The Shattered

Chapter 3: finally out of that stupid room

    My next few days were spent in the hospital. As time progressed, I was able to sit up and look around the tiny room that I was in. It was probably ten foot by ten foot, with a window on the wall opposite the door. There was a closet and a few paintings lining the walls, but other than that, the room was bare except for the bed and me. On the third day, the nurses allowed me to get up and walk out of the building for a little bit of fresh air. I went out and sat in front of the infirmary for a little while, before they urged me to get back inside before I hurt myself.

    Finally, after a week, they reluctantly let me go with a bottle of pills, reminding me not to hesitate to come back if something felt wrong. I told them that I would and practically skipped away from that hell hole. After I was out of their sight, I broke into a run. My home was across the village, so I had to run a ways to get there. I used all of the back roads, preferring them to the bustling main roads that most everyone else would be using to get to and from work and other places. Bustling was a slight over exaggeration, considering that there were probably only sixty people in their village, total.

    I turned a sharp corner and ran, quite literally, into someone who uttered a surprised grunt, but didn't seem too disgruntled by it. I on the other hand, felt as if I had hit a solid brick wall. My legs flew out from underneath me, and I fell to the ground. I sat there for a second, somewhat stunned by the impact. After a moment, I scrambled to my feet. I brushed myself off and then looked up, surprised to find Ethan's coal black eyes staring back at me. Suddenly, he burst out laughing, which nearly caused me to fall back down to the ground where I had just come from.

    "Whoa Rinnie! Where's the fire?" He said, his eyes crinkling at the corners like they always did when he smiled.

    "Nowhere. I was just looking forward to getting away from that tiny room that they were keeping me in, that and getting back home to Anna." I examined his face more closely, "And you should have something put on those cuts. They're starting to look infected." I tried to put on a commanding face, but he looked so amused that I wasn't sure that it was working.

    "Right." He replied, without much conviction. That irked me some, but I didn't mention it.
   
"I've gotta go. Anna is going to die if she doesn't see me soon." I said, biting my lip and looking at a particularly inflamed cut on his cheek. "Remember to get something on those." I added before giving him a quick hug and running on. I finally broke out into the street, and stopped to catch my breath, glancing around to make sure that I actually was where I thought I was. Pretty much the whole village looked the same, so it wasn't that hard to get lost. I veered left, hoping that I was right and that my home was that way, and it turned out that I was. We didn't have lawns in our village, and most people didn't have any plants at all, but our family had a small flower garden and a slightly larger vegetable garden. Our family itself consisted of me, my mom, and my sister. My dad died in the plane crash when I was just five, so I don't remember him that well. Both my sister and my mother remember him though, so we just didn't talk about him at all.
I walked slowly up our dirt walkway, trying to catch my breath. Mom wouldn't like that I had run when I was just out of the hospital. I opened our small wooden door slowly, and entered the five room house that we called home. We had a bathroom, a living room/ kitchen/main room, and bedrooms for each of us. It was a small home, but not as small as many of the families around us had, and many of them had more people than we had, too.
"Mom, Anna, I'm home!" I announced, and waited for a reply. None came. I walked through the doorway to my room, and flopped on the small bed that lay inside. My room wasn't that different from the one at the hospital, maybe even a tad smaller. At least here though I wasn't kept as a captive. I tried to think about where mom and Anna would be right now. I stood up and went back to the main room, and checked the clock. Crap! It was five past noon, and I was sure that lunch had started by now. I pulled my sneakers back onto my feet and sprinted out the door. So much for saving mom from having to know that I had been running.
Breakfast, lunch, and dinner happened basically the same way every day with very little variation. The times were always seven o'clock for breakfast, twelve o'clock for lunch and six o'clock for dinner. You could get there as early or late as you pleased, but it was all on a first come first serve basis. We all got into a line, and the later you come, the further back in the line you are. The further back in the line you are, the slimmer the chances of actually getting food are. The cooks rarely had enough food for everyone, even when the hunters had a good day. In our village, the early bird really did get the worm. I sprinted back towards the center of town where our meals were always held, and mentally smacked myself in the head with a two by four. I was rarely late for meals, because unlike Ethan, the cooks hated me and wouldn't save a drop of food for me. If I was in line though, they couldn't turn me down. They weren't allowed to.
When I finally arrived in the clearing, it seemed as if most of the town was there. If I wanted food, I had better hope that the hunters had caught a hefty amount of prey yesterday. I jogged over to line and stopped right behind Ethan.
"Well, fancy seeing you here!" he smiled at me and I smiled back, too out of breath to speak.
"I tried to tell you, but you ran off before I could say anything." He quirked an eyebrow at me and I scowled. I hated when he did that and he knew it. I stuck my tongue out at him, turned around, and crossed my arms in front of me, pretending to be angry. He tickled my side and I ended up melting into a fit of giggles. I couldn't hold a grudge against him and he knew that, too.
By the time we made it to the front of the line, they were handing out the last of the food, but I felt lucky to get any at all. It must have been a pretty good day for the hunters yesterday. They were serving rabbit soup with all kinds of vegetables. This was one of my favorite dishes, even though the cooks cooked some amazing things. I watched them pile the last of the soup onto Ethan's plate. It was a massive serving. It was amazing how much his good looks affected the women in this village. All except for me, the girls swooned over him, and the older ones would do anything that they could to make him happy. The village girls seemed to think that I was somehow his girl friend, because I was always hanging out with him. They resented me, not that I really cared what anyone else thought of me. I had my family and I had Ethan, and I didn't need anyone else.
We looked out over the sea of heads, trying to find my mom and sister. They almost certainly saved seats for us. That was another issue there. If you weren't to the meals early enough, they didn't have enough seats for you. That wasn't an issue for my family, because the earliest one here always saved seats for the other two, plus Ethan whenever he was able to join us. Finally, I spotted Anna's vibrant red hair.
"There! Next to mom and John." I pointed it out to Ethan, and we began making our way over to them. Sure enough, my sister and mom had saved seats for both Ethan and me.
"How did you guys know that I was out?" I asked. I had only been sent home half an hour ago, and we didn't have phones of any kind.
"We saw the nurse here and she told us." Mom commented. Obviously, Anna had not been informed, or had not been paying attention because when she saw me she squealed and jumped out of her chair to come hug me. Even though she was three years older than me, the same age as Ethan, she still acted like my younger sister sometimes. I quickly set down my tray just in time for her barrage of questions and hugs. She wanted to know all about my injuries, my stay at the hospital, the nurses, the battle, and everything else. Next year she was going to be turning eighteen, and at eighteen, you got to choose your job. Anna was still exploring the possibilities just to appease my mom, but she was pretty much set on being a cook. The actual cooks had basically already adopted her, so I knew that she would have no trouble getting the job that she wanted. I already knew that I wanted to be a hunter like my mom, but female hunters were very rare, and you had to be really good to get the job. Mom always said that I had a special touch, and that she knew that I would get the job, but I wasn't so sure.
I finally managed to sit down, and Ethan set down his tray besides me and engaged in a lively conversation with a women that I didn't know sitting a few seats down. Once we finished eating, we dumped our trays and utensils back at the cook's stand, and headed home. After lunch, everyone but the hunters had a break. Since I had just come home, the rest of the hunters agreed to give my mom the rest of the afternoon off to be with me. Anna had found a couple of her million friends during lunch, and had told us to walk home without her.
Mom and I talked about trivial matters as we talked, and when we got home, I went to take a nap. The jump from lying in bed all day to running half way across town and back had its fair share of effects on me, and I had to practically drag myself across the ground to the bed. I fell asleep almost before I hit the mattress.