Hunt

Chapter 73: Small Steps Forward

The room is quickly abuzz with activity. Faces both familiar and foreign pass by as multiple people quickly check on me in quick succession. Walker was laying on a table similar to mine next to me. There was a needle in his arm, similar to when I had my blood drawn in school. I quickly notice that I have a similar needle stuck in my arm, a tube leading to somewhere just out of sight. But the red liquid flowing through the tube quickly confirms my mounting suspicion.

"Ah, welcome back Kyle. Things were touch and go for a while there, glad you're back in the world of the living." An unfamiliar woman says as she enters the room. She's wearing scrubs, assumedly a doctor of some kind. "You're very lucky your friends got you to me when they did. You had suffered some pretty nasty injuries."

I try to sit up but I'm stopped fairly quickly by a searing and stabbing pain coursing through my abdomen. Groaning I lay back down on the table. "W-where am I? Where's..." my voice gives out before I can finish asking about my sister.

"You're somewhere safe. Reyna's quick thinking saved your life." Walker answers as he sits up from the table he was laying on. "You've been unconscious for nearly two days..."

I open my mouth to speak but can't get a word out before Reyna suddenly bursts into the room. The door slamming open as she crosses the distance to my table, collapsing on top of me. Holding me tight as she buries her face into my chest. I could tell that she's crying.

"Mr. Riley over there has been essential in your recovery." The doctor, who still hadn't introduced herself, says. "You lost a lot of blood, you're incredibly lucky that he's a universal donor."

I shoot a glance over to Walker, who was avoiding eye contact. "It was the least I could do..." He says quietly, almost under his breath. "I'm just glad you're back and awake..."

Reyna picks her head up, tears in her eyes as she also fails to meet my eye. A small tremble on her lips. "You were so cold. I was sure that we were too late..."

I spend the next hour or so unable to move on the table as I listen to the others around me, which was growing more uncomfortable with each passing minute. The dull ache in my back had slowly crept up my spine to my head, mounting in a slowly developing migraine. Reyna fills me in with an abbreviated version of what happened while I was unconscious. How she and Nyx drove off Markus and the other Silverlock wolves. How they got me here... She's pushed from the room by the doctor before I can ask her anything in return. Stating that I needed my rest and that she could come see me later. Questions that are left unanswered still burn hot on my mind, mentally jabbing me with white hot uncertainty. What happened to my sister? Where is Julie? Is she safe?

After a while of being left alone I finally had enough of this uncomfortable metal table. I couldn't keep laying here, I had to get up. With a lot of determination and quiet swearing I manage to wiggle myself up into a seated position, trying to ignore the mounting pain in my stomach as best I can. Swinging my legs over the side of the table I finally get better bearings of the room that I had woken up in. It was clean and sterile, smelling of disinfectant and soap, but that I already knew. It didn't have the charm that a normal hospital or doctors office tends to have, the motivational posters replaced on the bleach white walls with diagrams of... farm animals..?

Wait... Is this a vet clinic?

Stifling a confused laugh I quickly yank the tubes from my arm before attempting to stand. A flash of pain and heat ripples up my arm causes me to grimace, pulling me back to a vague memory of the heat that I experienced in my unconscious mind. That must have been what I was feeling... The cold I had grown comfortable in was me slipping away... It was so comforting though. Shouldn't death feel bad? Why did being brought back towards life hurt so much?