The next time I awoke, it was dark, and I had slept so soundly that I had no idea where I was when I first woke up. I had that experience where you open your eyes expecting to find the familiar shadows of your own bedroom and, when you don't, are at a complete loss about where you are for a few panicked seconds. It wasn't until I attempted to get up and felt the aching in my chest and legs that I remembered what had happened.

I did feel better than I had the first time I'd awakened – whatever pills they had given my for the pain must have worked. In fact, I realized just how well they were working, and what exactly they were – muscle relaxants – as I slid my legs off the bed and tried to stand up to go use the bathroom. Immediately, I realized I was too "relaxed" to bear my own body weight and collapsed, trying in vain to grab onto the bedrail but missing and falling rather unceremoniously into a heap on the floor. I remembered how I'd reacted to the muscle relaxants after the car accident, and how Darry'd had to carry me into the house. Same sensation. My legs were like jello.

I hadn't realized he was even in the room, but as soon as I fell, a light flicked on and Darry was jumping out of the chair – where, presumably - he had been sleeping.

"Are you alright?" He picked me up and set me back on the bed. "Did you hit your head?"

"I'm okay. I didn't know the medicine would make me so clumsy… Sorry I woke you up." I had forgotten that I wasn't supposed to be talking. He heard the raspy tone of my voice and signaled to me to whisper.

"It's alright, those chairs are crap for sleeping in anyway, I wasn't even really asleep. Why'd you get up? Dr. Bryant says you can whisper as long as it doesn't hurt."

"I had to pee," I whispered, and it didn't hurt.

"Oh. So I assume you still have to, then?"

"Well, yeah." The problem wasn't going to go away by itself.

"Put your arms around my neck," he said, and, as I did, he lifted me out of the bed and carried me over to the bathroom, making sure I had a good hold on the handrail before letting go.

"Don't try to come back out on your own," he said, as he shut the door.

I won't," I promised him.

I wasn't sure how my bladder could have possibly held that much – or where it had all come from, since all I could remember drinking was the Pepsi after coming out of the cellar – and I didn't even remember finishing it, but I was glad I had woken up. There was no way I could have slept through the whole night without a trip to the bathroom, and Lord knows how embarrassing it would have been to wet the bed.

"You can come back in," I whispered, when I was all done. Darry opened the door, laughing.

"What?"

"That was sure a lot of pee to come from a little kid like you," he remarked.

"I know. I guess getting bit by spiders makes you pee a lot," I said, though I shuddered as I said it. The reality of what had happened to me was starting to really set in, and the idea of whole thing was starting to scare me even more than when it had actually happened.

Darry lifted me back up and put me back in the bed, sitting next to me.

"What time is it?" I wondered out loud.

Darry looked at his watch.

"Two-fifteen."

"In the morning?" I was so disoriented as to the time.

"Yup."

"Oh, God, Darry, go back to sleep. Don't you have to work in the morning?"

"I have the morning off. That's why I'm here and I made Soda go home and sleep. He's working in the morning."

"Oh. Well, you should have just stayed home and slept. I'm fine here."

"I just woke up to find you on the floor. You have a strange concept of 'fine.'"

Oh yeah, there was that, but still…

"The nurses would be checking on me more if you weren't in here," I said, though I wasn't sure that was really the case.

Darry was quiet for a minute, then surprised me with what he said.

"You almost died, Scout. We almost lost you, for real. I don't want to leave you here alone, because for some reason I feel like as long as one of us is with you, we can make sure you're okay."

I felt tears coming. For the first time it really hit me, how close I had come to dying, and how much seeing that had scared Darry as much as me. I actually remembered thinking I was dying, and then dead, and not having either the will or the energy to do anything about it. Suddenly, I was terrified that it could happen again. I sat up and threw my arms around Darry, catching him off guard with my sobs.

"I'm always making you cry without meaning to," he said, as I buried my head in his neck and he reached up to smooth my hair back.

"I don't want to die," I whispered. "It was so scary. I thought I was already dead."

"I know, baby," he said, gently rubbing the back of my neck. "I know it was. It was scary for all of us."

"I thought when I woke up I was going to be dead, and gone from here, with Mom and Dad. I felt caught in the middle, like I wanted to be with them, but I wanted to be with you and Soda and Pony and Ben, too."

"I'm sorry, Scout. I'm really sorry this happened to you. I would have traded places with you in a second, if I could have." I could hear the sadness in his voice, over the fact that, once again, he hadn't been able to protect one of us from something bad.

"What if it happens again?" My throat was starting to hurt, from the combination of crying and the irregular breathing that went along with it.

"It won't," he said, lying me back down on the bed and lying down next to me, pushing me over on the narrow bed. "I promise, it won't."

"Thanks for staying with me," I said, then added, "I love you. Even when I'm a brat, I still love you." I wasn't going to let any more opportunities to say that pass me by, after how much I regretted not saying it the last time.

"Love you too," he answered, "Always. No more talking, okay. You're not sounding so good." He put his finger over my lips.

I didn't answer, just snuggled against him until, finally, I stopped crying and fell back asleep.

………………………………..

"Rise and Shine!"

Somebody was shaking me gently on the arm.

I woke up to find Soda grinning down at me, and Darry sitting up in the bed.

"You two got kinda cozy last night, huh?" Pony said with a smile, taking a seat as Darry stood up.

"Anything's better than that chair. Anyway, I thought you were working this morning," Darry said, working out a kink in his back.

"I am," Soda replied. "Just wanted to check on you two before I clocked in."

"I'm okay," I said, but I choked on my own words from the dryness in my throat, which sent me into a coughing fit that did nothing good for my pain level. I wanted out of that hospital, though, so I drank the water Pony had hurriedly poured for me and waved them off.

"I'm okay," I whispered. They were about to start the Curtis version of the Spanish Inquisition about my well-being when Dr. Bryant came through the door.

"My, my, we got the whole family up this morning, huh?"

"Yeah," I smiled. It had been nice to wake up to Soda rather than a nurse. Soda stood up so Dr. Bryant could pull the chair over and sit next to me.

He looked at me without saying anything for a minute and I was feeling a bit uncomfortable until I realized he was just seeing how I looked, through a doctor's eyes.

"So," he finally asked, opening up my chart and writing something, "how do you feel this morning? Honestly."

I wasn't sure how much lying I could get away with, but I also wasn't sure how much truth I could tell and still get to go home.

"Well," I whispered, though it did hurt a bit, "My chest doesn't hurt as much," I offered. "And I don't really itch anymore."

"How's the throat?"

"Kinda dry, but okay." I would agree to not talk for a week, if that's what I had to do in order to go home. He didn't say anything, though.

"How about the legs? Are they still painful?" He pulled back the covers to look at them and I recoiled. Both shins had big, raised marks that looked like bruises, with some sort of ointment covering them.

Darry saw my reaction and asked the doctor,

"They'll go away, right?"

"Oh yeah," he answered. "They should completely disappear." He examined a couple of the worst looking ones and wrote a few notes.

"I need to listen to your chest, okay?"

I shrugged. I certainly wasn't going to say no to the guy who just saved my life.

He slid the stethoscope under my hospital gown and listened, asking me to breathe deeply, which caused me to start coughing again. Pony handed me the water again and I drank, still coughing slightly. Dr. Bryant looked at me, his brow furrowed, and listened again, this time to my back.

All three brothers stood there silently, until he finished.

"Well?" I finally asked.

"It sounds pretty good. I don't like that cough, but I did bring it on by asking you to breathe like that, so it isn't just spontaneous."

"Can I go home?" I asked, trying not to sound as desperate for a yes as I was.

"Well…," he started, with a sly grin, "…okay. But I have some pretty strict directions for you to follow for a few days."

"She will," Darry said. Of course I would, because he would be equivalent to my prison guard at home.

Soda and Pony had to leave to go to work, Soda promising to fix something "deliciously liquid" for me for dinner later, the thought of which almost made me gag. All I could think of was him putting hamburger in the blender or something. I could still hear him laughing about it as he walked away down the corridor. Dr. Bryant turned back to face me and Darry.

"Okay, so, before I send you home, you and Darrel and I need to talk serious here, okay Scout?"

"Okay," I agreed. Darry immediately took on his face which indicated that he was going to memorize everything this doctor said and repeat it back to me word for word if I tried to do anything I shouldn't. I had to smile a little at him, for being so predictable, but he motioned for me to listen to the doctor.

"What happened to you was very serious," he started. "As you're both aware, you could have died, Scout."

I nodded, solemnly. It occurred to me that I could never repay him for what he'd done for me, or account for the simple dumb luck that he'd been there to do it in the first place.

"So, the fact is, we don't know what will happen if you get another insect bite," he said. I had been thinking about that. I already avoided spiders as much as possible, but it was inevitable that I would come upon one from time to time. "We think that you only had a reaction due to the number of bites and the amount of venom, but until you receive another bite, it's impossible for us to predict what will happen."

"I always hated spiders. Everybody always teased me about it."

"Well, it's not really a joke anymore. My personal feeling is that you only reacted due to the extremity of the attack, since your brother said you've been bitten by ants and stung by bees previously with no reaction."

"Yeah." I remembered both times. I'd sat on a hill of fire ants once at a picnic, and I'd been stung by a bee during school recess. It had hurt both times, but I hadn't almost died.

"The spider that bit you – it's called a brown recluse – they're dangerous but not usually deadly. But, just to be safe, because none of us who went through this the first time want it to happen again, I'm going to prescribe a liquid antihistimine for you. I'm going to order several of them, and I want you to keep one nearby wherever you go. Keep one with the school nurse, in your house, in the glove box of the family car, in your purse… anywhere you might get bit or stung."

"Okay."

"I'll make sure she does," Darry said.

"And if you do happen to get a bite or a sting, you drink the whole bottle, as soon as possible, and you come to the hospital, immediately, even if you feel fine, okay? You saw how suddenly things happened this time."

"I will."

"I'm not trying to scare you, Scout, but I don't want you dying, and neither does your family. So a hospital is the best place to go in case anything happens."

"I know. I appreciate it."

"Okay. Other than that, for the next few days, rest. No solid foods for two more days, no heavy activity, try not to talk more than necessary, absolutely no yelling, and you let me know if anything starts to hurt worse or if you have any other problems, okay?" He stood up, hanging my chart on the end of the bed.

"Thanks again," Darry said. "I can't say enough how much we appreciate you for what you've done."

"Like I said before, I'm just glad I was there."

"Dr. Bryant?" I whispered as he was leaving, and he turned around.

"Yes?"

"Can I give you a hug?" I asked, hoping I wasn't going to make him uncomfortable. I trusted and appreciated him as a doctor more than I ever had any other.

"Of course," he said, and came over and hugged me.

"Thank you," I whispered. "For saving my life. That's not something I can ever repay you for."

"No payback necessary," he answered, "seeing you well is the best reward I could ask for."

I smiled. If I had to get sick at least I was lucky enough to have the nicest doctor ever.

"Oh, and speaking of payment," he turned to Darry, "the balance of Scout's bill after the state insurance has been taken care of."

"What?" Darry nearly yelled in shock.

"That's right. An anonymous benefactor. So all you need to do is sign her out, and she's free to go. I'll have the papers sent down." He turned and left, as Darry just stood there, a look of complete astonishment on his face.

Free to go. Man, did that ever sound good.

…………………………………

A/N: Still feeling pretty sad about Patrick. Forgive me if there was some gratuitous Darry-hugging in this chapter…