I'll be here forever

chapter 50

I don't know how long it took me to grab that stupid pouch; just that it took way too long.

Just lifting my arm made me feel like I was dying, so I settled for shifting it over just enough to grab the pouch, making so much noise that the crickets in the bush next to me all left.

I couldn't breathe. My breaths were coming out in rasps and short gasps, and I was getting light headed. Every time I tried to breathe, to get enough oxygen, though, it felt like I was being stabbed a couple times. So, yeah, it didn't feel the best.

I figured I probably had a lot of internal bleeding, and probably a lot of external bleeding, too, which I couldn't see because of how dark it was and how I could only lift my head the tiniest bit. I probably had a punctured lung or two, as well as a concussion and whatever else. I didn't know too much about medical stuff.

I finally managed to grab the pouch he'd left me. It was bigger than I thought it was.

I could feel myself dying. I knew I was. I felt myself slipping away. I could feel it in every half-breath I took, the piercing pain stabbing my insides. I could feel it in how my heartbeat slowed down, and I felt sluggish. I wanted to lay down, and go to sleep. But I knew if I did that, I'd never wake back up. I'd never get to see her again.

That strengthened my resolve. But if whatever was in this pouch wasn't some sort of healing, I really was going to die here, on this dumb riverbank. Which sucked. At least falling into a hole is dramatic. Bleeding out on a riverbank? Who the hell dies on a riverbank?

With what little strength I had left, I lifted the pouch to be on my chest, even though it hurt like hell.

With trembling hands, I opened it, and the contents spilled out. I only immediately recognized one of them; a golden square, the moonlight reflecting off of it. Ambrosia.

Thank you, death Cupid.

I shoved the whole thing in my mouth with the only strength I could muster, hoping it would work before I keeled over due to blood loss and whatever the hell else was wrong with me.

It tasted like Chik-Fil-A and lemonade, like the meal Daisy and I had in Faire Coffees after I flooded the restaurant. I smiled at the memory, even though it was painful to smile.

The ambrosia worked immediately; the agonizing, burning, painful sensation in my chest was replaced with a warm, filling one, and I sighed and laid my head back onto the ground.

I wasn't going to die. Not yet, at least. If some monster decided to come out of the woods right now, though, it'd be free meat.

However, none did, and I let the ambrosia work. I felt it mending my internal injuries- it didn't hurt as much to breath anymore, less of a stabbing pain and more of a sore aching in my chest. Anything would be better than that piercing pain in my lungs. I'd take a sore chest over that any day.

But then the ambrosia mended my spine, and I was introduced to a whole new world of pain.

Turns out, the reason why I couldn't feel the water sloshing around my legs is because my back was broken. I hadn't had any feeling in my legs, until the ambrosia fixed that.

There was good news and bad news about that; the good news, I didn't have to be crippled for the rest of my cursed life. The bad news, my legs were mangled and broken in too many ways to count, and they hurt like a bitch.

I cried out in pain, and the ambrosia couldn't have worked any slower. It travelled down my spine, and I bit through my bottom lip trying to keep from crying out again, so I didn't get skewered by some monster that happened to be passing by.

Now that my neck was somewhat healed, I could raise my head, but I shouldn't have. Looking at my legs, I almost threw up. I only got a quick glance, but by the looks of it, the bone was sticking out of my leg, in more places than one.

Those next few hours were the worst of my life. I was in constant, agonizing pain. I couldn't move, only go through it. I thought it was bad before I could feel my legs; now that I could, I almost wished I would actually die. But I was determined to see Daisy again, and I wasn't going to let anything get in the way of that.

So I endured it. At some point, I passed out from the pain, and when I woke up, the sun was high overhead, almost close to setting, and my legs were almost healed. The bone wasn't sticking out anymore, at least, and I could sit up without fucking killing myself, which I appreciated.

So I did, and decided to inspect what the death Cupid guy had given me for whatever the fuck past-me had done for him in Alaska.

The items in the pouch confused me. There were two other squares of ambrosia, besides the one I'd eaten, which would've made three. That was normal- it was the other items that were weird.

There was a free admission ticket for an art museum in Long Island; a folded up, obviously used navigation map; a pine branch, that somehow didn't seem wilted; a wood chip, that had probably come from a playground; and a piece of paper, with a crude drawing of the watch that was miraculously still on my wrist, an arrow pointing at a something on the side.

I placed the items back in the pouch, and then shoved it in my pocket. I could wonder what the hell it all meant later. But right now, I had to get out of here, before some monster found me. I'd been in one place way too long.

I squeezed my eyes shut, hoping and praying my legs were healed enough to at least walk.

Slowly and painfully, I rose to my feet. I was 90% sure that I was going to just keel over and die right there from the pain, but I didn't, and instead, I stood. I felt like I hadn't stood in years.

And then, with nothing else to do, I pulled out the navigation map, spent at least ten minutes determining which way pointed to Long Island, and limped, very, very slowly, and very, very painfully in that direction.