The Medical School

Chapter Fourteen

Today is the last day of the dreaded attic.

We still have to sleep here tonight, but tomorrow morning we can eat breakfast. All of us are so weak that we practically fall down the attic stairs to the floor. I hope today's Lab doesn't involve moving.

And it doesn't.

We get to be strapped onto tables and tested for our reactions to pain in the Pain Reaction Lab. Seven and a half hours of pure torture. It's the worst Lab yet by a thousand landslides.

We are stabbed, pinched, burned, sliced, and frozen. Any form of pain that exists, we get the joy of experiencing. We are tested for how loud we scream, how much our heart rate increases, and how much we cry.

Then after all the tests are complete, they are done once again to determine if we got used to them or not. My arms and legs are nothing but four masses of cuts, burns, and bruises by the time the gong sounds.

We can't leave the room though, because we're in too much pain to even think about sitting up, much less trying to walk. The workers have to carry us to the attic, where we lie groaning for a good twenty minutes before we manage to re-form the circle for the last two speakers, which are Peter and I.

Painfully, I begin to roll my yoga pants down where they had been pushed up for testing.

I suddenly feel nervous about showing so much skin right next to Peter. It's a strange feeling that I've never gotten before.

Said teenage boy is currently staring off into the distance, seemingly gathering his thoughts about what he's going to say.

Thirty more seconds pass, and then I am exposed to who this boy named Peter is.

Peter Braudel is a fifteen-year-old boy from Devonshire. His parents realized that they couldn't support him, so at the age of one, they gave him to Happy Endings Orphanage.

He never understood why people wouldn't adopt him. Loving couples were taking all of his friends in, and he would always be left behind.

The staff had always given him false hope, and every time adoption day came and went without him, he would hate himself more and more. He spent his days alone, not wanting to make any more friends that he would lose.

He played by a small creek as a child, and caught salamanders. He enjoys being outside, left to his own thoughts. He never wanted to be close to anyone, until he met a wonderful girl named Bren.

Wait, what? It takes a second to register that he means me. I turn to look at him, and he smiles. My heart rate speeds up.

"Huh?" I say. I'm not used to this sort of affection.

"I want us to be friends," he says. "You're very kind, and you're the first person who I've trusted in a long time. Well, besides these two jerks over here." He nodded toward Kali and Tyler, grinning.

I'm paralyzed, and have no idea what to say to him. This guy just gave me the biggest compliment I've ever gotten in my entire life.

"Thanks so much, Peter. That really means a lot to me," I manage.

I smile, and he scoots a little closer to me. As he continues his stories, I can't stop thinking about him. Besides Abby, who is too young to really understand people, and Charlotte, who was on the same level of crazy as me, why would Peter of all people, such a nice person, want to be friends with me?

The girl, who is disobedient, never takes care of her hair, and wants to be wild and free. That's who I am. The boy, who is willing to put himself first, help others, and take care of people. That's who Peter is.