Sam sits in a softly lit post-op waiting room next to Chris. She's got a warm cappuccino from the cafeteria in her hand, but her lips have yet to touch the brim of it. They're waiting for a doctor to come out and tell them what happened with Josh. A nurse came and told the survivors that he would be out of surgery soon and that two people could wait in the post-op center for his doctor. They informed them that they usually only let family back there, but Josh's parents have been out of the country since the incident and are having trouble leaving and the doctors don't want him to have to recover alone.
She's hopes that whatever Matt gave them helps bring Josh back to himself. The others, except for Mike, think that Josh is relatively okay, that he's barely turned, but she saw it. She saw the disconnect in his eyes when he lunged at them. She saw the paleness in his otherwise sapphire eyes and the way his skin seemed taut. She saw the hole in his mouth where large incisors began to grow.
The image of Josh like that doesn't scare her. The thought of never getting him back, on the other hand, is terrifying. The pain of losing Hannah never really went away, it just reduced to an ache, but she's not sure that Josh will ever reduce to that. She has a connection with Josh, or at least she thought she had before the prank. She already feels responsible for not noticing the mental symptoms, she's not sure if she can live with not going back for him sooner as well.
"It's going to be okay," she says out loud, to herself. "Everything's going to be A-OK. Josh is going to be fine and this will all just be a really vivid nightmare."
Chris glances at her, but doesn't offer any words in return. He drums his fingers against his phone nervously and she wonders what this must be like for him. Its nerve wracking for her, but Chris has known Josh since the third grade. She can't imagine how much worse this is for him.
At that moment, a doctor comes into the room with a chart in his hand. He comes over to the two of them and Sam perks up greatly, standing up to meet the doctor. She tries reading his face, but can't detect whether the outcome is bad or good from his expression.
"You're here for Joshua Washington?" Both blonde haired teenagers nod. "I'm Dr. Ward, we just finished surgery on him about a half hour ago. We managed to get the shotgun shell out just fine, he'll only have some minor scarring and pain there for a few weeks, but no permanent damage. It's rather incredible that the shell hadn't lodged far past the skin. We did have a slight problem with the IV, unfortunately we had to put it in the vein on his neck because the skin on his arm was rigid, but that should go away in time. We think it's a side effect of the cannibalism."
Sam breathes a sigh of relief, only for the doctor start again with, "Now for the bad news. Thanks to the information you gave us, we think there's a direct correlation between the cannibalism on that mountain and the type of symptoms your friend has experienced. I'm not sure what the correlation is exactly, but it's presenting as a type of Prion disease caused by the consumption of human flesh."
"That disease, it would make his skin hard and his teeth grow?" Sam questions, keeping her doubts concealed. Those things on the mountain did not have a disease, they were monsters. Creatures far from ever bearing human resemblance. She's never heard of or seen a disease that could do that kind of damage.
"Not exactly, no. The Prion disease accounts for his changed mental state and the cloudiness in his eyes. However, we think that the flesh he was eating was contaminated from being in those mines. There are some types of bacteria that have been known to harden skin and promote excess calcium deposits, which would make his teeth grow."
Again, she doubts the doctor's answer. However, what's turning him into that thing doesn't matter. The only thing that matters is if they can stop it and get Josh back before it's too late.
"Is this treatable?" Chris questions. "Is he going to be okay?"
"I believe so, yes. We went in and removed all of the flesh from his intestines before he could digest any more toxins from it. We completely flushed every trace of human flesh out of his system. His skin has also lost enough rigidity for us to put in an IV line on his wrist and his brain function appears to be returning to normal. Now, we don't know how much brain damage has been done, but we already brought in an oral surgeon to file down the teeth, and we can sew the hole in his mouth up and get it back to normal with minimal scarring with skin grafts, and correct the cloudiness in his eyes with drops and glasses."
"Josh is going to be okay?" Sam says in disbelief.
"Like I said, we don't know the extent of the brain damage." Upon catching Sam's hopeful glance, he adds, "But other than that, your friend will be just fine." As Sam's heart soars with the weight of wendigo Josh being lifted, a younger doctor comes over and explains something quietly to Dr. Ward. "If you'll follow Dr. Johnson here, she'll take you to your friend."
Sam and Chris follow the young brunette doctor down the hallway and into the section for patient recovery rooms. Nervousness thrums through her veins as they get closer and closer to Josh's room. She keeps trying to squish her hopes down, the fear that Josh might be acting like those creatures on arrival lingering in the back of her mind. She's strong, but she's not sure if she's strong enough to watch the person she's been spending most of the last year with writhing beneath restraints or spitting out horrendous screeches at her. She's not sure she can handle watching her best friend... almost more than a best friend, become one of those things. If only she had noticed the signs sooner, saw that he was sick. This could've been avoided. She could've stopped this, helped him. How did I miss the signs?
"He's going to be fine," she says quietly to herself as the doctor stops in front of one of the doors. There's a split moment where she's convinced that she'll be seeing a pale, gaunt, humanoid figure that barely resembles Josh with long nails and fangs. There's one single god awful second where she's convinced that Josh won't even be human at all.
The doctor opens the door and she steps inside, relieved to find Josh looking vaguely like himself. He's three shades whiter, heavy bags hang beneath his eyes, his skin looks rather tight, and there's a gauze bandage covering most of his left cheek, but it's him. One of his arms hangs in a sling, a hefty bandage over the gunshot wound in his shoulder, and he's covered in a mountain of blankets, but it's definitely not a wendigo squinting back at them.
A sort of joy runs through Sam's chest and despite the horrific prank Josh put them through, she wants nothing more than to run over and wrap her arms around him.
A/N- Thank you guys for continuing to read, review, favorite, and follow! I hope you're enjoying the story so far and reviews are always welcome. :)