It's a long one!
His chest hurt. His legs shook. Just one foot in front of the other. He had to. He had been through worse than this, hadn't he? He squeezed his eyes shut. He could handle this. But his breathing was starting to get ragged and...
Ugh. His legs...couldn't...
No…
"You're doing so good, Danny." A kind female voice broke through his clouded brain. "Just a little further…"
"Hurts," he grunted.
"Ok, let's sit down, then," the woman said.
He felt something tap the back of his legs and found himself all but collapsing in the wheelchair.
Danny pressed his lips together, glaring into his open palms like they were the hands that messed him up beyond repair. After a tense moment of silence, he opened his mouth. "I don't understand. I should be fine by now."
"Danny, you're healing at an incredible rate given the amount of stress your body has undergone. Don't sell yourself short."
"I know." He closed his eyes and steeled himself to stand back up. "I just...I need to do this. I can't spend my life in a wheelchair. I need to get better. I have to."
"And you will." The physical therapist made her way around the chair. She stood in front of Danny, arms crossed and an inquisitive look on her freckled face. Danny studied her face, noting her thin eyebrows and expressive green eyes. She'd introduced herself to him on the first day they'd met, and he had also heard her name from several other people after that. But no matter how hard he dug in his mind for her name, his brain was blank.
The doctors told him—well, actually, they told his parents, but he'd been in the room anyway—that he had minor brain damage. It, like everything else, would get better with time. They'd reassured his parents. His parents had cried, but Danny lay in his hospital bed unmoving. He didn't need a doctor to tell him that. He knew what was wrong. What was missing.
Forgetting bits of conversation, forgetting what he ate for breakfast, forgetting what day it was—those had been the obvious signs. The signs that he couldn't hide from his parents or his sister, who regarded him with sad eyes every time he repeated a question or asked yet again what time it was.
But there was another, more subtle sign of the damage to his mind. One that he didn't notice at first, one that only made itself more apparent as time went on. One that frustrated him to his core and that he tried desperately to hide from the world.
Names.
No matter how many times someone told him their name, no matter how many times he heard it in passing conversation, he couldn't commit it to memory. He noticed it first with his nurses, who he saw every day. They were amazing, caring people who treated him with as much dignity and respect as they would treat each other. And for that, he was grateful. But every time he would try to put a name to their face…his brain would draw a blank. He couldn't do it.
His therapist, his doctor, his physical therapist, even the patients that he ate lunch with every day, he had nothing to call them by.
And that killed him.
The physical therapist shifted, putting most of her weight on one of her legs. "But right now you need to sit. Your chest isn't completely healed yet, and if we stress your body out too much, you'll only end up hurting yourself. We need to take this slow, Danny. Slower than you'd like, but it's the only way to do this. Anyway, most people in your position wouldn't be out of the chair for months, if not years."
"Most people in my position would be dead," said Danny stiffly.
The physical therapist shrugged, her eyes darting up to the ceiling. "Yeah, well. Small blessings, I guess."
Danny clutched his chest. "I'm gonna get those one hundred feet before I go back to Casper High."
"That's only one week away," she remarked, raising an eyebrow.
"Yeah. But I can do it."
The physical therapist stared at him for a moment before she shook her head and sighed. "Danny, I—"
"Clarice?" a deep voice sounded from the entryway.
Danny tensed, his fight or flight senses activating out of nowhere. Calm down, Fenturd, he tried telling himself. You're safe. You're at your PT appointment. Nothing's going to happen.
"Can I borrow you for a second? This form isn't right," the man said, his voice just inches behind Danny. It reminded him of...it almost sounded like...
The blood drained from his face and ragged breath escaped his lips. His hands gripped the armrests of his chair as his eyes stared unseeing in front of him. The white, fluorescent lights were suddenly blinding. Stop shaking, stop shaking.
The physical therapist's eyes widened as they flickered down to Danny's trembling form. "Uh, Michael—"
"Oh!" the man exclaimed, turning to face Danny. Except it wasn't the male physical therapist. It was the glaring image of Operative O.
He sneered down at Danny and wiped a fleck of ectoplasm from his otherwise pristine white suit. "Ectoplasm is a stain on humanity," he growled, his deep voice digging into Danny like a hot knife. "I will rid the world of it, dog."
It's not him. He's not here.
"I'm so sorry, I didn't realize—"
"If you had just behaved, ghost, I might have let you keep your legs," Operative O said, his voice dripping with slime. "We tried to be nice. You brought this on yourself."
Danny was on the tiled floor. It was cold. Damp from his ectoplasm. They'd kicked him over so he was lying on his stomach at some point, presumably bored of beating his face and chest. His head was turned to the side, mouth open like a fish as he tried to suck in any air he could through ragged breaths. Ectoplasm dripped out of his mouth, forming a small puddle on the floor.
He was shaking, sweating, his body racked with pain. No! No! Please don't. Please don't, he wanted to say. But he couldn't speak.
In the distance, he heard the muffled voice of his physical therapist. "It's okay. Can you go get a nurse for me?"
Operative O leaned down, his eyes gleaming. He held up a metal baseball bat. "You've left me no choice, dog."
SNAP!
"NO!"
"Danny?" a face appeared in his fogged vision. "Danny, what's going on?"
Danny's eyes latched onto the blurry face of his physical therapist, blinking until she came into focus. Her red eyebrows were raised high into her freckled forehead. Her green eyes pierced into his. "Danny?" she repeated.
"I—" He coughed, as if trying to expel the phantom pain that flared in his back. He gasped out, "My back!"
A look of alarm spread across her face. "What about your back, Danny?"
His knit his eyebrows together, trying to piece together his broken memories. "They—it's...it's broken...they broke it…"
To his utter confusion, she relaxed. "Yes, Danny. You're at PT right now because we're trying to help fix this."
"I'm—I what?" Danny's hands shot to grip his hair as he searched his brain, grasping at...something...something to remember. Wisps of "T-12 level break" and "paraplegia" flickered through his mind. His panicked expression morphed into a look of horror as his eyes shot down to his legs. He lifted a hand off his head and let it hover over the numb limbs and froze. Snapping out of his stupor, he yanked his arm back up to his chest, curling the fingers in protectively. No...he wasn't...was he?
"You're getting so much better though. You're walking now and everything, Danny."
"Yeah," he said through a shaky breath. "Incomplete."
"That's right." The physical therapist bobbed her head, the light reflecting off of her soft cheekbones. "The break was incomplete, so that's why you're here learning to walk again. You have enough motor function in your legs to essentially retrain your body."
"Oh."
"Hey Danny, what's going on?" came the voice of an older woman. Danny looked over to see the kind expression of one of the more senior nurses still working at the hospital. Her light brown hair, speckled with gray, was cut in a short style that accentuated her curls. He searched through his brain for her name...he must've known it, right? He saw her all the time. He was sure he'd heard it before….
But nothing came to him.
She peered at Danny through her round glasses. "Bad day, huh?"
The physical therapist craned her head up to look at the nurse. "Michael didn't realize Danny was here. He came over to ask a question."
The nurse hummed in response. "Sorry about that, Danny. Michael can be pretty unobservant sometimes. You doing okay?"
"I...yeah…" Danny said, swallowing thickly.
"I think he's just a little shaken up is all. He should be okay soon." The physical therapist glanced at her watch. "Our time is almost over anyway. Can you get Danny to his room? He probably wants to get ready before school starts."
"Yeah," Danny breathed out, relieved at these words. On a typical day, he went straight from physical therapy to the inpatient academic classes in the morning. But today, as if the physical therapist could hear his thoughts, he desperately needed a few moments to collect himself.
He didn't understand what went wrong. Until now, he had been having a good day. He slept soundly last night, he socialized a little at breakfast, his chest hadn't been acting up at all, and he walked far at PT.
So what went wrong? Why did everything suddenly go to shit?
No...that was too easy to answer. It was because his stupid brain couldn't handle things going well for too long. He was broken, a mess, a joke of a functioning human. He couldn't even handle being in the same room as someone with a deeper voice without his brain imploding on itself. All because of stupid Operative O with his stupid bald head and his stupid white suit.
Danny hadn't realized the nurse was wheeling him back to the inpatient wing until she pressed her keycard to the locked double doors. They were a disgusting shade of teal. Nothing like Jazz's headband, which was brightly colored and radiated exorbitant amounts of Jazz energy. These doors were bleak in comparison, reflecting far more grays than blues. It reminded Danny of a swamp.
The doors opened, and she pushed Danny into the teen inpatient sector. "Welcome back," he muttered to himself.
The entire ward was relatively small, which made sense in Danny's mind. After all, a bunch of mentally unstable teenagers in a maze sounded like a terrible idea. Danny glanced to his left to the arts corner. It was nothing special, just a few round tables with art supplies in plastic buckets along the walls. To his right was the lounge area. That was nothing special there either, just a rug, a few long benches, and board games. Beyond that was the cafeteria.
The nurse pushed him straight across the hallway that separated the two open rooms. A few lazy eyes flickered Danny's way, but most people paid him no mind. It was no secret that Danny Phantom got cut up by the government and had to attend physical therapy sessions at the hospital outside of the inpatient facility. It was not uncommon for Danny to be pushed in a wheelchair by some nurse, even if he was becoming more and more independent by the day. And it wasn't unusual for Danny to appear with that ever-present dazed look in his eyes.
The nurse pushed the accessible button, opening a second set of gross teal doors to reveal a small hallway. Blue tiles covered the floor, and in the back of his mind, he recalled one of Jazz's long-winded speeches about the psychology of colors. Blue was...calming? Danny needed to talk to the idiot who thought of that. The Box Ghost's skin was blue, and that guy had caused Danny nothing but irritation.
"What number are you?" the nurse asked, interrupting his inner ranting.
Danny lifted his arm and waved it at a door to his right. "That one. Four doors down."
"Alrighty!" she said brightly as she pushed him through the open door of his room. "Are you alright here on your own now?"
"Yeah," he said, his voice soft.
"Okay. We're leaving for school in ten minutes, so be outside when you're ready."
He turned, offering her a small smile. "Thanks."
He stared into his plain room. The room was designed for two occupants—two beds, two dressers, two desks—but the second set of furniture remained unused. Danny had asked about the vacancy once, purposefully keeping his tone light as he did, but the response he received was lackluster. Disappointing. A dismissive wave of the hand along with some ill-devised excuse about there just being an open space, and he never brought it up again. Through his three-and-a-half week stay in the facility, he'd seen other people cycle through new roommates as nameless faces came and left the hospital. Hell, the redhead even had two roommates at once when he first moved in, and yet it seemed Danny's own room was destined to remain bare.
It shouldn't have bothered him the way it did. After all, wasn't it nicer to have a room to himself? Wouldn't he have wanted to be alone anyway? But, for some reason, it did bother him. Maybe it was that final reminder, the final twist to the knife in his gut, that even to the people who preached how equal and deserving of human rights he was, he wasn't human enough to have a roommate. He was a flight risk, a safety hazard. What sane parent would allow their child to room with a ghost anyway? He stared down at his paper thin arms, their color so pale that he could make out the veins underneath. Disgusting, that's what he was.
He shouldn't exist.
He deserved to be alone.
After all, he brought it on himself when he went into the portal the day of his accident. And then later when he decided to be a hero for Amity Park instead of slinking into the shadows like most other ghosts. And then again, when he was too slow, too weak, and got himself revealed on national television. Of course he was the Guys in White's golden prize. If he wasn't such a narcissist and just kept to himself like Vlad warned him to do...
"Stop whining," he hissed as he heaved himself from his chair, leaning on his walker. He took a moment, allowing his body to balance, before walking over to his dresser and grabbing a red Casper High hoodie.
He slowly made his way over to his bed and sank down on the hard mattress. He ran his hand through the red fabric, noting the missing strings on the sweatshirt. His mother had ripped out all the strings on his hoodies the day he was admitted to inpatient. Something about the hospital code and strings being dangerous to teens. The now undecorated garment perfectly matched his new velcro sneakers.
God, if Dash could only see him now. Wearing velcro sneakers like he was a preschooler again.
Danny would never admit this to anyone, but he was almost glad for the hospital's strict clothing policy. The shoes were so simple to get on and off, a small blessing in disguise for someone who was only just relearning how to dress himself in the morning. Even though the hospital's no-laced-shoes policy prevented him from trying, he couldn't imagine being able to lace sneakers in his current state. Doing the velcro straps already took far longer than it should. As tacky as it looked, Danny would take whatever break he could get from life.
He pulled the red hoodie over his head and turned his attention back to his walker. He had been too mentally drained when they first introduced him to it to be appalled by the fact that he needed a walker. And while he didn't exactly love hobbling around in a walker in front of the other patients, wheeling around in front of them was equally as embarrassing in his mind. Here was the great Danny Phantom reduced to…
This.
He pushed himself off his bed and walked back over to his wheelchair. He slid down into the cushioned seat, undid the breaks, and left his room. Through the windows in the hallway doors, he saw the other teens congregated in the lounge area, looking thoroughly miserable as they waited to be brought down to the classroom area. He pressed the accessible button on the doors and silently prayed to any god that may exist that he wasn't the last person to arrive to the lounge.
As fate would have it, he heard a distinct "There he is! Okay, that's everyone" as soon as he came through the doors.
"Took you long enough," a tall redhead commented as soon as Danny drew near. He was one of the few people who willingly sat with Danny at lunch. Maybe it was because they had both been in the facility for so long, or maybe it was because the redhead was a slight fanboy of Phantom. Danny didn't really care. As long as the kid was friendly, Danny was fine with him.
"What, no PT today?" the guy asked.
What was his name? Kevin? Calvin?
Danny fell beside him as the group turned to leave. "No. I, uh, got out early. So I went back to my room to change."
"Gotcha. I was confused when the nurses said you'd be walking over with us today."
"Yeah, well. Surprise, I guess." Danny shrugged.
Jerry? Chase?
"Charlie!" came the higher timbre of the Hispanic boy who'd arrived earlier in the week. "Sit at my table today, yeah?"
Now that the brunette had been in inpatient for a few days, he was starting to open up more. He was also one of the few people Danny liked, despite being new to the facility. He was quiet, nerdy. The boy had told Danny during free time that he used to play Dungeons and Dragons with two of his friends in middle school and asked if Danny played the game at all. Danny hadn't, much to Tucker's despair. The brunette had offered him a shy smile at this, the first smile Danny had seen from him since the boy's arrival, and said "We'll have to play it some time. You know, if you're interested."
He was a sweet kid, truly. Danny could only wonder what happened for him to end up in a place like this.
"Of course," the redhead said. He glanced down at Danny. "You're joining us too, right?"
"Where?" Danny asked.
"Uh, at our table today?"
"Okay," Danny said, swiveling around a corner in the hallway. He tried to ignore the way the hallways looked, always a pure white. A spotless, immaculate white. The tiles, shiny and pure. Untainted with his ectoplasm.
"Disgusting," Operative O hissed, pinching a white coat splatter-painted green. The darkness of the cell framed Operative O's face, creeping up his cheekbones and stopping just before his eyes. "Look what you did. Ectoplasm stains, ghost. I'll need a new jacket now."
It always struck Danny as odd how, no matter how bloodied he'd get the hallways as they dragged his lifeless Phantom form down it, the floors in the government facility were always back to their pristine white state the next morning.
"Ectoplasm stains, ghost."
It was as if someone hit a reset button on the facility at midnight. Every speck of ectoplasm was gone. The smell of burnt citrus and that hint of lime were replaced with the smell of Clorox. The walls glittered like snow, and the floors reflected the fluorescent ceiling lights with a purity Danny didn't know existed.
"Ectoplasm stains."
Too bad the reset button didn't spread its magic to his cell.
"Danny, you need some help there?" a voice asked, breaking Danny from his thoughts. Looking around, he noticed he was falling behind the group.
"No, I'm alright," Danny said, glancing up at the redhead. "Thanks."
Danny huffed, putting more force into moving his chair only for his chest to suddenly flare up in pain. "Shit," he exclaimed, ripping his hands off the wheels as if they emitted an electric shock. He sat erect, eyes wide and mouth open. He tried to choke down some oxygen, but his breathing was choppy, disjointed, and oh god what was going on why couldn't he BREATHE.
"Danny?" His two companions turned around in alarm.
"I—" I'm fine, Danny tried to say.
A nursing assistant was on him in an instant. "What's going on?"
"I don't know," the redhead said. "He was fine a minute ago, but he just suddenly stopped. It's probably his chest again."
"Yeah." The nursing assistant bent down to Danny's level. She looked at him with steady eyes. "Danny I'm going to stand you up, okay?"
He nodded. Or, he hoped he nodded. He wasn't sure. Everything hurt. The shallow breaths weren't enough for him. He was starting to get light headed. The walls were so bright here. He knew he wasn't at the government facility, so why did the walls have to be so bright?
"His chest?" Danny heard the brunette whisper.
"Yeah, he gets these flare-ups now. From...you know…"
He felt the nursing assistant grip his arms and hoist him from the chair. It was almost depressing how easily she managed to lift him up. He was on a diet plan at the hospital to help him regain what he'd lost at the government facility, but still...
"Take a few steps for me," she commanded.
He managed to nod this time as he shakily took a few steps forward. Already, the hot pain in his chest was receding. The tight muscles in his chest unwound slightly, allowing him to breathe. He closed his eyes, gulping at the air. Tugging his arms out of her grip, he placed his palms over his face and focused on staying on his feet.
The perfect distraction from the dull pain that was beginning to flood his chest.
"Danny?" she said.
He let his arms fall to his sides. Cracking open his eyes, he noticed the other teens had stopped in their tracks. They stared at him apprehensively, their previous chatter replaced with silence.
"Sorry," he said, lowering his gaze.
"Don't sweat it," the redhead said. "Here, let me help you."
"No, I'm—"
"Danny," the nursing assistant said, her tone even. "Sit down. Let us help you."
Danny breathed in, fully prepared to launch the reflexive 'no' from his lips when he stopped. He surveyed the group of teens in front of him. They looked uncomfortable, tense, as if they were waiting for him to snap, to dig out the chip in his neck with his bare fingers, power up an ectoblast, and launch them through the walls of the hospital.
His eyes wandered away from the group of teens to the two boys—what were their names again? Craig and Mikey?—who stared at him with a mix of earnest and concerned expressions. The tall redhead offered him a small smile, his hand on the side of Danny's wheelchair as if to say, "I'm ready whenever you are!"
Without warning, a wave of everything came crashing down on Danny's shoulders. He felt like shit. His only two friends in this hospital were here to support him, but he didn't even have the decency to remember their names? Not to mention, their mental health issues were almost certainly more pressing than Danny's. They were here because they tried to take their own lives, whereas Danny was admitted because he felt sad. And Danny was really going to fall apart in front of them? Force them to comfort him? All because his chest hurt a little bit?
How selfish could he be? Wasn't he supposed to be the strong one? The hero? The one struggling kids and teens could look up to as their real-life superhero they could rely on to protect them from all the bad in the world?
And now look at him.
Utterly despicable.
Feeling more disgusted with himself than ever, he sat down in his chair and tried not to let his face heat up as the redhead gently pushed him forward. He tried not to notice the pitying side glance the brunette gave him. He tried.
Some hero, he thought miserably.
"Man," the brunette said after a few moments of tense silence. "I didn't realize I'd still have to come to school here. That's so dumb."
"I feel you, Miguel," the redhead said, catching onto the shift in topic. "It's only for three hours, though, so it could be worse. After tomorrow, I'll be back to the regular school day, so that's gonna suck."
Well, that certainly piqued Danny's interest. Before he could help himself, he asked, "You're leaving tomorrow?"
"Yeah," the redhead said, his voice odd. "I, uh, mentioned it yesterday at lunch. Finally got the okay from my psychologist. So that's good. Except then I have to go back to school and explain why I was out for three weeks…"
"Oh," he said, feeling a bit stupid for forgetting such an important detail his own friend told him. Embarrassment flooded through him as he was reminded yet again how different his situation was from the average teen. Danny was fairly certain everyone in his school knew exactly where he was. After all, his final breakdown had been an embarrassingly public event inside Casper High complete with jocks trying to calm him down, Mr. Lancer calling Jazz over the loudspeakers to his office, both of his parents rushing to school, and an agonizing discussion the Fenton family had been avoiding like the plague. So yes, even though Danny was positive his sister would never divulge where he was to his classmates—save Sam and Tucker—without his permission, he knew his peers were smart enough to put two and two together.
But the redhead was a different story. His suffering had been a silent affair. His brain had torn itself to pieces, leaving only an apathetic teen who drifted through his day-to-day life without experiencing it. Eventually, the war inside him bubbled to the surface in the form of coming out to his father, which ended with screaming, tears, and the heartbreaking "Don't come back until you've sorted your shit out!" That, combined with the rejection from his classmates, had been the final straw for the redhead. A pit stop at a Walmart on the way home from school one day, and he had everything he needed to take himself out.
He was lucky his mom came home from work early that day.
To his classmates, the redhead simply disappeared. He wasn't dead or else they would have heard about it in an obituary. Maybe he contracted mono. Maybe he was recovering from an emergency appendix removal. Maybe he had moved in with his dad. Maybe his grandfather in Florida died and he had to fly halfway across the country to be with his family.
Nobody knew, and nobody could contact him while he was in inpatient. They were all certain to have questions when he got back. Questions that, judging by the redhead's somber tone, Danny couldn't imagine he would answer honestly.
"What are you gonna say?" the brunette asked.
"I dunno," the redhead said.
"Tonsil surgery has a two-week recovery period," Danny blurted out. He remembered Jazz's. It was her first time taking heavy pain medication, and that's when they found out that her body couldn't handle the pills on an empty stomach. She was violently ill and ended up back in the hospital with an IV in her arm. "But if you have a—a...complication, then you could probably get away with...uh...more time."
"Oh," the redhead said. "Thanks. I might use that actually."
"Same, if you don't mind," the brunette said sheepishly. "Since I'm only here for two weeks."
"It's not like we go to the same school," the redhead responded.
"Yeah, yeah. I know."
Danny looked up at them confused. "We're all going to the same school."
"What do you mean, Danny?" the redhead asked.
"Right now...aren't we? We all go to the same school?" He brought a hand up to his head.
The redhead paused before answering in a patient tone, "You're right. Right now, we all go to the same school, yes. But after tomorrow, I'll be going back home, and I'll be going to a different school. And soon you and Miguel will also go home and go back to your own schools, too. Since we live in different towns."
"Oh," Danny said. He wasn't sure if he understood that or not, he kept it to himself.
"Though, speaking of hell…" the redhead muttered, pushing Danny through a wide doorway to reveal the hospital classroom. It was rather average-looking, with a blue rug covering the floor and light pouring in from the large windows. Aside from the this-room-was-recently-renovated look the classroom had, the only real difference between this room and a typical classroom at Casper High was the use of dark wooden tables rather than individual desks. Apparently, it was to promote collaboration during completion of assignments. The therapists wanted the teens to work together and learn to ask each other for help with their math problems. Danny didn't really see a point, but he didn't voice this opinion to any of the psychologists. Even for him, a C-average student, these assignments were rather easy.
Not that he was complaining. If the hospital wanted to give them algebra review, short poems to analyze, and easy science articles to read for three hours a day to meet the public school attendance policy, that was fine by him.
The redhead steered Danny over to the table closest to the windows and parked Danny alongside the table. The brunette went to remove one of the wooden chairs to make room for Danny's wheelchair.
"Wait," Danny said, gripping the wooden table. "Leave it. I'm fine."
The brunette glanced around nervously. "Uh, are you sure? You—the nursing assistant—"
"Don't worry, Miguel," the redhead said, waving the black-haired boy off. "He's fine."
Danny felt a small swell of warmth at the redhead's assurance. He stood, leaning on the table for support, and shuffled over to his wooden chair. He spared a glance over at the brunette—Miguel, right? Or did they say Michael?—who regarded him with an odd, pained expression. Self-consciousness overtook Danny, and he made a special effort to sit down in his seat as fluidly as possible.
"Alright, class," the teacher said. The awkward tension at Danny's table dissipated immediately as their attention was pulled to the whiteboard. With neat blue letters, she printed something at the top of the board. Mrs. Reyes. Recognition sparked in Danny's brain as he read her name. And for the third week in a row, he tried to commit it to memory. Mrs. Reyes.
"Today's math lesson is going to be review for most of you. We're going to be doing some geometry today! Specifically, we're going to be working with triangles. I'm going to pass out your worksheet, and then we'll do the first few problems on the board before you guys finish the worksheet at your table."
The class collectively groaned as the teacher—Mrs. Reyes—passed out the math worksheet. Danny picked up his worksheet, glancing at it. It didn't look too bad. Pythagorean theorem, some work with fractions, and a few problems centered around angles. All in all, not terrible. And thankfully things he'd already seen in Casper High's math class, as absent as he'd been his freshman year.
Regardless, he tried to pay attention to his teacher. Everything he did—or didn't do, for that matter—was reported to his psychologist. If he was unable to pay attention in school, they may push back his release date. As it stood, he was set to be released after four weeks in the program. But if he regressed…
Well, Danny could kiss his dreams of freedom goodbye.
The te—Mrs. Reyes—drew a small box around the last example solution on the board. "Okay, students! Now I want you to work with your table to finish the worksheet. I'll be floating around the room, so wave me over if you need me!"
Danny stared at her for a moment. How could she be so happy in a place like this? Working with depressive, angry teenagers all day?
"Hey, why do you think she's here instead of a regular school?" Danny found himself asking.
The redhead looked taken aback by the unprompted question. "I dunno. Maybe she's just a nice person. Why did you dress up in a jumpsuit and fight ghosts from attacking people every day?"
Danny froze, his gaze locked into the redhead's strong eyes. This was a test, he realized. A test that had a rather simple answer.
Danny could just say it was his ghost obsession. Obsessions were fairly public knowledge, anyway, even if a small yet loud group of critics liked to say otherwise online. And it didn't take too long of an observation to figure out what a ghost's obsession was, even a halfa like Danny. Even if his obsession wasn't necessarily as strong as a normal ghost, it was still everything that made his identity as Phantom. The silly "hero voice" he used to calm down children, the quirky personality, even the lame puns he made while fighting ghosts. They were all tactics he used to protect.
But… "I don't know," Danny said, shrugging. "It just seemed like...the right thing to do."
But obsessions were personal. Private. Ghosts, as in-your-face as they were about their own obsessions, were also equally as sensitive about them.
It was a paradox. Truly. One Danny couldn't fully put into words. At least, not in an attempt to explain it to a random human. It was one of those instinctual, unspoken laws that governed the ghost zone. Sure, The Box Ghost quite literally had the word box in his name, and he did carry boxes with him almost 24/7, but Danny would never think to say the words, "You're obsessed with boxes." At least, not to his face.
Obsessions were unspoken. Understood, but never told. Sam and Tucker once made the mistake of insinuating what his was, and Danny reacted by tossing his lunch in the trash and hiding invisible in the library for the rest of the lunch period. He apologized later—his face red with embarrassment—and they did too, but the topic was never brought up again. And neither was his reaction. Danny truly didn't know why ghosts were sensitive about this discussion or any discussion related to their death or personal identity, but they just were.
And, judging by the intrigued looks from the two other teenagers sitting at his table, this conversation seemed to be headed towards a dangerous discussion.
"Are you gonna go back to being Phantom when you leave?" the brunette asked.
Danny winced.
Yup, he was right.
"I...don't know." Danny responded quietly. "I guess, you know, if I can. Probably. So, I'm looking at this problem, and it uses fractions and I—I'm just not sure how to...to divide fractions. I, uh wasn't really paying atten—"
"Wait, does that mean you'll be able to get out of the wheelchair eventually?" The brunette leaned closer to Danny.
Danny leaned back subconsciously and glanced nervously around the room. A boy in the table next to theirs was sending nonchalant glances their way. The teacher was on the other side, helping the table nearest to the door with a problem.
Damn, he couldn't rely on her to make them focus.
"That's the goal," he said.
"Is it because of your ghost powers?" The boy from the table in front of theirs had turned around. He was tall, well over six feet, with mussed-up brown hair and thick eyebrows. His eyes burned with curiosity. "I heard ghosts can heal fast. Does this mean your spine's gonna re-fuse or something?"
"I don't know," Danny said, claustrophobia beginning to creep into the corners of his mind. He fought to keep the panic out of his voice. "I don't know."
The guy in front of him grinned. "Man, I remember watching Phantom—er, you—on TV. It was so cool, dude. You beat the shit out of everyone!"
"Yeah, it was pretty cool," the teen at the table next to him said. He propped his elbow on the table and rested his sharp chin in his hand. "How did you even get ghost powers anyways? Cuz you're not even dead. So how does that work?"
A shaky hand went up to grip his hair. His chest was suddenly tight, and his breathing was beginning to get ragged. Through his glassy vision, he saw the redhead quirk an eyebrow at him from across the table.
"Or did you die and come back to life? Is that what happened?" the teen next to him continued, seemingly unaware of Danny's rapidly declining state. "Were you, like, going to turn into a ghost and then they brought you back at the last second?"
Air. Danny needed air. His hand tightened its hold on his hair as his other hand tugged on his shirt. He felt like he was sucking air through a straw. Nausea rolled through him like a wave. White spots danced in his eyes. He needed...he needed…
The higher pitched voice of the redhead pierced through his panic. "Hey, dude, stop. I don't think Danny's—"
"What's going on over here?"
"Nothing, we were just—"
"I don't see much of this worksheet completed."
"Yeah, we were stuck on—"
Danny leaned over the side of his chair and threw up.
Thank you to everyone who read/reviewed last chapter! I hope you enjoyed this chapter!
Till next time!