Ten to the power of thirty three

Chapter one continued

voicing an annoyance that vampires don’t sparkle.
By the time he left hospital that time they had found his anaemia was caused by a Meckels diverticulum which a few months later was sorted by surgery.
By the time he was midway through his A-levels, now age 18 he ended up in hospital yet again. He was at his paternal grandparents, at a barbeque in the middle of the summer holidays. The sun was glaring down at them so much so the adults were hiding in the shade of the gazebo. The grass moved only slightly in the wind, brushing against the many owl statues that were dotted around the garden. The willow tree at the very end of the garden waved serenely and the dominant sound was of the children there running around shouting and screaming to each other as they played.
Ezra was one of those sat under the gazebo, enjoying being in a social environment where his mother and stepfather couldn’t make snide comments due to how the other adults would react. His peace though was broken by a child’s shrill voice as they asked for an adults help.
‘Our toys got stuck up the tree’ a little boy around seven told the gazebo of seated adults ‘Can someone help?’ he asked, almost pleading as children do.
Ezra stood up, not saying anything but walking over to the tree to see where the toys were. He passed through the outer layer of the willow branches, the beautiful slender lance like leaves stroking against his face as he walked through and closer to the trunk. There against the trunk he looked up. He had to look between the branches, searching for something that wasn’t green or brown until somewhere near the very top of the tree he saw a flash of pink with green.
Ezra sighed now he knew where the toy was. There was no way he could hit the toy out via a stick or something and so he crossed the last foot or so towards the trunk of the willow tree and took hold. It was brittle with deep grooves and almost some sort of shaggy scales as he pulled himself up into the space left by the v split of the trunk. He'd climbed the tree many times in his youth and so as he climbed higher and higher he felt confident that he’d be ok. Each step was tested carefully, pressing down on the next branch with a hand or foot to make sure it would take his weight before he ascended to another layer. Eventually he reached the top and the toy, an action man which as Ezra looked at it snarled slightly back in a frozen plastic way. Still it being hard plastic meant that Ezra could throw it down to the children. It crashed into almost every branch on the way down but made it there to the ground unharmed. The same child who’d come and asked for help picked it up off the ground and called up.
‘Thank you Mr’ the boy shouted and he ran off with the rest of the children.
Ezra though still had to descend the tree, and so began to go onto each branch he’d used on the way up. It was slow progress but eventually he was close to jumping down. He reached the last branch, around seven feet from the ground when he heard a snap and the branch broke beneath him. He fell but the fall was over before he even realized he was falling. He landed on the ground, straight on his back with a thud loud enough to alert everyone there that he’d fallen. Still what alerted them more was the scream from his mouth as pain blossomed in his back that was beyond anything he’d ever felt. He rolled over to try and escape the pain, illogical though it may have been it made perfect sense in his head. When the pain didn’t stop he rolled back onto his back and that was when someone came to see him.
They were one of the adults who had been at the barbeque who he’d never seen before that day. Still as they crouched over him he no longer cared if he knew them, only if they could help.
‘Can you feel you legs?’ the man asked and when Ezra confirmed he could they told him he could get up.
Pain was still extreme in his back. Breath was hard to catch and his face was now as pale as milk. He walked slowly, each step adding to the pain and yet he didn’t cry. He wheezed as he made it past the gazebo and into his grandparents house, going to the toilet before he made it back to the gazebo. There he sat (or more perched, unable to truly sit as any pressure on his back or bum made the pain worse), pale and hardly able to breathe due to the pain until his mother looked at him.
‘Do you want to go to the hospital?’ she asked him and he only just managed to get the word yes out. From there he was taken to hospital and eventually after an X-ray it was shown he’d fractured his L1 vertebrae. He had to stay for two weeks as they inserted titanium around it to stabilize it and then to see that he was able to cope should he go home. His mother visited him each day after work in hospital though he hated having her there, feeling no familial bond with her now, not since the age of thirteen. She’d never used violence against him again but he couldn’t find it in himself to trust her ever again.
For that reason when it came to going to university only a few months after Ezra chose somewhere as far away as possible simply so that he never had to speak to his family again. It gave him a freedom he’d never known before and something he became protective of beyond reason.