Octonauts

Part 4

Muffled sounds come through his ears, blurry images that he can't really make out. Sobs, he hears sobs. In his shadow of consciousness, he feels himself being dragged back to the clinic, being placed on a table.

"I'm a doctor-" He hears part of a muted sentence. "-Medical training."

"I want to die." The sentence slips out of his cracked lips, his voice raspy. It's the first time he's said it, but he feels as if he was waiting to for years. It's always been there. At the back of his mind. Sometimes it's barely a whisper, other times it shouts so loudly he can't hear anything else.

Bright light blinds him, the blurriness coming slightly into focus with shouts of a different kind.

"Peso!" Shellington yells, smiling slightly. "You're alright. You're going to be alright."

"Dashi-" Peso whispers inaudibly.

"He's awake! Captain, he's awake!" Shellington calls.

"For God's sake 'e better be." Kwazii mutters, "I'm gonna break his bloody neck."

"What? Why?" Shellington's blurry shape seems confused.

"While we were all bein' helpful, shootin' down the boat fulla psychos, he watched Dashi." his voice quivers slightly at her name, "He watched 'er die. He didn't do nothing." Kwazii's scowl hides something deeper.

Even though he's an ass, he still cares. But he's right. I'm responsible. It's my fault. I should die.

Peso's heartrate quickens, he begins to shake. Straps hold him to the table. They must have seen the gup's footage.

"Let me up." Peso pulls against the restraints. "Let me up!" the beeping machine maddens him further. "It's my fault! She's DEAD!" he wails again. "I should be dead!"

"He's concussed." Shellington injects him with the last of the anaesthetic. Knocking him out.

Kwazii's POV:

"But 'es right." Kwazii asserts. "He should be dead, not 'er." He slouches in his chair. Shellington's attention had all been on Peso, him having the worst injuries, so no one else had been treated while he was out.

"He'll be fine for now." Shellington states as he turns towards Kwazii, who has a deep cut across his eye onto his cheek. The scarlet liquid from the wound is splattered across his hair. A bandage is wrapped carelessly around it, but the chances of seeing with the eye again are low.

"I'm so sorry Kwazii. Peso was in a critical condition." Shellington's voice confirms the fact that he will never see with that eye again.

"Should'a let him die." Kwazii's fists are clenched, his nails puncturing his palms. His eyes begin to water, cleansing themselves. He frowns away the tears. He flinches as the salt seeps into his laceration.

Removing the loose bandage, Shellington gasps. Half of the eye is sloping out; half is crushed bloodily into the socket.

"How the fuck did you do that?" Shellington asks.

"I was swimming to get the gup's propellor. It was broken. I 'eard the splash of a harpoon on the water, I was too slow to move. It hit me helmet, and me eye. But matey, I was close enough to the octopod to not drown."

"Bite this." he holds out a thick piece of leather.

"What? Okay?"

"Sorry for this." Shellington speaks quickly, and before Kwazii can do anything, he digs his gloved fingers into the socket and pulls out the remains of the eye.