A/N As promised, part II of the group's adventures in hospital!

Even with the relief of seeing Gazzy patched up, and the rightness of seeing him and Angel being reunited, the silence that hung in the room was still thick with worry over Nudge. Of all the injuries that had been sustained, hers was the worst. I mean, a broken back? Oh, God… The thought of it made me feel sick.

We didn't hear anything for hours – the only people who came in to see us were folks coming to check up on how Gazzy was recovering, or to make sure that Star's shoulder was still strapped up properly, or to bring us food. Not that I was complaining, especially about that last one, but I was beginning to feel like I was ready to climb the walls. The sky outside was starting to turn dark by the time a figure finally appeared in the glass window that was set into the door.

Jeb came into the room, and it surprised me how thankful I was that he was okay; until that moment I hadn't thought I really cared all that much. He looked kind of grey, like he'd aged about twenty years since the last time I'd seen him.

'She's out,' he said, his voice low and gruff from all the smoke he'd inhaled. 'They spent ages trying to fuse her vertebrae and repair the damage done to her spinal cord, but there wasn't a lot that could really be done. So they've pinned the fractured bones together to try and keep it stable and prevent further injury, and she'll be on her way down just now.'

No one moved as we all took in what he'd said.

'So…' Ella said after moment. 'What about…? I mean, can she…?'

We all knew what she was trying to say.

'It's unlikely,' Jeb responded quietly, and I felt my stomach turn over. 'It's still too early to tell if it's permanent or not, but if she ever regains use of her legs then it won't be for at least a few months.'

I sucked in a great breath of air, feeling like I was suffocating, then forced myself to sit up straight.

'How can they not know? Are the nerves damaged or not?'

'They are, but when there's been trauma to the spine something called spinal shock can occur, kind of like a temporary inability of the cord to function,' Jeb explained. 'If that's the case then any paralysis will wear off once the cord has started working properly again, but…' He coughed. 'It's too dangerous for the surgeons to do a definitive check on Nudge's spine – it would risk hurting her even more. From what they can tell there has been permanent damage.'

'You saved Ari, though,' I said, refusing to believe that what I was hearing could possibly be true. 'He was dead, and you brought him back. Why can't Nudge get the same treatment?' I realised that my voice was rising, making me sound just slightly hysterical, but I didn't care.

Jeb shook his head, shrugging sadly.

'I don't know exactly what's been going on; I've been sitting up in the waiting room by the theatre, so all I know is what they told me when they brought her out. I would guess that Nudge's lighter bones make her vertebrae harder to fuse, and the avian DNA's influence on her nervous system will be affecting the options the surgeons have.'

Nudge was asleep when she was brought into the room across the hall from us; the dark-haired doctor who came with her – Dr Adams – went over the things that Jeb had already told us and confirmed his suspicions about Nudge's treatment, adding that the anaesthetic had worn off but that Nudge was now in a natural sleep that needed to be sustained for as long as possible.

'The first twenty-four hours after surgery are very important,' she said, scanning the group, her voice carrying the slightest hint of an Australian accent. 'Her body will be working at maximum energy to try and repair itself, so it's important that she stays rested. I understand that your… situation is somewhat unique, but I'm afraid I'm going to have to say no more than two visitors at a time, at least for the next day or two.' She smiled kindly. 'Dr Batchelder has informed me that you heal much faster than most patients, but this one is going to take some time, even so.' Pausing for a moment, she seemed to choose her next words carefully. 'This is not going to be easy for any of you. It's unlikely that Nudge will recover from this, and it's going to be difficult to deal with, especially at first. But keep in mind that this situation could've have turned out much worse. Sorry if that sounded patronising – I'm sure you know much better than me how things could have ended for all of you.'

Through all the panicking that was taking place in my head, I noticed that this was a doctor I could actually stand. I seemed to be meeting more and more of those as time went on. Go figure. After she left Jeb spent a while telling us about what had happened up in the control room, recounting the way Nudge had kept a watch over all of us as we raced through the School, how she'd erased our expiration dates from the system and saved him from the fire, the fight with Not-Ari and the struggle through the corridors. Despite how worried I was, I couldn't help but feel myself swell with pride when he told us everything she'd done.

I don't really want to talk about what it was like when Nudge woke up. She came around in the early hours of the next morning, whilst Jeb and I sat silently in the room with her, barely a hair's breadth away from nodding off ourselves.

Now, consider this: waking up in a hospital bed with an oxygen mask over your face would be pretty unnerving for anyone, and for those of us who happened to grow up in a lab undergoing horrible experimentation it's downright scary.

Nudge woke up in a hospital bed with an oxygen mask over her face unable to feel anything from the waist down.

Just imagine it for a sec.

The terror in her face was heart-breaking. I tried to talk to her, to calm her down, but within moments her breathing rate had gone way up as she entered a full-blown panic attack. The top half of her body thrashed wildly in the bed; her movements were limited by the hard plastic back brace that enclosed her lower torso, but she was still able to hit out at me and Jeb whenever we came close to her, and her terrified screams bounced off the walls. The others appeared in the doorway, looking horrified as medical people pushed through them into the room. Jeb pulled me back and hooked an arm over my shoulders, and I could feel myself trembling so hard it was as if my whole body was about to just fall apart.

They ended up having to sedate Nudge again so that she wouldn't "cause any further harm to herself". Dr Adams sat down with us afterwards:

'I want you to know that what happened with Nudge is not out of the ordinary for patients with spinal injuries,' she said, her voice calm and reassuring. 'I know it was very upsetting to see, but it's normal for patients to feel distressed upon first waking up. Her mind needs some time to assimilate the new situation she's in, and at this point it's just as important to monitor her emotional state as her physical one.'

The second time Nudge woke up was a much quieter affair; she slowly lifted her head, her chin almost touching her chest as she looked around at us – Dr Adams had caved and allowed us all to sleep on the floor in her room on the condition that we didn't crowd her too much – and eventually her eyes landed on me.

'Can I still fly?' she asked quietly, sounding so incredibly young that all I wanted to do was pick her up and hold her like I had when she was still a little girl.

I looked at Jeb, not knowing the answer to her question. He took a few steps forwards and laid a hand on the metal railing that went along the side of her bed.

'It will probably be different,' he said, his voice soft. 'You won't be able to hold yourself in the same way, and your balance will feel off for a while. But the nerves that supply your wings branch off above the site of the fracture. Your wings still work. So yes – with some adjustment you'll be able to fly.'

We all watched Nudge, on edge to see what her reaction would be. She let her head drop back onto her pillow, fingers brushing lightly at the sheets that covered her legs as she stared at the ceiling for a long moment.

'That's okay,' she breathed, her words barely audible. 'That's okay.'

Over the next week she slowly started to talk more, and Dr Adams came by regularly to see how things were going.

'There's still a long way to go,' she said to me a few days in. 'This isn't the kind of thing that someone just gets used to over the course of a couple of days. But she's clearly a fighter, and her conviction to fly again is a very good sign – it shows that she's in a positive mind-set rather than a negative one. Some patients with these sorts of injuries give up completely, but she's looking forwards. Very good indeed.'

I nodded.

'I wish I could say she hasn't had to get through worse things before. But she has, and she'll get through this,' I said, looking through the window of the door to her room.

Dr Adams studied me, a small smile making its way onto her face.

'She will, won't she?'

By the end of the week, the fractures in Nudge's spine had almost completely healed; the cord itself was still damaged, but the surrounding bones were strong enough that she could be sat up in her bed or in a wheelchair without worrying about any fragments causing further harm. Gazzy still needed to be careful about bending or twisting his body too much, but the row of stitches across his belly had given way to a thin, pink scar. Something really has to be said for the healing abilities of recombinants.

I expected resistance from the adults when I said that we were leaving, but Mom and Jeb seemed to feel the same way that I did, and when I spoke to Dr Adams about it she was surprisingly understanding. She knew we all wanted to get away from the hospital.

'Nudge is going to need regular physical therapy for a long time, to keep the upper part of her spine supported and reduce pain,' she informed me on our last day. 'I'm going to call ahead to make sure that the neurological team at your local hospital are fully briefed on the situation, and I'm getting a pack of meds prepared for you to take for the journey.' She grinned suddenly. 'I'm honoured that I got the chance to meet you and your family, Max, despite the unfortunate circumstances under which it happened. I wish you all the best.'

'Thanks,' I replied, shaking the hand that she held out. 'Thanks for everything.'

She nodded once and walked away, her white coat flapping a little as she went. Between her, Mom, Jeb, and the folks at the CSM, I was starting to think that maybe I'd given doctors a bit of a raw deal over the years.

Then we were being driven to a state-of-the-art medical transport plane, equipped with a full surgery and a team of doctors as well as the regular seating area and food cart. As we lifted off into the air, I looked around the cabin; Nudge was sitting upright in her wheelchair, braced against some special supports on the cabin wall, talking to Ella. Gazzy hadn't left his sister's side since they'd been brought back together, and he and Angel were across the aisle from me. She was curled up in the seat next to him, her head on his shoulder, her wide eyes blinking as she gazed silently around; she still wouldn't speak to anyone, still cried out in the night at the awful things that ran through her thoughts as she slept, but it seemed as though she felt safe with us. I was holding on tightly to the tiny improvements that sprung up in her as the days went by.

I sat back in my seat, letting out a long sigh. Maybe we were damaged, maybe we were going to need time to heal. Maybe we had been changed forever by all the things that had happened to us, but we were safe and we were together, and that was what mattered. It was over. We were going home.

A/N This part was tricky to write. Thinking about how Nudge would be feeling about her paralysis and everything was a bit of a challenge, and fingers crossed I did it justice. Hope you like it. Review!