Winning His War

41

Jem's POV

My stomach fucking hurt. My throat was burning. My eyes felt like they weighed a ton. I couldn't move my fingers or toes without using way more strength than I should have had to use.

Every voice around me sounded muffled and underwater. Voices sounded familiar but I couldn't place them. Every now and then a tune would fill the room, I could have sworn I knew it but my head hurt and my mind was tired.

Days passed with this feeling.

Nothing but black filled my vision. Nothing but mumbled voices and that same familiar tune filled the room. Nothing but pain filled my body.

Days and days of this.

I tried and failed to move my fingers over and over again with no success.

Everything hurt. Everything was black. Nothing made sense. I couldn't feel anything beneath me; it honestly just felt like I was floating.

Being almost dead was boring and frustrating. I could feel people coming in and out of the room I was in constantly. I could feel the way the air shifted when they sat around me like I was on display. I could hear their voices as they spoke but I couldn't understand anything. My fucking fingers still wouldn't move.

I assumed I was back home but the simple fact that I didn't know for sure was enough to make that familiar feeling well up in my chest. The thought of the person sitting beside me being an enemy who was only helping me stay alive for information I might have had panic building up inside of me.

My heart felt like it was too big for my chest. It was growing rapidly and soon enough it would outgrow my body. It was going to kill me long before the bullet in my stomach would.

I had felt this feeling enough times to know that if I could feel my fingers they would be numb and my knees would be shaking.

My chest only grew. With every day that passed that fear got worse until I no longer took comfort in the familiar tune that would echo around the room or the voiced that spoke in hushed voices.

I thought I could feel my hands shaking but I knew better than to think that they actually were. I was frozen as time went on around me.

Days and days of panic. Days and days of frustration. Days and days of pain.

I had managed to move a finger by pure luck but since that day I was back to nothing.

In the split second I had my fingers move the panic subsided but when I realized I couldn't do it again, it was back in an instant.

A hand brushed against mine. I had tried to jerk my hand away but I didn't have the strength. I laid there, the panic in my chest searing as the hand brushed and played my arm but it only made my skin prickle and my heart beat faster.

Then I heard the first clear voice since this happened.

"It's just me James. It's just me. I've known you long enough to know that the change in your heart rate isn't a good sign. You're home. You're safe. Barrett and I are fine. Patrick and Andrew are fine. The raid went according to plan. There is nothing to worry about. Just calm down."

Dev's voice was the first bit of relief I felt since this whole thing started. His hand didn't move away this time. He moved his hand down to mine and gripped tightly.

I could feel myself calming down little by little as Dev's voice filled the air.

"There you go," he soothed. The monotone voice I had grown so used to over the years was comforting. "You're doing so well. Can you move your fingers for me?"