One Moment

Perfect ending

"Where is he?" I yelled in the nurses face. "Where'd you take him?! We need to see him!" The nurse pulled herself out of my grasped and headed back down the hallway she had come from. I pulled my hands back through my hair. It was knotted, and caked in mud.

"Where's a doctor?" Dally snapped. He looked just as frantic as I felt, and was whipping back and forth, looking for a doctor.

"I don't know – I don't know!" I punched at the wall again, this time it left a smudge of blood. "Where'd they take him?!" Just than, the nurse came back down the hall with a doctor. Dally was in front of him and grabbing the front of his white lab coat before they were even that close to us.

"Where's Johnny Cade?!" He hissed through clenched teeth. "Where have you taken him?!" The doctor – who was about Dally's height – pulled himself from Dally's grasp.

"Johnny Cade has been taken to surgery." He said, and the three of us stood in stunned silence. Surgery? "We think we have found a way to help him walk again. It's going to be close, but we have a very skilled team of surgeons in the operation room with him right now. If all goes well, he should be able to walk again after he recovers from the surgery. Now, if you plan on staying, please refrain from jumping at our staff to get information. I'll have Jane here show you to the waiting area for people waiting for someone in surgery." The doctor walked off and turned a corner. I stood in shock, and waited for someone to come and tell me I was in a dream. But no one did. Instead, the nurse motioned for us to follow her down another hallway. But I didn't make it.

I collapsed to the floor, my head buried under my arms as I knelt there and cried. I'd never cried so much in my whole life, and there was no way I was going to stop. Johnny was going to live – at least there was a very good chance he was. If he was going to live, so was Dally. And not only was he going to live, but he was going to walk. He wasn't going to waste away in a wheelchair, he was going to be able to walk.

"Mia, come on, baby." I knew the voice, yet the person it belonged to didn't sound like that. The voice was too soft. I looked up to see Dally kneeling down beside me, no expression on his face. He just looked suddenly drained, like the light had been taken out of him, but not in a bad way. "We can go wait for him to get out. Here," He held out a hand and pulled me to my feet, and once I was standing, he wrapped his arm around my waist to hold me up. "Come on, Pony. We need to call the guys and have them come out here." I'd almost forgotten Ponyboy, and I took a deep breath to calm myself down.

Ponyboy was standing, as if in a daze, starring at the floor. I reached out and took his hand, bring his attention to me. We stared at each other for a moment before he nodded his head and we all started to follow the nurse. She lead us to a quiet hallway with a large waiting area, and left us alone, promising to send someone to tell us when Johnny was out, though it would be a few hours.

"I'll go call the guys. Find someone to look at him." Dally said, motioning to Ponyboy, who'd dropped himself into a chair. I nodded and watched him walk away before searching for a nurse. It would have been easier to keep the other one around to ask for help, but she was already gone.

"Come on, Ponyboy." I said soothingly as I pulled him up from the chair. "We're going to find you help, OK?" He didn't say anything, but he stood up and we walked back the way we had come. I had thought I'd seen a nurses station there. But we didn't get far before a nurse walked out of a room and gave us both a look before leading us into a vacant room a couple doors from the waiting area.

"He needs to be looked at first." I said, and dropped down into a chair beside the bed that the nurse had gotten Ponyboy to sit down on while she went for a doctor.

"Mia?" My head had lolled to the side, but I looked up as Ponyboy stared at the floor.

"Yea, Pony," I said as I got up and walked over to sit down beside him. He was quiet for a moment.