A/N: Once again, big thanks to everyone for so much support! It means a lot. Thank you THE GIRL 9713 for your glowing reviews. I think from this chapter on I'll focus more on Josh's time in camp. I don't know, I'll need to do a lot of thinking and typing to get that sorted out.
Sit back, relax, and grab a snack and a friend, because the show, is about to start.
Beep.
Beep.
Beep.
There was a space between each horribly annoying shrill, digital noise. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized it didn't sound a thing like my alarm clock. My eyes cracked open barely, but they were still so very tired. I wanted to roll over and hit the snooze button, but my body was not reacting the way it usually did. Everything felt backwards or slow or heavy, and the more I reached about beside me the more I realized I couldn't find that damn alarm clock to hit it off. Something was pulling at my arm and hurting as I reached around, restraining me and everything, and then the alarm clock got louder and more annoying.
Beep, Beep!
Beep Beep Beep!
"Joshua, calm down, you have to calm down!" there was a distant voice, but I could not make it out or put a face to it. I listened to it anyway, and slowly the beeping became just background noise.
"What the..." My eyes opened and closed, and everything was way too bright to look at. I blinked again as I touched my face, trying to get my vision clear. "Maddie..." her name was on my lips as always, and I muttered it in and out of consciousness. "Where's Maddie?"
"Josh, it's me, it's Zack. Greg is here, too," I was glad he introduced himself, because I could not have placed the voice through the ringing of my ears and the pathetic groaning I made as I tried to adjust to this uncomfortable thing I was laying on.
"What are you doing here?" I groaned out as I finally got to see some of what was going on. I was laying on this long, white bed, and everything around me was so freaking bright and white. I squinted to see their faces as they came into view, but theirs were not the faces I wanted to see. "Where's Maddie? She getting a soda or something? That's so like her, being gone when I wake up." There was just silence as I tried to piece together the circumstances, when I realized that I did not know what exactly I was waking up from. Zack and Greg glanced nervously at each other but still said nothing. "Wait, where am I? Why's it so damn bright?"
"You're, um, you're in the hospital, Josh," Greg squeaked out as he bit at his lip and played with the long hair hanging just passed his ears, wincing as if I was going to lash out at him or something.
"What am I doing in the..." I trailed off as it came back to me, the barn, the moonlight, the stars, the green lights, the blinding headlights. "Goddamn it!" I swore as I cringed at the familiar brightness of the fluorescent lights above me, remembering how quickly lights had come at me before.
"Please, just..." Greg's meek voice didn't even come close to reaching me, but I jerked in pain and turned towards the two of them seriously.
"Where's Maddie? She was right behind me, she was..." I remembered the feeling of her warm arms around my waist, the sound of her laughter, the taste of her lips. "Where is she?! Maddie! Madison Stallanos, where the fuck are you!" I shouted until Zack and Greg calmed me down with gestures and shushing.
"Joshua, you have to stay still," Zack told me matter-of-factly like he was trying to keep objective, but I shrugged off his advice and kept on prying.
"You're avoiding the subject, so what is it? How bad is it? Is she—?" I couldn't even say it, my throat contracted and I nearly choked on the idea, my eyes desperately grasping at my friends for answers.
"It's okay, Josh, she...well, she's alive," Zack told me, but there was something else. I could hear it in his voice, I could see it on his face, something was troubling him, "You're both lucky to be alive."
"Don't fuck with me, Parker," I glowered, moving the blankets as if to try and get up, but I found the needle and tube in my arm rather bothersome. I ripped it out and moved the blankets again, realizing I was sitting there in a hospital gown. "I was on my motorcycle, I remember that. I crashed, didn't I? Come on, what are you not telling me?"
"You're right. Listen," Zack's voice fell low as he began to speak, and his face was serious like he was giving some presentation or something. His words were scientific and distant, "You were in a collision with another vehicle. It was bad, it was really bad. You went into cardiac arrest, due to the blood loss, the trauma of the accident, and significant physical damage."
"What does that mean?" I furrowed my brow as I tried to decipher her smart talk, finding her honesty and straight-to-the-point attitude refreshing.
"It means that your heart was not pumping blood through you." His eyes were on mine seriously, and I realized entirely what that entailed. "For a moment, you were pretty much dead, Joshua."
"I was—" My voice was caught in my throat again as I came to terms with it. I cringed as I sat up abruptly, grasping my chest where it hurt. I could feel that something was not right, and it hurt to move and breathe, I realized. "Ugh, what happened to me?"
"You lost a lot of blood, hit your head pretty hard, and I was told there was, was little bits of metal, actually inside of you." Well that sure freaked me out to hear. "The doctors think that most of your injuries were from the accident. Except a couple cracked ribs."
"Cracked ribs?" I repeated, and I felt the pain in my chest as I spoke.
Zack's mouth turned sharply down but she fought back the frown, and fought back the shakiness in her voice, "That was the result of Maddie's incessant CPR. She knelt over you for several minutes, administering CPR long enough for the ambulance to arrive in time to revive you. But you should know that emergency CPR is usually quite ineffective. The chances of you surviving were, well, basically none."
"None?" I blinked stupidly. I didn't remember any of that, and that terrified me. I didn't know much about medical stuff, but Zack definitely seemed to, and something had him really torn up while he explained everything to me. "Where is Maddie?"
Zack tried to hold eye contact, but he found it hard to keep from breaking down entirely, I could tell. Still, I kept staring at him, needing to hear the answer. However, he was not finished with his story.
"She passed out from blood loss on the way to the hospital. Besides the pool of it that had formed around you as she worked to keep you alive, the first responders found her blood all over the motorcycle, in weird places." I gaped at the sound of that, it seemed so awful. And Maddie had endured it all while I had been laying around passed out like dead weight, almost quite literally. But hold on, it got worse, and Zack's expression fell and crumbled into near tears, "They surmised that you had been pinned under it after the accident, and Maddie..." His face contorted into this grotesque and pained expression as she described it with her trembling hands and wavering voice, "The doctor told me she broke her arm in the crash, but she, she—she set the bone back into place, so that she could summon enough strength to p-pull the bike off of you. S-She actually broke the bone into a better place so, so that she—"
"Where is she?" I tried to stop him, though his breath was quick as he tried to hold off the whimpers and cries, his voice getting loud and upset with each new word. I had never seen this side of Zack before.
"A-And she was pounding o-on your chest hundreds of times, with that broken arm, bleeding all over—!" Zack shouted as tears poured down his face, clenching his fists in his lap and hitting his knees with them.
"Zachary! Where is she? Please, tell me where she is!" I desperately called out to get through to him, my own voice faltering; I couldn't stand to listen to this torture any more. It was all one big, horrible nightmare, it had to be.
"She's down the hall, I-I don't know if she's conscious. She kept, kept refusing the morphine and sedation until you came out of surgery and she knew you were okay. She wanted to be awake for it," he told me as Gregory tried to console him, though he himself was falling to bits to hear it told again. "But they wouldn't even let her come and sit by your bedside, she's really broken up, Josh."
"I have to go." I stumbled as I tried to get out of the bed, and Zack and Gregory stood suddenly to attempt to stop me. "I have to see her!"
"Joshua, slow down, you have lost a lot of blood, you're going to—!" Zack tried to tell me, but as I stood I realized my legs were pretty numb and unresponsive. I fell right to the floor and landed ungracefully on my side, cringing at the way my ribs pained me. "Greg, get a wheelchair, will you?"
"I don't need no damn wheelchair," I groaned loudly as I tried to get myself back up, but the pain in my chest was unbearable. Zack helped me back up to the bed and I leaned over in in a hunch, holding my side. "I'm not a freaking cripple."
"It's procedure, Joshua," Zack tried to tell me as Greg returned with the pathetic contraption, and I refused to even look at it. "The hospital staff won't let you just walk around in your condition. You could rip out your stitches or something. It's just policy, and it's safe."
"Yeah, safe really helped me out last time, didn't it?" I snorted as I reluctantly let Gregory help me to the chair. I didn't notice the shock and sadness in their eyes, and continued on, again not noticing as their expressions went back a little to relatively normal, "I wore my damn helmet and everything."
"Come on, you know that a helmet is no guarantee," Zack told me, his voice wavering a little like he was overcoming some sudden shock, as he avoided my gaze, shuffling around as Gregory turned the chair around and pushed me through the door.
"Just take me to her already," I commanded, and I could even hear the pleading in my voice. My chest felt tight as I thought about what she might look like, what I had done to her by taking her out for some wild ride. I even clenched up my eyes in humiliation, feeling utterly guilty and horrible. I gripped at the wheelchair and wanted to start pushing it myself, but it hurt to do much of anything with my arms while my ribs were so tender. "Hurry up."
"Um, y-yes, it's not much farther now," Greg told me as he quickened his step. I continued to grind my teeth, finding the distance still too far to calm my nerves. I reached one arm out and pushed the wheel myself, though it still hurt and had Greg stuttering nervously.
"Joshua?" I heard Emily's voice as she called my name and stood up, I could see her and Fiona by some lounge, getting to their feet as they watched me rush by.
"Faster, Greg, faster!" I nearly yelled at the guy, wanting to be there immediately. Doctors and nurses moved out of the way as we dashed through the hallway, with the rest of our friends hot on our trail.
"I'm trying!" he called out, and I swear he was actually crying as he said it.
Finally he turned suddenly, and the wheelchair screeched to a halt in the narrow doorway of some room, some room that seemed like any other. That is, until I saw her lying there. I said nothing at first, my eyes racing over her bandaged and restrained body worriedly and anxiously. She seemed so weak, so small as she laid there all wrapped up and completely still.
I had horrible flashbacks to the first time I saw Caleb in his dressings and on that damn bed. The first time I realized my twin brother was gone. This time, though...seeing her there I realized that this felt like I was losing them all over again. I'd put them where they rested now, just as I'd done to Maddie. I shouldn't have let myself love her. I did this to her. The last good thing in my life, and I almost killed her.
Her family sat and stood around her, watching her limp form as she let breaths in and out slowly. Before I said anything, Maddie turned her head and looked at me, and I swear her glistening eyes reflected every light in the whole damn room they were so watery and sad. Her lips though, they curved into a relieved smile as she saw me.
"Hey you," Maddie spoke, her voice so gentle and adoring I nearly burst into tears right then and there. She broke the contact to address the other few in the room, her family to be specific, "Y'all wanna give us a minute, here?"
"Eeyup," Mark agreed as he helped Granny Stallanos to her feet, directing Annie away from her older sister's bedside and towards the door. Greg pushed me into the room so the Stallanos family could get past, and though they all glanced over at me as left, I could not meet a single one of their gazes.
I pushed my own wheels as I approached her, though Greg tried to help me along. I pulled up right next to her bedside and traced her once over, that fit and attractive body I had once taken for myself now broken and wounded. I was on her right side, and looked down at the hardened exterior of a cast that the doctors had wrapped around her arm.
She was looking at it too, lovingly but with such, such sorrow. Our friends had caught up by now, but they did not come into the room. They just stood at the door and watched, letting Greg duck out nervously to join them without uttering a word to Maddie.
"Y'look like hell," Maddie said to me as her eyes met mine, and her weak but cheerful smile hurt me to look at. I avoided her attention and tried to bite back my pitiful whimpering and regret.
"I'm glad you're okay," was all I could manage, and it even sounded forced to my ears. Maddie watched me for a moment before taking in this long and slow breath.
"Joshua, honey," Maddie addressed me personally as she tilted her head, hoping to get my attention. "Look at me, will you? Everyone's sayin' that it'll be fine. Thing is, it don't feel fine." She moved her arm a bit and cringed, the whole thing taped up and held set and still. I felt so awful for putting her through that, but I had to answer her when she asked me, "Tell me the truth, Joshua. How does it look?"
I swallowed the dryness of my mouth, taking another good look at the injury. I'd seen some serious injuries in my past - hell, the injury to my leg was a prime example - and I knew I couldn't lie to her, "It doesn't look good, Mads."
"Right. I know," Maddie nodded vacantly, looking up at the roof without any resentment or anger in her voice, though surely there should have been. "I keep wanting to ask the doc if he thinks I'll be able to pitch again, kinda silly thing to worry about, don't cha think?"
"Not at all," I disagreed, wanting to reach out and console her. But it was not my place, after all, I had been the one to do this to her, to ruin her arm and nearly get her killed.
"I woke up a little while ago after they forced me the meds, I was kicking and screaming something fierce," Maddie laughed and shook her head, but regret did eventually come back into her voice, though it was not directed at my actions at all. "Greg was by my side, but I didn't care who it was at the time. I grabbed him by the shirt and yanked him closer, shouting at him and askig' if you were okay."
Her eyes ran over me fondly the way we both wished her hands could. "He was crying when he said you were still out, and I lost it for a bit until the others ran in and held me down long enough to explain. I didn't get to apologize to him. Will you do that for me, Josh?"
"Jeez, Mads, you make it sound like you're dying on me," I muttered lowly as I fidgeted nervously in the wheelchair.
"I almost did, didn't I?" Maddie asked, but I would not respond. I couldn't. She sighed loudly and leaned over in the bed, reaching over with her good hand and touching my chin, raising it so that I was facing her again. "Look at me, will ya?" She smiled warmly at my troubled expression, and went on easily, "This isn't your fault you know. Zack said the other guy, he ran a red light over a hundred miles per hour. We're lucky to be alive, Josh."
"From what I hear, I'm only alive because of you," I responded, watching the way she blushed a bit and as usual, shrugged off any praise.
"I dunno about that. I was a mess out there, crying and shouting, I was a wreck if I ever called it," Maddie admitted, rubbing the back of her neck with her good arm sheepishly. She kept watching me though, and I could hear the thankfulness in her tone, "I'm just so grateful you're okay. I don't know what I would'a done without you."
"I, I just can't believe I did this," my head fell into my hands and I slammed my eyes shut to keep the tears at bay, feeling so totally horrible and guilty and shit. How could I ever hope to make this up to her? "I mean, everything was so great, and then I wanted to take you out on some stupid, reckless thrill ride, and—"
"Don't you even start with me mister," Maddie snapped at me, and I jerked back out of my pathetic, self-loathing whining to listen to her. "Accidents happen, our luck with coming back out of it, that isn't something to shake a stick at. And just think, if it wasn't us, that guy might have hit a couple of kids who weren't quite so tough, y'know?" She fake-punched my shoulder, though it was abnormally weak, and she struggled to do it right, gripping at the side of the bed to regain her balance.
I smiled despite my watering eyes, loving just everything about her, "You are weirdly optimistic sometimes."
Maddie chuckled a bit as she readjusted herself to lay back more comfortably. Her eyes went soft again, and her voice was nice and easy, "I see it kinda like this, Josh." She turned her head to look at me, her glorious green eyes still capturing mine and shimmering like life itself despite their vicinity to death. "Say I toss ya a curveball."
"A curveball?" I perked up at the familiar baseball term, a kind of pitch I knew well. It struck me then, that one day in our youth, Maddie and I had been star players on the baseball team. In some ways, those days were happier; in others - mainly because Maddie and I hadn't started admitting our feelings to each other - they weren't
"Yeah, say I throw you one hell of a curveball." Maddie nodded, her eyes still fixing on mine as she took in a slow and shaky breath. "At first, it's flying hot, and you're thinking, Yeah, no problem for me to snag this one. So you fall into your swing, and for a while you're thinking it's just right, just perfect. But you see, as the ball approaches the plate you realize that it's dipping quite low, hell so low it's hardly even in the strike zone. But you're already in your swing, right, so you can't do anything but adjust it a bit deeper. Now, that is a good analogy, and it isn't a Southernism either, y'hear?"
She laughed lightly and stifled a bit of a cough, picking on herself the way the rest of us usually do about her odd sayings. It really broke me up to see her like that, but she didn't stop speaking to me, consoling me with some weird baseball metaphor. Maddie sat up a bit as she went on, and I was utterly enthralled by her every word and pause.
"Sometimes you're tossed a pitch that seems just fine, till it drops down right at the plate. Thing is Josh, is that there wasn't anybody who was on that old team that had a hit count like yours. I reckon a curveball isn't anything you can't knock right out," Her usual sultry grin melted across her face, and that adorable dimple dipped into her cheek. "So here we are, Josh. And you and I both know how fast you are, and hell, we both know you've rounded home already. So then, what's with all those tears? We still got the rest of the whole game to get through, me and you." She pulled herself up a bit more and spat right onto her palm, causing me to huff this painful laugh and pull this great big smile across my face. "You game?"
I wasn't sure if I was laughing or crying as I did it, but I leaned forward and spat into my own palm, smiling all the while. I reached out, but noticed that she only had her left hand available, making our usual handshake rather awkward. Still, I wrapped my arm around hers, pulling myself closer despite the fact it hurt my ribs to get up so near. I clapped and clasped my hand with hers, our grips strong as ever and our eyes locked in a determined embrace we both knew too well.
"Bet on it," I agreed adamantly.
I pulled myself up even closer despite the way my body cried out in protest, and I relinquished the supportive hold on my side for a loving caress of Maddie's cheek. I leaned my elbow onto her bed to relax my stomach muscles and managed to get close enough to touch her more intimately. My lips greeted hers warmly, kissing her just as freely and passionately as I wanted to.
She responded promptly and eagerly, leaning up to return the kiss with just as much fervency as I displayed. We broke sooner than I would have liked, my injuries preventing me from exploring her mouth again. I groaned a bit as I nearly fell onto her bed, and she laughed whole-heartedly as she held me close, letting me rest there for a moment.
"Am I missing something?!" Zack's voice peeped in at the top of her vocal range, and I had almost forgotten she was there. I didn't bother getting up or trying to explain, I just groaned a bit and listened to the rest of them chuckle.
"Oh darling, allow me to explain," Emily began to speak and cleared her throat, though I could tell she felt rather overwhelmed by everything herself. I felt Maddie shift from beneath me and her own voice chimed in.
"Wait, you knew about this?" Maddie asked as she tried to move me, maybe so that she could see the nervous and sheepish grin on my face.
"Just Fiona and myself, dear," Emily tried to correct the situation. "I found out a while ago that Josh was honestly and irrevocably infatuated with you, and let me say, that is putting it lightly. Fiona only overheard us talking about it a few days ago."
"Um, I figured it out, too," Greg's meek voice squeaked in, and I had expected as much from him. There was a time, long ago now, that he knew me well enough to have seen that something was up. I guess a part of that closeness still hung on.
"So everyone knew about this, except for me?!" Zack was utterly dumbfounded, for once. Though it was no surprise, I mean he was always far too interested in studies and fluting to pay attention to interpersonal relationships.
"Well if it's all the same I'd say I didn't know much about it 'til I shut myself up with Josh for that weekend," Maddie tried to calm him down, but I heard him expel a great frustrated sigh. Maddie lowered her head a bit, her voice drifting somewhat lower, "You, you don't think it's odd or somethin', do you?"
"What? No!" Zack hurriedly defended himself, coming over to us in a rushed pace. "I just wish you had told me. I mean..." He kind of smiled a bit, though I could tell he was clearly a little uncomfortable with the sudden change. Zack was no good with change. "I can kind of see it. You two always were really close."
"You have no idea." I snickered with a devilish grin, causing Maddie to shove me somewhat roughly back into my wheelchair despite my hiss of pain. "Ouch, it was just a joke, Mads!"
"Remarkable, even while bedridden you two still bicker and rough-house," Emily spoke up in a rather bemused tone, crossing her arms and shaking her head as she watched us carry on.
"Hey, I'm not bedridden, note the wheelchair?" I corrected her as I pointed to the contraption below me. Grinning, I turned back to Maddie, "Can't say the same for ol' freckle-face over here."
"I oughta wallop you with this cast," she made a face, threatening me with her heavy hand as best she could. "But I don't wanna rip out any stitches."
"That reminds me." I picked up the bottom of my shirt and looked around at my midsection, finding exactly what I was looking for nearly right away. I was all bruised up really badly, and I could see all these little scrapes along with this big stitched up wound that seemed to stretch to my back, "Jeez, look at me, I'm hardly in one piece." From the scarred over wound on my leg, to the many little scars from three years ago and just one day ago, to this monstrous wound on my midsection, I wasn't sure there was an inch of my skin that wasn't scar tissue.
"I reckon I don't look much better." Maddie curiously looked down at herself, still covered in the blanket.
"Well, when we're all healed up, one day we're going to look at these scars and say, hey..." I admired the wound before looking up at Maddie fondly. "I got that on the best night of my life." She looked surprised to hear such a thing, but returned the smile readily.
"Shucks, Josh." Maddie could not help from smiling and, though she tried to hide it, blushing. The others all made some cutesy musing sounds, which only made Maddie all the more self conscious and embarrassed. I found that adorable though.
I reached up and put my hand on hers, though it was pinned still by the cast and everything. Her fingers moved against mine and accepted my support, holding my hand as best she could manage. My body still hurt all over and I was unusually cold, but I did not want to leave her side again. We stared at each other silently, our connection much stronger than any fickle words could express.
"Did you guys have sex?" I almost fell over as Fiona's words hit me, and Maddie just gaped in shock. Greg nearly passed out and Zack and Emily both stared at her incredulously. "What? It's just a question!" Everyone heard the heart rate monitor hooked onto Maddie suddenly speed up faster and faster, and Fiona gasped loudly. "You totally did!"
"I'll take that morphine now." Maddie groaned as she pulled the blanket up over her face and sunk down a bit in her bed, the furious flushing on her face intensifying. I snickered a bit and tried to contain my amusement, which was quickly slashed by the sharp pain in my side due to the force of my laughter.
I knew later I'd have to send an Iris-message to Chiron at Camp Half-Blood and let him know what had happened. I knew more than a few of my friends would kick my behind as soon as I got back.