Raven

Barely Alive

"TADASHI!" I shout out, snapping my eyes open, suddenly filled with energy as I remember the man who came to rescue me and is now stuck in the building, now fragile from the flames and explosion.

Crawling to the unmoving body of Tadashi, I check his pulse.

He's alive.

Thank goodness.

I shake him, but he's not stirring up.

"Tadashi, wake up!" it hurts to speak.

"Tadashi, you need to wake up!" the tears now pouring out of my eyes, almost evaporating due to the high temperature.

Even after a few more shakes, he's not waking up.

Sobs now escape my throat. I can't leave without him. I refuse.

Looking around for anything that might help me, my eyes find a hover board. It better be able to carry two people!

I crawl to it and to my surprise and relief, it works.

I take it to Tadashi's body and use all my strenght to raise him up so he's leaning on me, piggyback style. Not wasting any time I step on the board and we are off. It barely keeps our combined weight up in the air, propably a bit damaged from the explosion. I do not blame it though. I would've been amazed if it worked perfectly.

Stepping on the speed button, we zoom away from the, now, collapsing building, it not being able to hold iself up thanks to all the damage that happened.

On my back, I feel Tadashi's hearbeat slow down, not yet slow enough to be life threatening, but slow enough to make my own hearbeat quicken from worry and anxiety.

The board now going as fast as it possibly can I navigate it through the city. Only slowing down as we near a house at the edge of San Fransokio and we drive straight in from one of the opened windows.

I hurry upstairs, almost falling down when my foot didn't step on the next stair. I drop the unconcious man on a bed and get to work, running around the house, gathering the most essential medical equipments and medicines that mom left here.

Good thing she was a doctor and liked to keep stuff around "just in case", as she used to say.

I use all the knowledge she stuck in my mind to hook Tadashi on all those machinery, a needle here and a sticker there.

In no time the room is filled with the steady beeping of a heart monitor and the humming coming from the oxygen tank. Also some other machines I deemed necessary.

Finally sure he was not going to die, not right now at least, I go and gather the rest of the medical stuff I think I'll need. That includes a few tubes of the same type of moisturiser I used a couple of weeks earlier when I got a burn on my hand.

Some good things about when your mom is the best in her field of work and inventing new ways to help the medical industry, is that she's always having a few containers of her own products laying around, just like, for example, the moisturiser.

Carrying everything upstairs at once I place them on the table beside the bed Tadashi is still unconcious on.

I stare at his face, tears still falling down my face, dampening my shirt, well at least the top of it, right under my chin.

Telling myself he is not going to die, I move my view of vision down to his shirt.

I need to take it off.

I really need to take off his clothes so I can apply the moisturiser.

"It's fine. It'll just be like all those time you spent time on the beach."

"I have seen his body before."

"Yeah, but that was when he was still concious and was the one who took off his own clothes."

"But I have no choice, I need to do this. The burns will only get worse if I don't apply the moisturiser."

I talk to myself as I gently take off his shirt, mindful of all the tubes and wires around him and stuck in, or to, him.

I throw the shirt to a couch at the other end of the room and move down to take off his shoes, socks and pants. Not wanting to completely rid off the small amount of privacy he still has, I leave his boxers on, pretty sure that area is safe to keep untouched. At least his clothes gave the impression that it didn't receive any damage.

With shaky hands I squeeze a tube and start spreading the moisturiser evenly on his whole body. I would've liked this, the feeling of my fingers running around his body, if he wanted me to do this. But at the moment I am touching it without his consent.

I know I am doing this to help him but still. I feel bad because he won't be able to stop me if he didn't like me touching him.

...

"Done." I raise both of my hands, as if surrendering, and step away to give the unconcious man some space. I take a few more steps back and flop onto the couch, letting a sigh escape my mouth.

Now that the immediate threat of Tadashi dying is over with, a sudden wave of tiredness washes over me.

I guess that much adrenaline would do so for a person.

With the tiredness comes the realization that, even though he's now in stable condition, Tadashi could still die. The suppressed tears force their way out and I'm not even going to try stop the sobs escaping my throat.

So I cry.

And cry.

And cry.