"Catnip. Come on, Katniss, come on. Come back to me." I open my eyes but nothing comes into focus. The words sound muffled like I'm underwater. "Can you walk with me?" Gale's voice pierces its way into my reality. I shake my head. I can't feel my feet. "Come on then, wrap your arms around my neck." I comply, and Gale lifts me into the air. I feel dizzy, and I vomit on his chest. I try to formulate words of remorse, but I can't. The sun seems low in the sky. I'm supposed to be in the woods. That's where I'm going to go when…
I wake up in a sterile hospital room. Even though I'm disoriented, I've become familiar with this setting over the past few years. There is a tube in my throat. I hear the clicking and buzzing of machines. I fight the tube, and they put something in my IV. I go back under.
When I wake again I'm restrained. My mother is asleep in the chair next to my bed. Gale is propped in the corner, his head hanging as he bobs in and out of waking. His shirt is covered in blood and sick. I doze off.
The next time I come to, I hear crying. I'm too tired to open my eyes. I know the voices.
"What the hell happened, Gale?" I hear Johanna sob into his chest. "It's all over the news." She describes the story. Gale is interviewing with a reporter on his new job as District 12 Senator when Peeta staggers out of the woods. Gale runs to him, Peeta collapses at his feet and whispers something to Gale. Gale takes off sprinting into the woods. A hovercraft appears, and Peeta is loaded onto a stretcher and taken away. Some time passes, and then Gale emerges from the woods, carrying me in his arms. My mother is there. They load me onto a second hovercraft and then the coverage shifts to a reporter, who states both the Mockingjay and Peeta are in critical condition.
"He said Katniss was at our hunting spot in the woods. I just tried to get there as fast as I could. I could feel my heart beating out of my chest and I was trying not to throw up. I know the way, but I couldn't have mistaken it. Peeta's blood was everywhere, all the way to her. She was totally out of it when I got there. I just tried to get her back as fast as I could." Gale breathes in a shaky breath.
"So they were shot? That's what the news is saying," Johanna asks.
"That's what it looked like," he replies.
"How is that possible? Some kind of hunting accident?" she says again.
"Katniss doesn't use guns to hunt. Someone must have followed them out to the woods." They are both silent for a bit. I want them to talk more about Peeta, but I slip back under.
The next time I wake, Gale is sitting in the corner again. He's changed clothes. "Hey," he whispers as he approaches my bed. I feel myself choking up and the tube makes me gag. Tears pour out of my eyes and my nose fills with snot. I feel like I can't breathe, which is ridiculous because there is a machine breathing for me. I shouldn't be this lucid. I want the tube out. I don't need words to communicate to Gale.
"Let me wake your mom up and see if we can get that out now."
I nod my head furiously. Gale leans over my mother, and shakes her gently. When she sees me awake she rushes to my bedside.
"She wants to tube out. Can we do that?" Gale asks. She checks some levels on the machines.
"Yes," my mother nods. I see her face set, and she's ready to work. She pulls a tray next to the bed and meticulously organizes the tools. She stands over me. "You may feel like you have to cough. Go ahead." She counts to three and pulls the tube from my throat.
I'm sputtering and coughing. "Peeta…" I choke out.
Gale takes my hand in his. "He's in 13. He wasn't stable enough to transport to 4." My eyes nearly explode from my head. I try to vocalize my panic, but my voice is hoarse and the air just isn't cooperating. They'll try to kill him. He can't be in 13.
"I spoke with the Mayor in 13 myself. They have him under armed guard. Most people in 13 still remember when he saved their lives. They don't want any harm to come to him. Effie and Delly went with him. You know Effie won't let them touch a hair on his head," Gale tries to calm me down.
She won't. He's right. Effie would claw their eyes out with her fake nails before she'd let anyone near him.
I ask with my eyes. "He's alright, Katniss," my mother says. "The bullet went completely through. No fragments were found in his body, which is good. His lung was penetrated and he had damage to his esophagus and trachea, but those things can be repaired once we get him to 4. They are still stabilizing him. He's just a tricky case because we don't know how his heart will react to certain medications. We have to take every precaution in his treatment."
I nod. Peeta's alive. She tries to tell me about my condition, but I don't really care. My mother can see my mind wandering, and tries to get my attention.
"The bullet was lodged against your vertebra. The doctors were able to repair the nerve damage, but you will likely need intensive physical therapy. Your legs won't cooperate right away." I just sit there, staring at the wall. "Katniss," my mom says gently, taking my hand. "We lost one of your ovaries, and there was some damage to your uterus. We've repaired what we could, but I don't know what the long-term implications of that are."
I am overwhelmed by a mix of emotions I'm not articulate enough to describe. I've never wanted kids, but I eased the loss of my not-real baby by telling myself I could always have a real one someday, if I ever changed my mind. I think about the girl Peeta described, with the stone gray eyes and straw-colored hair, running around our yard with her hair twisted in a braid. I've been calling her Lily in my head. I haven't told Peeta that. I cry silently to myself. Gale steps out, and Johanna crawls in bed with me. My mom hovers, adjusting tubes and things, but eventually she leaves too. Johanna weaves her fingers in mine and nuzzles her face into my neck.
"Let's focus on the good right now. You are here. You are going to be fine. Peeta will be here soon, and they will repair his gorgeous chest and then you two can boink until you make a baby. And if you can't, I'll just give you one of mine. We won't tell anybody. I'll go on a trip, and you'll stuff a watermelon under your shirt, and no one will ever know." As foreign as it feels, I start to chuckle.
"You don't think they will catch on when I birth a watermelon?" I ask.
"No, I think they will catch on when her first word is 'asshole' and she cuts off the heads of all her toys with an axe," Johanna laughs.
That night, Peeta arrives in 4. I'm finally able to stay awake. I spent most of the day drifting in and out, not really able to grasp what was going on or remember what I said. I ask to see Peeta, but I'm told he was wheeled directly into surgery. My entire crew waits it out in my room. The nurses try to make everyone leave, but asking a group of Victors to do anything they don't want to is just about impossible. I remind myself how cyclical my life is… how only a few months ago, we were all sitting quietly in my kitchen, putting together jigsaw puzzles waiting for word on Peeta.
Effie and Delly tell us about 13. Delly reenacts Effie chasing off a man with a syringe who turned out to be a nurse. Effie blushes. "He certainly didn't look like a nurse!" Gale sits on the floor with his back on the wall, Johanna between his legs. Haymitch is quiet and avoids looking at me. I can feel his guilt permeating the room. I want to comfort him, but I'm not emotionally equipped to handle that right now. Delly sits on the end of my bed and smiles at me. She is too bright, and too perky, but she's weaseled her way into my heart and my family, and I'm so glad she is here. If Johanna is my sister, Delly is Peeta's.
Hours pass. Effie, who didn't dare sleep in 13, finally dozes off in the chair next to my bed. I spend some time looking at her. Her chocolate hair is draped across her face. This is the first time she's left 12 without a wig. This is just who Effie is now. Her lips are stained a deep burgundy, and her pale skin almost looks like porcelain. Her eyelashes are long and tickle her face when she stirs. Her spiked heels lay on the floor in front of her, and she's curled into a ball with her bare feet tucked in the arm of the chair. I remember how irritating I used to find Effie. How irritating she used to be. She was flighty, and overbearing, and completely intolerable at times. But she loves Peeta. And she loves me, too.
Delly is sleeping curled up at my feet. She reminds me of Buttercup a little, if Buttercup were pleasant and optimistic, instead of mangey and practically feral. Johanna is wrapped in Gale's arms, and his head is resting on top of hers. Haymitch is awake. He stands in the corner, staring at the machines that wheeze and beep next to my bed. I try to catch his eye.
"So that's why you stayed sober?" I ask. He doesn't look at me. "Because you were keeping an eye out for me?"
"Yeah, well, I load of good that did. You almost died," he grumbles.
"Haymitch…"
"You know, I've spent every moment of the last few years thinking about you. All the time. How to keep you safe. How to protect you. How to get you sponsors. How you should walk, and talk, and what to say. How to keep you from getting yourself killed with your arrogance and stupidity. You aren't easy to keep, sweetheart," he says.
"I know," I say back.
"You are always getting into trouble. Sacrificing yourself. Running in front of bullets and fireballs. Putting the kid's life ahead of your own. And Prim's. And Rue's. Dammit, Katniss, I think you'd sacrifice yourself for a dust bunny if it seemed innocent enough to you." He lets it sit in the air. "But this time… I should have seen this coming. I could have gotten you killed."
"Haymitch, this isn't on you. We were supposed to stay at Gale's," I say. "And Peeta wouldn't want you beating yourself up either."
He melts a little. "I didn't even realize you had left." He's trying to keep his composure. "It was Mitchell's wife. They found her in the woods, a few dozen yards from you. She'd killed herself."
The words just hang between us. "Peeta can never know," I say.
"We can't do that again, sweetheart," he says back.
A moment later, a crew of medical professionals wheel a bed into the room. Peeta is asleep, more machines than I have clicking and buzzing at his side. He looks terrible, but he looks very much alive. Everyone is up. Effie is at his side immediately, stroking his face and whispering soothing words. Johanna grabs his hand, rubbing his wrist in concentric circles with her thumb. Delly is fixing his hair, which is laughable in a moment like this, but she preens and pushes it out of his eyes. Gale sits on the end of my bed and takes my hand. Haymitch doesn't leave the corner.
I want out of this stupid bed, but my legs aren't playing along. Suddenly I feel my bed moving, and Gale and Johanna are pushing our beds together. One of the nurses tries to scold them, but Johanna gives her a well-practiced glare and she backs off. I weave my fingers in with Peeta's, and I feel him squeeze my hand.