Clementine x Male reader : We Are Monsters

Chapter 51

Everything was dark and peaceful, then everything was blinding and painful. That's how you'd describe what it felt like when you opened your eyes for what felt like the first time in your entire existence.

At first, you just stood there, tears swelling up in your eyes as you didn't even have the reflex to blink. Slowly, one neuron after the other, your brain started to difficultly start and acknowledge your surroundings as a survival instinct. You were starting at a ceiling fan, with two out of the four blades snapped in half. You didn't even really know if you were really awake, nor where the fuck you were. All you could tell right now was that you're laid on your back, most likely on a bed from the soft feeling of it, and that your body seems to weigh a ton.

You finally blinked, and those tears rolled down your temples. Breathing was difficult, and painful. Straining, you sounded a bit like a biter trying to breathe with its dead muscles. The pain was oddly diffused, and warm. It didn't feel that bad. Shaken by a thrill, you realized that you were bare-chested, tucked under a large blanket. It didn't take you long to start to cough, and you squeezed the mattress of the bed while groaning in pain in a strangled way. Then, you cleared your throat and spat a little chunk of coagulated blood. The taste of iron in your mouth felt like if you sucked a coin for hours.

Slowly, your neck stiff and your head feeling in a fog, you moved your head around and started to take a look around. The bedroom you were in had a single person bed, a white desk with an office chair by it ,a bookshelf, a closet, and that was it. The blue wallpapers were starting to peel off, covered of moss and humid stains.

After staying like this for maybe five minutes, wondering if you were really alive, you tried to sit on the bed. What a terrible mistake that was. Instantly, your chest started to burn you from inside, like if a fist was squeezing your organs and ribs with all its strength. With a grunt, at the verge of tearing up, you fell back on the bed and started to pant, holding your chest with one hand and clenching on the blanket with the other.

With a weak gurgling whine, you rolled on your side, clenching your teeth and telling yourself that you're a god, that nothing can stop you, especially not a bullet, and that everything's fine. But who are you kidding, a bullet is more than enough to stop anyone, and you're far from being a god. So, you just stood there on your side, trying to ignore that fire in your chest like if Satan decided to open a new branch of Hell in there. You took a look at the desk, and saw some bloody rags as well as duct tape. 

You took a look at your chest, and noticed a long piece of cloth wrapped all the way around your chest. There was also a larger and thicker rag held by some duct tape three inches above your liver, bloodied. The more you stared at it, the more your pain grew, so you took another look at the desk, and saw two small orange plastic bottles by the rags. You squinted to see the labels, but couldn't. Most likely, those are heavy painkillers and they're the reason the pain is bearable and that you're so stunned.

You rolled back on your back, and stared at the ceiling for ten more minutes, trying to get your composure back. You started to think about many things, for starters where the fuck the girl is, then the state of your body. You probably have one or two ribs completely shattered, which is bad as some pieces could have stabbed your lung and caused even more damage and bleeding. As for your lung, well, from the squeezing and burning sensation, your best guess is that it probably collapsed due to a hemothorax. At least, the wound wasn't a seal-sucking one, else more and more air would have came into your lung cavity and compressed your lung hard enough to crush your heart in the process as it doesn't have any way to escape. If that was the case, you'd be a roaming dead corpse by now.

Someone can survive with one lung, just don't expect to be able to run a marathon, but right now you're threatened by infections, internal bleeding, and a thousand other life-threatening scenarios. What were the percentages of people who survived chest gunshot wounds when hospitals were still a thing, huh ? Probably not as low as people who got shot in the head or heart, but still a deadly injury nonetheless.