Element

✭ Chapter 49

A jolt passes through my body as the ambulance rides over a pothole. My whole body has gone completely numb, unsusceptible to everything around me. Alanna's gaze out the little window shows that I'm not the only one in shock. Parisa and Aately look horrified, both looking as if they'd seen a ghost.

Then again, what we just encountered was just about that. Maybe even worse.

I shift in my seat in the back of the ambulance, feeling rather uncomfortable. My back is hot and sticky with blood, even though the medics covered the cut with temporary bandages. They just wanted it to be covered before we got to the hospital. It's apparently bad enough for hospitalization, but doesn't classify as an emergency.

Aately starts shivering violently, and winces like she's physically in pain. Alanna takes notice and wraps a single arm around her petite shoulders. The sisterly notion is all Aately needs to even out her breathing. She curls up against Alanna, who looks to the side, back out the window.

As I stare out the tiny window at the top of the vehicle's back door, my mind tries to make sense of the events that happened. The whitish gray landscape whips by in an indescribable blur. Like the frozen woods surrounding the road, I'm completely devoid of emotions. It's as if when Drexel showed his true colors, my insides froze.

My mind works without thought, reliving the event as if on a film screen. Yvette... Taunting Drexel, calling him out. Drexel trying to strangle her, pushing me over, turning into a shadow...

Aately let out a scream that was unlike any I'd ever heard before when he transformed. Shrill, ear-splitting, utterly horrified. Ms. Benting and General Forge must have heard it, because the next second, General Forge had tackled Drexel away from Yvette and knocked him out cold. Ms. Benting's face went white with horror when she saw Drexel. Aately, Parisa, and Alanna stood stone still, their breath robbed by shock.

My eyes close, and I recall two heavily armed men lifting Drexel and locking him in the back of a large vehicle. It drove off almost immediately, leaving us behind without any answers.

Yvette's limp body flashes across my mind, when the medics driving a different ambulance carefully lifted her up off the ground to a cot. Aately tried to run after her and Ms. Benting had to pull her back.

"She'll be alright," she said, trying to comfort Aately. Like words at that point could ever do anything.

I wonder if she will be alright. Yvette deserves what she got in a way. She deserves to have a reminder that what she says does in fact have consequences. But Drexel was trying to kill her, I remind myself. Despite how horrible she's been, I'm sure that I don't want her dead. Her life is worth more than what she's done.

The ambulance shakes again as we pass over another pothole.

They should really fix those, I find myself thinking as I again shift in my seat.

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The ambulance slows to a stop. I hear two doors slam shut and the crunching snow under boots. A muffled voice yells out commands, and we hear the back doors of another ambulance swing open. More crunching is audible, so Yvette must have been removed from her ambulance.

A heavy pair of footsteps crunches towards our ambulance, and suddenly, the back doors open. Standing before us is a large, burly man in a nurse uniform, with a snow jacket to shield out the cold.

"Follow me," he grunts in a low voice, as we clamber silently from our seats along the insides of the ambulance. The man leads us to the very front of the hospital, under an overhang, where a stern-looking young woman waits expectantly.