Chapter 17: Thread and Needle

"Ohmigosh!" Frankie exclaimed, slamming on the breaks as she spotted the gang of friends surrounding a familiar red figure. She opened the doors and stood, "That's Wilt!"

Joe was off the bus in moments, followed closely by the Foster's crowd.

At the sight of an armed officer and a crowd of imaginary friends the gang scattered. James was the last to leave, his eyes on Wilt as he retreated. He would get his chance . . .

Satin scrambled to Wilt's side, ignoring the sounds of Frankie and the others bounding towards her. Wilt lay facedown on the pavement where he'd fallen. A small slit in his upper lip bled slowly, trickling through his fur. Carefully, she crept closer, "Wilt?"

He opened his eye slowly, "Satin? A-are you okay?"

"Yes. I'm fine. It looks worse than it is." she moved closer and felt her hand land in something warm, wet and sticky. Lifting her hand she saw, in the harsh light of the bus headlights, a crimson stain.

A puddle of thickly rolling blood moved towards her, spreading out from underneath her friend. Panicking, she rolled him onto his back. He gasped as she moved him, "I'm sorry but that hurts."

"Shhhh . . . I know but I need to see." she whispered to him in a soothing tone.

Blood flowed freely down the sides of his chest as he coughed slightly. She gently examined him closer, almost scared to touch him, "Wilt, be still, all right? I'm going to get help." He closed his eyes with a sigh.

At the moment Joe and Frankie arrived, kneeling beside her. Joe took one look at the situation and began making frantic calls through the two way radio attached to his belt. Frankie stared for a moment then looked up at Satin, "Satin, I need you to be calm, okay?"

Satin nodded, tears filling her eyes. She'd never seen Frankie like this . . . She was so tense it had to be serious.

"Wilt is seriously injured. We can't stop the bleeding. Wilt's child imagined him differently than most. We need to get this wound closed before he loses anymore blood. It doesn't matter what with, as long as it stays closed." Frankie took off her jacket, looking for ways to turn it into a bandage.

"Wilt es muerto?" Eduardo asked in a shaky voice.

"Not on my watch, Ed." Frankie replied quickly, working away at her jacket.

The others stood around awkwardly, unable to process the shock of what was happening. Even Bloo seemed subdued, quieted.

Satin felt the tears overflow, this was her fault. Wilt wouldn't have been out here if it weren't for her stupidity. He'd be safe at Foster's asleep. She cradled his head for a moment, stroking his stitched scars and wonky eye stalk. Then, without thinking, she began to dig in her pack.

Children create their imaginary friends to be protectors, companions, someone to relate to, someone to love. The last thing they would wish is for their imaginary friend to feel pain but in the creation of a friend part of the child is transferred into them, making them real. Being real means much more than having a corporeal form. Being real means that all the pleasures and pains of life are opened up before you. But, in their simplicity, children relate pain in an entirely different way than adults do. A band-aid, a few stitches, some ointment and it's all better. Often, this is their knowledge of pain. For many imaginary friends their hurts are healed almost instantly with even the simplest of cures. However, Jodee remembered her car accident. In fact it was one of the things that inspired her to imagine Wilt . . . She knew what pain felt like. She knew much more than most children should at her age about hospitals and surgeries. Her memories of the blood, so much inside the car . . . These things were related to Wilt as well. Yet her child-like nature also knew that something could make it all better. Something that an adult could make look so simple would make it better . . .

Satin's hand closed on what she'd been looking for.

A needle stuck in a spool of navy thread.

Her hands shook as she threaded the needle, watching Wilt's chest rise and fall shallowly. Frankie had stopped working on her jacket to watch her and was now trying her best to clean away the blood so that Satin could work. Gently, Satin brought the flesh together and dipped her needle into the skin. Wilt whimpered but didn't open his eyes.

Carefully, she began to make her stitches. Small, even stitches which drew the cut closed in a tidy seam. The moment the two sides came together the bleeding stopped and the flesh beneath the stitches closed up, though the stitches remained, a faint mark of navy on blue the length of the number one on his chest.

He was still unconscious when the ambulance pulled up. The paramedics loaded him into the vehicle with Satin by his side and Frankie following close behind in the bus.

The darkness was absolute and in that darkness, he was whole. Flexing his arms, he stared at his matching hands. Two hands. A sound, high and distant, like thunder or a drumbeat above him. He explored his face with his hands, two eyestalks, two eyes, not a stitch to be found. A pang of pain entered his heart. He'd once carried Jodee in every stitch.

Now that he was complete . . . He felt miserably lonely.

A warm red glow echoed through the substance he was suspended in and he caught the barest glimpse of his hiding place. Silky walls of deepest red, a diaphanous sheet entwined around him like loving arms. So familiar but so strange, he settled himself into the womb in which he rested, the catalyst of imagination.

His chest rose and he glanced down, seeing something new. A dark mark over the one on his chest with a slow leak of blood permeating into the fluid around him. He blinked in surprise, but when he reached to touch the wound it sealed itself, thread snaking out of nowhere to stitch it tight. Softly, he ran his fingers over the stitches and smiled sweetly. He was alone no longer . . .

Satin clutched Wilt's hand all the way to the hospital, her heart racing. She'd put him through a lot, confused him, scared him, and now here he lay, tubes snaking into his veins, monitors taking notice of his every breath.

The stitches seemed almost black underneath the blood gleaming on his chest. She'd done all she could . . . It was out of her hands now.