Chapter 39

Fox is just shooting some hoops outside of his house. James and Vixy had left for a trip on their own for the weekend, so Friday to Sunday the house was all to Fox. A couple of long shots swished right through the net. 'I should've tried out for the team this year' He thought to himself as he picked the ball back up. 'Ugh, a weekend by myself, hopefully the guys aren't gonna be up to much this weekend, don't know if I can take a weekend all on my own.' It was kind of late, about 8, so it was getting dark. 'One of my night runs to finish it up, maybe watch a little tv and head to bed early maybe, maybe then I won't sleep in so much.' He went inside and changed into some shorts and a T shirt that wasn't as nice as the one he was wearing already.

He grabbed his Ipod and earbuds and headed out the door. 'There's something I figured I'd see' he thought as he ran past Krystal's house and saw Panther's car. As he passed the house he noticed that Krystal's mom's car wasn't there, and the garage door was closed. 'I'm sure her mom's just gone somewhere, even if it's kinda late. I wonder how her parents feel about Panther?' He just kept running and made his rounds around the neighborhood. He came back around and saw a not so happy jungle cat coming out of the house.

Fox just noticed that he huffed and looked pretty angry. "Hey! Come over here!" He barely heard over his music, Fox did as the cat requested.

"You know, I'll never see why you really liked that girl, besides those looks, I'll give you that McCloud you sure got that part right for sure."

He suddenly kicked Fox in the knee and he fell down onto one knee from the sudden blow. Panther thumped Fox on his left eye and he yelped in pain and covered his eye with both his hands. Suddenly he took a heavy blow to the right side of his jaw, then another on the left, then another on the right, then a final one square on his nose. Fox fell over on his back and Panther kicked him in his side where his ribs were and as Fox lay on the ground defeated and hurt, he stomped on his right hand and laughed as he got into his car and left the battered Fox laying on the ground with small trickles of blood coming from his nose and larger ones from his mouth.

Fox groaned in the sudden and extreme pain that he was under, his vision was dimming, it ws fading between black and the house in front of him. "I'm…. passing out….. gotta…." It was too late, just barely on the curb of the street he was falling unconscious as he tried to crawl to the door, it would be awkward no doubt showing up at Krystal's door a bloody mess, but at this point he didn't really care at this point.

"Ugh, think I have…. A broken rib…. And hand…" Closer and closer he inched to the door, for what felt like hours. He finally reached the door step, "If I can just….reach the doorbell…" he couldn't reach it with his left hand the way he was laying, he could only reach it with his hand that was stomped on. "No good…can't put enough pressure to…press the bell." He knew he couldn't just stay laying here, he'd pass out and who knows if Krystal would actually see him, and she needs to know what Panther said, right?

His eyes shot open at the thought 'Oh know, what do I do? This is the second time in a week that this has occurred, but if I tell her all this, it's gonna break her heart. Oh know, this can't get any worse.' But he was running out of time, the only way he could ring the doorbell was if he slammed his hand into the doorbell. He grunted in the extreme pain, whimpering a little bit even, when he slammed his hand onto it.

"Now who could this be at this time at night?" Krystal said to herself as she walked to the door. She opened the door and was confused when she didn't see anyone, then she heard a groan and a "Krystal…" below her.

She squealed in terror at the sight of Fox and instantly kneeled down in her basketball shorts and tank top. "What happened!? Are you okay!?" She could tell what Fox wanted to say, but couldn't, when she asked that. "Right, you're not okay. Okay, now I'm gonna put you on the couch and I'm gonna get our first aid kit. She leaned down and put his arm around her shoulder and grunted and did as much as she could, but she could hardly get him up off the ground.

"Sorry Fox, I can't get you up so I've gotta drag you through here." At this point it hurt Fox to talk, he couldn't even walk because of the huge blow dealt to his knee. She wrapped her arms around his torso just below his arms and started pulling him inside the house. She pulled him around to the front of the couch and stood up on it trying to pull him onto it completely. He reached his left hand out to try and pull himself up some to help her, he could tell she was really struggling to pull him up by herself. Once he was laid out on the couch she ran over and shut the door and ran down the hall to get the first aid kit. She got a gauze for him to soak up the blood coming from his mouth, and she had a tissue wiping the blood coming from his nose.

"What happened? How did this happen to you?" She asked in a scared and alarmed tone. He just groaned, trying to avoid the topic with subtlety. "Right, we need to fix this up first." She reached for his hand since she noticed it didn't look natural, and when she grabbed and felt it Fox yelped in pain. "Oh no, it's broken. There's no other explanation."

Fox accidentally spat up a little blood onto her shirt when she grabbed his hand. "Oh no, is this internal bleeding?" He could only groan a little bit more at the though of internal bleeding. "Fox we have to get you to the hospital now, I'm calling an ambulance since I can't drive." Within 15 minutes the ambulance arrive and Krystal waved the paramedics in with a stretcher. Once they had him on the stretcher the night had run it's course on him and he passed out as he saw the inside of the ambulance. "Can I ride with you?" Krystal asked the paramedics.

"You certainly can, can you tell us what happened?" Krystal had no idea what to say as she grabbed her phone and keys. "I know this is going to sound weird, but he really showed up on my doorstep like this. I'm not joking, that's really how it happened." She got some dumbfounded looks as the paramedics did their work. "Is he going to be okay?" She asked with great concern.

"He should be fine, just a cracked rib on his side, didn't do too much, just a couple spits of blood. His nose is bruised but not broken, his hand's broken though. His knee is fine, just a sudden and unexpected blow kept him off it. Looks like he took a good couple of licks to his jaw though, but overall he doesn't look to be in bad shape, just a sudden number of blows may have disoriented him making him think it was terrible." Krystal sighed in relief at this news. The paramedics just laughed a bit as they tended to Fox.

They arrived at the hospital around 10 that night, about 50 minutes after the attack by Panther. He lay in his hospital bed still unconscious while Krystal sat in the chair beside the bed, with her legs propped up in the chair with her knees in front of her face with her arms wrapped around her bent legs. She was still concerned for her friend.

As she sat there waiting for him with the great concern she had, she heard a snore. A loud snore, then another, and it was coming right from her friend.

He was fast asleep, not exactly unconscious any more, but he was somewhere else right now, somewhere he liked. She just laughed to herself on how he could do things like that, and soon after she laughed, she herself was slipping off into somewhere else as the room grew dark and her eyes fell shut.


Once again guys, my B on being gone for so long. Now that it's summer maybe I'll rekindle interest in writing the story. Originally I planned A LOT more content, but I realized the problem with me not finishing the story was because I planned for too much and didn't have enough actually planned story, so I gradually lost interest when I couldn't find any good material. So the story is basically rebooting from here and I'm gonna scale down the content so hopefully I'll end the story this summer. Again thank you guys that still stuck with me when I was being a jerk and not hanging around or saying anything. Please let me know what you thought of this chapter in perspective to the older ones when I was a regular. :D