain her grin anymore.
He puts up his knuckles and gives her a soft fist bump to her bandaged hand.
"There ya go…" He says. "Why can everyone else punch that-"
She stops him, knowing where it's going, "You're the most lethal, dude." She laughs.
"Maybe one day, if I'm lucky."
There's a beat of silence.
Then, Jesus says, "I'm glad you're alright."
Mariana smiles back at him.
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Callie is restless in her bed, it's getting late, but visitors are still roaming the hallways. She observes the different behaviors, those mourning with sadness, others happy in relief and so on. She thinks about their lives and who they are visiting.
Then she thinks about her neighbors in the rooms next to her, but she doesn't think long as she actually doesn't know them at all-not even if they are boys or girls, men or women. She looks to the side of her table and sees books she hasn't read, homework she hasn't finished and get well soon cards she hasn't read. The overwhelming, intimidating work is exhausting her just by looking at it so she picks up her phone. But just as quickly puts it back on the table; even her phone is can't entertain her anymore…
There's a moment of serenity as she takes in her environment, everything still.
Suddenly, the lights flicker in her room. It's nothing, she thinks. This is not a horror movie, she reassures herself. She exhales, needing to distract herself from her imagination. She's already counted the tiles on her ceiling... 248 to be exact.
The lights went out entirely. It's fine, they'll come back on any second, she thinks.
Too many seconds pass.
The generator wasn't working.
Only battery powered lights were illuminating light and there was only one: the exit sign outside her door. The sun had already set, so while it wasn't pitch black, she couldn't see too far in front of her. The hallway was easier to see as the exit sign gave her a point of reference and light.
There's an eerie absence of sound, no beeping monitors or machines, no random numbers that doctors can understand. Nothing.
Then everything.
The silence only last for a few moments until screams and shrills filled the air with patients whose lives were depending on those machines. Callie squeezes her eyes shut, hoping as she opens them again it was all a dream.
It was worse. When she opened them, people were running down the hall yelling for help, screaming. Her own heart rate rises in the anxiety of everyone's lives at stake, but her monitors won't read that. The blackout is becoming more and more dangerous.
I'm fine, she thinks again.
A man with a deep voice-compared to the mothers, aunts and daughters Callie's heard running around-approaches the exit door right outside her own. He spins in helplessness, in need of a hand, or sense of direction.
He yells, "She's in trouble! She needs assistance! Anybody?!"His eyes are wide and wild. "Please!"
He twists and turns around looking for nurses, doctors, anybody. Callie peers at him through her room and he finally faces her.
Pearson.
The foster father that falsely reported Callie to the police as a violent, unstable delinquent.
He recognizes her, too.
"It's you." He growls.
"It's you." Callie says, shocked.
Callie jerks back, afraid he that he'll come in, but a college boy knocks into Pearson, whisking him out of Callie's sight.
Callie looks around, panicked. Thinking if he'll come back, she looks around the room, looking for anything that can change the room number or her name.
No luck.
She whips her head around to her phone and boggles it in her hand. She is fumbling with the numbers as she tries to dial Stef and Lena.
She's breaking down, not knowing when he'll come back-if he'll ever come back. Maybe for revenge, she thinks. Or to finish what he started, as she follows this downward spiral of terrifying thoughts.
The dial tones ring, once, twice, three times. It never takes this long, she thinks. What could the Fosters be doing?
"Hello?" A groggy voice answers. Lena must have fallen asleep to the TV again.
"MOM! He's here! You gotta come NOW." Callie screams, shaking.
"Wait. Callie. Slow down." Lena says, unable to understand what's going on or who's she talking about. "STEF! Get to a phone!" She yells in the house.
"He saw me, Jim, he-he... The house. The first time you met Jude. He's here. And he saw me. And there's a power outage. All hell's breaking loose." Callie stammers.
This time Stef answers, "Callie, I need you to calm down, sweets. There's nothing-"
"What if he comes back for me? He knows where I am. I got him arrested!"
"NO. He got himself arrested, you didn't do anything. Can you talk to a nurse?" Stef asks.
"Everyone's looking for help. There's-there's yelling and crying, Mom. I think people are dying out there. Did the blackout reach you?" She says, her voice uneven.
"No, everything's fine here. Lena's going to stay on the phone with you. We're both heading over now, but I have to call the station and report this, okay honey? Lena? You there?" She pleads.
"I'm here. I'm here," Lena says on the phone, as she grabs her car keys. "Just keep talking to me Callie."
"I-I don't know what to do." Callie whispers. Stef disconnects her line.
"You don't need to do anything, Callie. Just stay where you are, we're coming. You hear me?" Lena knows she's losing the battle to whatever is distracting her.
"Um. Lena, I need to go. I'm not safe."
"You are safe. In a hospital with nurses, doctors; this is the safest place you can be." Lena tries to bargain.
"Not anymore."
"Callie. Don't hang up. Callie! CALLIE" A constant tone rings on, Callie ended the call.
Callie frantically looks around at her bed; she throws the sheets off the bed, freeing her lower body, moving her legs to the edge again. She thinks back to how she got down.
Stef and Lena.
Should I wait? She thinks, calculating how much time has passed from when Jim Pearson saw her to how long the Fosters will get here to how long until he comes back.
She takes the gamble and looks at the wheelchair, trying to aim herself; hoping to position her body so that she can ease herself down.
She hears footsteps. Her heart races. Hands shake. Now or never, she thinks.
Callie hops off the bed to the chair, but the wheels slide as her feet clumsily knock into the footrests. Her grasp can't reach back to the bed, and her only anchor is unreachable. The chair moves out from under her and she falls hard to the tile. She lays there for a second.
Stupid.
She pushes her arms up, lifting her upper body off the cold floor. She's stronger than she expected. Callie plants one unsteady foot on the ground, her balance shaky. Her second foot follows the first and for the first time in weeks her feet feel the weight of her entire body.
It's heavy. It's sustainable, but it's already starting to hurt.
She reaches for the wheelchair that rolled away, but she's caught-restricted by the cables and wires connected to and around her. The blank monitor no longer reads her heart beats per minute, or blood pressure. It'd be blaring if it did.
She rips the IV and measuring wires out of her arm, finger and anything attached to her.
I've already wasted too much time, she yells to herself, furious.
She rests her hand on her side, feeling for the bandage. Hoping for the best, yet expecting the worst. It seemed fine, while the pain was starting to ignite all over, the central point seemed unchanged. She pulls up the fabric from the bland, nude colored uniform and no longer sees the white gauze covering her stitches.
As she lifted it to see the stitches, there was blood. Not a lot, though.
Callie winces, in pain and in frustration. She pulls the fabric back over fast, probably too fast, but her anger is in control now.
She takes a step forward, uneasy on her feet.
Get the hang of this, already! She screams at herself.
Callie tries to use her momentum to escape her room, the one place she thought she was safe. She reaches the doorway and places a hand to readjust her balance. She looks left and right, surveying the chaos outside. Trying to search for the face she needs to avoid. Her eyes dart from running kids to overwhelmed nurses and crying parents.
She keeps to the wall, finally able to see who her neighbors are. Curious, she peeks in.
Callie immediately regrets it as her eyes land on doctors trying to revive a middle-aged woman. No equipment is working and Callie rapidly turns away. Her back slamming against the wall, almost bouncing off.
Not that way, she decides. She grabs the edges of windows, benches, anything to steady herself as she tries to jog down the hall.
The wheelchair, she thinks. She left the wheelchair in the room. She peers back down the hallway, but shakes her head and moves on. I've come too far, too much time.
Her bare feet slap the cold ground as she walks, startled by the chaos and noise. Finally, she reaches a corner and turns to reach a dead end.
At least it's quiet, she exhales.
Little does she know, her phone vibrates on the empty bed, sheets strewn across the room. The phone goes black, then lights up with the notification:
17 missed calls.
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A bit more serious this around, but I like exciting story lines. What do you think is going to happen? Where do you want it to go? R&R!