Snake Eater - THE BRAVO BOYS [book three]

Chapter FIFTY

Logan Nash

...a few days later...

Cold, unforgiving pressure presses upward from beneath me as I stir awake.. Groggy, with a splitting headache and an aversion to the overhead fluorescent lights, my eyelids flutter open to take in a blinding white glow.. I feel the icy sting of polished steel against my bare chest and cheek, and the gentle bristle of an overhead air conditioning vent breathing a chill into the air.. The presence of gravity creeps its way back into my awareness as my orientations focus to become clearer, honing in on my surroundings..

Slowly and with a hazy head, I navigate that I am laying face down with my breath restricted by my own weight.. The taste of chemicals and charcoal clings to the back of my throat and lingers in my nostrils, causing me to retch and cough involuntarily..

"Nngghh-" Blinking through bleary eyes, I wince and groan at the tight pull of pain.. There is an obvious trauma tugging at my back and ribs, screaming its discomfort..

I feel like a total fucking dumpster fire.
Everything hurts..
I mean.. EVERYTHING.

Gingerly folding my arms under myself and bracing for support, I begin to test the limits of my collective injuries.. My muscle trembles weakly beneath my sedated weight and my head wobbles with what could only be explained as a pharmaceutical laden dizziness..

"D-Dallas?" I croak in concern, a rough, sandpaper consistency to my withered vocal chords.. "Baby?"

"Careful there, Young Man.. You don't want to tear your stitches again.." Murmurs a rigid voice overhead as a pair of old fashioned loafers shuffle into my sightline.. "You sustained quite a nasty gash in the chaos of it all, and a few good burns too.."

"What chaos?" I wheeze with a struggle, lifting my pounding head to glance around and finding and expanse of cheap terrazzo laminate flooring and cinder block walls.. But there, among the sterile benches and laboratory instruments, stands a wiry, silver haired stranger in a white coat.. He now stares down at me through piercing, midnight sapphires, studying me like some kind of naked lab rat..

Suddenly I am unsettled in my own skin..
"Where the hell am I?" I manage to rasp through a relentless thirst that seems to slice in my throat with serrated ferocity...

The surly old stranger sighs, crossing the room with a graceful gait, he offers me a thin paper hospital gown for modesty, which I fold over my exposed nethers with a wince.. The frigid blast of the AC doing me no favours in that department..

Waiting for me to cover myself, the stranger plops wearily into a plastic chair at the tableside before he speaks.. "That is the million dollar question, Young Man.."

I grunt through the agony of twisting my body to a tentative upright while his visage blurs in and out, so that I can't quite make out the insignia embroidered upon the breast of his white coat.. "Are you a doctor?" I bite with irritation, frowning down at the bandages wound tightly around my tender torso and up my right arm.. In the confusion, my brain aches for being forced to think about literally anything other than the howling pain that burns its way up my flank.. "Cus' I could really use some fucking meds.."