He tries to speak, but there's a tube in his mouth. He wants to spit it out, but he stops himself. He can't get rid of it. He probably can't breathe without it, if the rhythmic wheezing nearby is any indicator. He can't be anywhere but a hospital. And he has to be SICK for Sarai to be here, threatening him with bodily harm if he doesn't wake up. She only does that when she's really worried. She only comes when she's really worried.
He slips his hand out of the one that isn't his sister's, and tries to lift it to his face. He doesn't get far, stopped by IVs and bandages and sensors. So, he makes weird sort of circling motion by his side, trying to trace a pair of glasses in the air. God, he wishes that Lasik didn't put him at risk for bleeding.
"He wants his glasses," one of the boys watching him announces. Trent or Jon, he thinks, although he's not entirely sure who they are or where he is. His mind is slowly coming back into focus, although the world becomes sharp when he gets the heavy, black frames on his face.
Once he can see, he tries another sign. He holds an imaginary pen, and mimes scribbling. He feels someone sliding a writing implement into his hand, and paper underneath.
He skips the first, and most obvious question (where am I?), deciding that his actual location beyond hospital is irrelevant and goes for the second. WHAT HAPPEN?
One of the boys reads it out.
"Hypovolemic shock," Sarai tells him frankly. He breaks apart the words. Hypo. Low. Volemic. Volume. Oh, God. He had a bleed somewhere and it almost killed him. One of those fantastic fringe benefits of his disease.
WHERE BLEED?
Again, someone reads the question for him.
"Your hip," comes the glib reply. (It's not from the one who read the question, but another. Jesus, how many of them are there in his room? He has to be in the fucking ICU, where they typically don't allow many visitors.) "There was an abrasion along your femoral artery, and it didn't clot."
CLOSED?
"Yeah, early Friday," the narrating voice tells him gently.
He thinks he was hurt on Thursday.
WHEN NOW?
Glances are exchanged over his head. "Saturday night."
Fuck. He has lost more than a day. And, he'll probably more. He focuses on the pressing priorities.
WHEN TUBE GONE?
Sarai is unsympathetic. "When the doctors say you can breathe on your own. You almost fucking died, Frog, give it a break if they want to keep you intubated for a bit."
ME = DARTH VADAR. SUCKS. This gets a laugh.
He turns to another pressing matter.
HURT.
"Do you want more morphine?"
YES. GOD YES.
He hears the gentle whirr of the morphine pump, and his passing acquaintance with reality is replaced by a dream world. At some point, he's aware of the ladies of Doña Alda and their dresses and bread. At another, there's The Highwayman. Sarai has a nasty habit of reading poetry in various languages aloud when she thinks he's asleep.
The tube came out somewhere during La Belle Dame sans Merci, he thinks. Although it might have been when Trent shoved a copy of one of the Bloody Jack books into Sarai's hands and asked her to read him a real story. (Or at least, he thinks that's what happened shortly before Trent pulled down his pants to show off a blue dolphin tattoo… to which Sebastian had responded by jamming a wig on his head and playing folk songs on a violin. … He really hopes the second part was a drug-induced dream.)
His throat is rough and raw he's happy to be breathing on his own again. Mostly because he's tired of dreaming of a masked man in a long black coat with a red light saber who whispers in a husky voice, "Jaime, I am your father." The man is met by a bloody boy with long shoulder-length blond curls who wears old-fashioned breaches and boots and retorts, "My name is Hunter Clarington. You killed my father. Prepare to die."
Not's not sure about much, but he's sure that he's never left alone.
Sometimes it's Sarai and Tennyson and Keats and Byron and Antonio Marchado and Cervantes and Dumas and Gautier.
Sometimes it's Jon and Trent, bickering like an old married couple about everything from Pretty Little Liars to Hell's Kitchen to Covert Affairs. (Trent swears he doesn't want to try Annie's shoes, but he insists so vehemently that Jon almost goes out buys him a pair of size 13 pumps. He might also have a crush on Auggie's tech… well, and Auggie himself.)
Sometimes it's Sebastian, glowering at everyone and reading a Malcom Gladwell book or a physics text or scribbling on his physics homework.
Sometimes Sebastian is joined by curly-haired Blaine, who hums constantly. Somehow he manages to be in tune.
Sometimes (rarely) Thad and once, David, sit with him. David is twitchy, and doesn't stay long. David leaves a steaming plate of anise cookies behind. He once admitted that he remembers Christmas with anise and lemon cookies that were allowed to sit overnight. David looked up a recipe online, and had promised to make them. Even though he can't eat yet (feeding tube down his nose, making his throat even more raw), he loves the smell.
Nick and Jeff curl together in the blue vinyl hospital sleeper chair and tell each other jokes and stories. Nick trails lines of kisses along Jeff's collar bones and around his wrists, where the burn marks are. But, he doesn't see and doesn't ask about the angry red scratches on Jeff's back and sides. The ones that show when Jeff spends the night alone in that blue vinyl chair and his hoodie rides up. He doesn't know if Nick is just blind, or if it's a selective blindness. Boys don't cut. And, more importantly, people cut on their arms and their thighs. Anywhere else would be silly. He wants to ask Jeff about it, but whenever he thinks of it, he's walking the snowy paths of Narnia or on a rainy plain in Spain or in Camelot or riding elephants with Hannibal (he's still not sure how Hannibal got his elephants, considering that he lived in Valencia, Spain, which is closer to Africa than Persia and African elephants aren't trainable… but that was a thought best left for a time when he wasn't high as a kite. Or a student at CU Boulder on 4/20).
At some point, they start dialing back his pain medication. He still sleeps a lot, maybe because his hip doesn't hurt quite so much when he's asleep, or because being awake and in pain takes so much energy.
At some point, they switch him from the nasal feeding tube to soft foods. He tries eating one of David's cookies. It hurts going down, but it tastes so good that he eats another. That one hurts coming back up. After that, he sticks to vanilla pudding and jello and chicken broth until his stomach settles.
At some point, he realizes that the day is still starting with horrible music. He wakes up to Total Eclipse of the Heart and B-I-N-G-O and The Hamster Dance. He wakes up angry, but when he wakes up angry he stays awake. He stays lucid for just a little bit longer.
At some point, he learns that Jon's PET scan was inconclusive. There were abnormalities, but they can't decide if there was a problem with the machine or a tumor. So, they've schedule the beat boxer to go again, and then they'll probably do a biopsy if they still can't tell. Better safe than sorry.
At some point, Jeff asks him how he keeps going, and he sighs and says he doesn't know and Jeff comes back with more scratches on his back and a haunted look in his eyes. When things make more sense, he will ask Jeff what's going on. But, for now… for now he is floating.
He rolls over and goes back to sleep. Maybe everything will come together when he wakes up, and he'll be lucid again.