"What's that alarm?"
"347 is in the weeds."
"He's been bad since we've brought him in. He's had how many bags of blood?"
"Three pints."
"I'll get the crash cart."
"I'll go and be there on hand."
"Can we get a doctor up here?"
"He's tachycardic."
"What the fuck is happening?"
…
"He's crashing."
...
"Clear!"
…
"Clear!"
Each breath is a blinding white stab of pain. He tries to stick to quick and shallow pants. Panting isn't so bad; it feels like a hundred hornets in his chest instead of a single cleaver. Oh, his head still swims and him limbs feel weak, like hollowed out glass, but at least no one is stabbing him in the chest. The problem is that he's going to faint if he keeps panting like Mr. Shelby's old dog in the muggy Texas heat. And, every time he feels himself slipping over the edge into unconsciousness or like he's going to vomit everywhere, he takes a deep breath and gets a white-hot shock of agony.
He raises his hand, because he does not care, cannot care, about balancing equations when his chest is on fire. The teacher looks at him, and decides that he isn't faking it. Of course he isn't faking it. He might be an idiot who agreed to play football at recess (becase he was sick of being the weird new kid and he wants to fit in) but he can't really fake this. So, Dominic Berteluchi and Eddy Salvator lead him out of the classroom.
Nic and Ed, they're the coolest boys in school. So, he stumbles after them, out to the old iron fire escape by the third floor teacher's lounge. Nic spreads out his red sweater, and Eddy loosens his tie. He strips off his own tie. It's constricting his neck. Nic pulls out a pack of cigarettes, and Ed produces a lighter. Each of the boys takes a long pull on the cigarette, before they pass it to him. He doesn't want to say no. But the world is spinning, spinning, spinning, spinning.
He wakes up in the ambulance on the way to the hospital. There's a tube down his throat, and for once, he feels like he's getting enough oxygen. It hurts like hell, but he can breathe. Even with the knife in his chest, there is nothing more beautiful than oxygen.
"We have him stabilized, but there's a tear in the artery wall in his leg. We need to close it does any more permanent damage."
"SO DO IT!"
"Jinx! Jeff and Seb and Nick and Jon."
"So not the time, Toaster boy."
"We need guardian's permission."
"I'm the acting guardian. But, I should call his sisters."
"We need to do this sooner."
…
"You've got permission."
Bookend men in suits stood at the four corners of the auditorium. Even though he was in the middle of flipping over Even's shoulders and harmonizing to Van Morrison's Brown Eyed Girl, he still saw them. In their identical, off the rack black suits that didn't quite hide the shoulder holsters and their almost invisible ear-pieces, these were the boogie men of his childhood. His sisters never warned about monsters in the woods, or ghosts that could get him. But, these real life boogie men… they were ingrained in his nightmares.
Oh Danny boy, the pipes, the pipes are calling
From glen to glen, and down the mountain side
The summer's gone, and all the roses falling
'Tis you, 'tis you must go and I must bide.
Their set ends with the crisp, poignant lyrics of Hunter's Danny Boy. The sweet notes shiver through him, and remind him of his fate, if the men in suits should get to him or his brothers.
And I shall hear, though soft you tread above me
And all my grave will warm and sweeter be
And then you'll kneel and whisper that you love me
And I shall sleep in peace until you come to me.
Back in the greenroom, the boys were drinking water and blowing off steam when the men in the suits appeared. They pulled him aside.
"Listen, James," one of the suit bookends growled. "We need information, and no one gets hurt."
He glances around the room, looking for one of the basses. "I'm Kellen," he objects. "Jimmy is over there, with the tie around his head."
The man hits him hard, in the shoulder. It responds by subluxing, and not-quite dislocating. "I know who you are, James Eliot. And I know you know about your parents."
"My parents are dead." His voice breaks, with the physical and emotional pain.
"Liar!" The man hits his right hip hard enough to bruise. He can't tell if it's gotten dislocated as well, but he suspects he'll need medical attention. At this point, the only thing holding him up is the suited bookend.
At a sign from the leader – a big beefy man with hands the size of history books – his thug dropped him. "We'll be driving you gentlemen back to school," the leader announces. "There's a snowstorm coming down on the front-range, so we need to go, now."
"But the ceremony," objected Hunter.
The leader gave him a very dark look. "We don't want to get stuck in the storm!" The man growls.
The thugs escort the boys out to their bus, two holding him up. His hip is on fire, and sitting on the bus makes him feel like he's going to pass out.
"You're coming in at five? To Columbus International? … Yep, we'll have someone there to meet you."
"Can we make a sign? Can I make a sign?"
"Only if it doesn't have glitter. Or toaster bits."
"We'll have a sign. S-A-R-A-I? Is that right?"
"Or dead Barbies."
"Ow! Sebastian! That was Hunter! That wasn't me! Don't hit me! Don't hit me!"
"Shut up, mate! He's on the fucking phone!"
"Okay, we'll see you soon, Sarai. Thanks. Bye!"
"You can't hit the guy with cancer!"
"You don't have cancer."
"Fine, you can't pummel the guy on crutches!"
"AHHH! Nick! Take me with you!"
"You can't leave."
"Take Seb with you!"
The cool night air is heavy with acrid smoke and salt and sulfur. Cheap perfume and rubbing alcohol and the bitter, medicinal scent of betadine form a strange top note. He leans against his sister, huddled in his blanket and clutching his toy frog to his chest. Mommy and Daddy brought it back to him from the Amazon the last time he went, and gave it to him for being a brave boy when they took the cast off his legs. And then they went away again. He'd rather have cried and been a baby and not have the frog than have them go away again. He tries to breath, but the air catches in his chest. It makes him cough, and feel sick.
He reaches up to tug on his big sister's nightshirt. She's barefoot, with her curly auburn hair falling loose to her lower back in wild tangles.
"Sari!" His voice is quiet and hoarse. He sounds like a frog. The doctors put a tube down his nose, and it hurt more than when he had strep. They told him that if he would eat, they'd take it out. He didn't want food. He wasn't going to eat until his parents came back. But, his parents didn't come back and his granddad told the doctors to put the tube in his nose. "Sari!" He says it as loud as he can.
She can't hear him over the noise of the house alarm, and the triton sirens and the howling of the wind and the crashing of the surf against the rocks. They blend together into a single, heart stopping melody over which nothing can be understood.
And, Sari is busy. She's staring at the glow in the dark night behind him. The black silhouette of a haunted house is outlined in red-orange flames. Red, white and blue emergency lights add a macabre white light to the scene. The house might once have been a home, but now it isn't. It's just an empty shell.
He takes another breath, and coughs into his sister's leg. She finally notices him, and scoops him up.
"What is it, Jamie?" She lisps from the retainer she wears when she's sleeping.
"I can't breathe and I cut my foot." He sticks out his blood toes.
"How long, Froggy?" She shifts him to her hip.
He puts a finger in his mouth and sucks it while he thinks. "When we were leaving the house on our tummies."
Sari sighs, and picks her way across the rocky lot toward the flashing emergency lights. He hides his face in her shoulder; he doesn't like firemen or police or ambulance men. They come when he's sick and they take him to the hospital and he has to stay there.
Sarai finds an empty ambulance, and puts her baby brother onto the cot. "My baby brother, James Elliot. He's got hemophilia and he can't breathe and his heart is on the wrong side," she tells the techs in a rush.
They put a mask on him, and even though it smells like plastic and smoke, he can breathe better.
Lara comes over, and leans in with Sarai. The three children watch as their granddad gets carried out on a stretcher. His face is covered with a cloth, and his chest is bare. Blood is flowing from his chest, like a river. Granddad bleeds the same way Jamie does.
"It looks like our world is ending if fire," Lara whispers to her younger sister.
Sarai shivers. "And ice," she agrees.
"…But if I had to perish twice
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice." The women's voice pauses. "Frog, it's time to wake up, or I'm going to freeze your ass." The last she says in German.
He doesn't want to wake up. Well, he doesn't want to go back to the nightmares, either, but he doesn't want to wake up. It hurts. His hip hurts. His side hurts. His chest hurts. His throat hurts. And… there's a tube down his throat.
He's woken up this way a few times. His practical side tells him not to try to moan.
He blinks his eyes open, looking up at the white blur above him. He wiggles his fingers.
Sarai takes one hand. "I'm here, Frog."
Someone takes his other.
"We're here, too, mate." He can't place the Australian accent, but it makes him feel safe.
He squeezes the hand back.
A/N: YAY WEIRD CHAPTER! I wanted this to have a weird feel, and I dunno, I've been wanting to write dialogue for a while. Some of it is supposed to be comic relief. Each of the italicized sections is a memory/dream, the rest is dialogue that's happening as Hunt/Frog/Jamie is unconscious. I hope this sastifies you as much as it has apparently satisfied my muse. He's had a rough computer-less week.
The poem that Sarai reads to her brother is "Fire and Ice" by Robert Frost. I have once again bastardized parts of it for my purposes.
I'm making a universal announcement here. I will say it again. You are welcome to hug any Warbler you can find who agrees to be hugged first (Trent says he likes hugs). But, I don't have any control over and can't send them off to hug you.
Thanks to all of you lovely people who have been reading and favoretting this. Shout outs to Pen Magic, Eraman, NiffAreForever, B00kworm92, PhoenixInAshes, Pi-on-a-skateboard, and youdon'tknowme06.
Questions, Comments, Concerns or Critiques all welcome. –C65