Chapter Nineteen

There's a leak in the tent.

I don't think anyone but me has noticed. From my bed… cot… whatever it is and considering that I'm completely immobilized, it's all I can see.

An always increasing wet spot on the fabric of the tent.

They'll figure it out soon enough, I suppose.

Primrose taps a finger against my chin – a place I've learned over the last two days is one of the least injured parts of my body. There's a mask over my face too and it keeps me from speaking. "Hello there," she says with a sweet smile that seems out of place in the drab, militaristic environment I've found myself in. "I'd like to give you some special juice. I'll have to take the mask off and you'll need to try and swallow it. It may hurt. The reason I want to try it anyway is that it will help us judge how the wound in your stomach is healing. May I take off your mask?"

I don't think I can even nod my head. So I just stare at her.

"Blink once if you're willing to try," she suggests. "I promise that we can stop and fix everything if it's too much."

I'm more aware of what's going on all the time now so I suppose it would be nice to know if my stomach wound, one I didn't know I had, is healing. So I blink once.

The boy, Gale's brother, appears on my other side and he's the one who puts his hand on the mask and gets ready to move it. "Take small, slow breaths," he tells me. "If you gasp when you don't need to, it'll hurt more. Ready?"

I blink once again.

He lifts my mask off, keeping it close to my face, and Primrose uses a large dropper to put the juice in my mouth. "Swallow, Finnick. Try."

So I try.

And it hurts.

Tears well in my eyes and I feel them leak out.

But I swallow it all.

Gale's brother puts the mask back over my face but stays beside me as Primrose moves down toward my stomach. Leaning over me, she sniffs at my body. "This is very good," she announces firmly.

He seems as confused as I am but the upside is that he can talk. "What's good, Prim? Did you just smell him?

"Yes," she says as if it should be obvious. "There were onions in the dropper. If he was still bleeding internally, I would have smelled them. I don't. It means things are healing. We still need to get him to a proper hospital, but this is good."

He glances at me, seeming to silently ask if I have anything else I need him to ask. I can't say anything, though, so he figures it out for himself. "Because if he was still bleeding internally there really wouldn't be much chance of him surviving?"

I like him – he gets right to the heart of things.

"Right."

From the way she answers him and the way he hangs on her every word, I decide that not only is he learning to be a medic from her but he also loves he – and I hope they both survive to be old and gray and surrounded by their grandchildren.

Primrose taps my chin again. "I know you're probably very bored and in pain, but I promise it will be over soon. We just need to make sure you're absolutely stable before we put you on a hovercraft."

I have so many questions, questions neither of them are reading my mind to answer. It occurs to me that I miss Gale because he never missed one of my unspoken questions.

"Rory and I have to go tend to a few other patients, Finnick," Primrose says, tapping me yet again in the same place. "We'll be back soon to check on you. Try to rest."

That sounds so much easier than it is.

But I do fall asleep. I know this because I realize I'm awake and that Peeta is standing above me. He seems to relax when he sees my eyes are open – maybe he didn't want to have to tap my chin. "Annie will be here in an hour or so. Do you want me to talk to her before she sees you? Tell her about your condition and what happened?"

I consider this. On the one hand, Gale and Primrose probably know more and it's an awful lot to ask of Peeta. On the other hand, I don't know where Gale is and Annie doesn't know Primrose well. Annie told me in Thirteen that she, Johanna, and Peeta made a pledge to always do whatever they could for each other after their time as prisoners. Maybe he is best.

I blink once.

"That means yes, right?" he asks.

I blink once.

"Since you're still calm, I'll take it as a yes," he says as he leans against the side of the thing I'm lying on. "You know her better than I do, of course, but I don't think you need to worry about how she'll handle this. She was so strong when we were held here. Johanna might not admit it but neither of us would have made it without Annie."

I wouldn't have made it through the last five years without her either. She is strong, stronger than anyone gives her credit for – especially herself. I'm still scared of how she'll be when she sees me like this. But I haven't even seen myself. Maybe, aside from being immobilized and occasionally needing to drink onion juice to see if I'm bleeding internally, maybe I'm not that bad off.

That's probably extremely wishful thinking.

"Blink once if blinking once means yes," he says, apparently still nervous about this method of communication. When I do blink once, he nods. "I can stay with her, if you want. They're not going to need me for anything and people might be busy. I don't think she'd like having to come and go whenever Haymitch does and I bet you don't want her to be alone, even here with you."

I blink to tell him he's right.

"Do you want me to stay with her?"

I blink once.

I don't want Annie to be alone. I want someone to make sure she eats and sleeps and doesn't curl into a ball. Peeta will do that. I think. And even if he doesn't, she'll want to take care of him and that will keep her motivated to stay in the moment.

I hope he's done asking me questions, though. I'm tired and my body hurts, probably too much to sleep.

He understands this somehow and pulls a battered book out of his pocket, holding it up for me to see. "It's called Gulliver's Travels and I found it in the last room I was in. I flipped through it and saw things about pirates and the ocean. Want me to read to you for a little while?"

It's one of the easiest things I've blinked about yet. It's the same book my mother read to me when I was little and had nightmares. It was the only book she ever read to me. Maybe it can make me forget again, just for a little while.

He gets a stool or something to sit on and opens to the first page.