Mac Vs PC: Infected

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In this business, by the time you realize you're in trouble, it's too late to save yourself. Unless you're running scared all the time, you're gone.

-Bill Gates (Window/PC)

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A cracked sternum.

Three weeks to heal, three long weeks to heal.

Three weeks without the sound of his name elongated in the screams of victory, without the victorious line of sweat along his back soaking his jersey, nor the zealous veil of power accompanying the defeat of an opponent.

Three week of Piper playing nurse. Shoot her now.

Thanking the passing doctor, Piper's mother began the coddling. Maternal murmurs ran over Mackenzie's face as she ran her hands along his arms soothing the threat of immobility. Mac hadn't opened his eyes since the unpleasant diagnoses—his hands clenched into fits, knuckles bone white. The pain he felt had nothing to do with the fracture of hard bone, but of the organ it protected. The emotion pierced so deep, Piper could feel through the wall of her own heart.

Shifting in the cold plastic chair, Piper pulled at her fingers—tugging at the joints hoping the pain would distract her. She couldn't give him her mother's sympathy, as much as it was in her genetic make-up she learned long ago that just as boys don't cry, boys don't comfort. Rub some dirt on it and continue on.

Looking up from her sore hands, she focused on the picture her mother created nurturing the motherless boy. As much as she wanted to disappear from this emotional moment, Piper spoke up.

"Mom," Her voice lifted over the waves of anger Mackenzie was pumping out. She needed to get him out of here before he forgot his pain; and before he realized that two floors above was where his mother was held. Piper had realized it the moment Mackenzie wheeled in the emergency doors kicking and screaming.

"I know." With one last embrace, her mother peeled herself from his side, wiped her eyes, and straightening her back into a firm line of motherly love. "I signed the discharge papers," sniffle, "here are some clothes I bought for you to change into," snivel, "I'll just—I'm just going to bring the car around."

Quickly her mother moved from the stale pallid bed, her eyes not leaving Mackenzie until she was forced to turn away.

"Mac," Piper tried to speak as gently as her Mother had as she leaned forward in her stiff plastic chair. As much as she wanted him out of here, she didn't think she could take it anymore than him.

"Don't gloat. Just don't." Facing her, he opened his eyes, resentment a fresh green. As quickly as he opened them, he shut them—his lids colliding into each other as if shutting out the light would shut her out as well.

"I wasn't." The shock came quicker than her defenses could handle, the hurt tainting the force field. "Here." She plopped the duffle bag on top of his feet. "You should get dressed."

A silent second formed into a frozen minute until, finally, Mackenzie's eyes slid open rendering raw red eyes: colored in pain, dry with anger at his untimely mortality.

His movements were slow and shaky as he moved the thin gray blanket from his body, sliding his legs over the cold steel bars of the bed.

Piper didn't move from her seat.

Slowly, he pressed his hands behind him to push himself off the bed.

Still Piper stayed seated.

She felt her eyes glaze over. In a flash, she was two floors up and 5 months in the past watching Pam Tosh struggle from her bed to the bathroom too proud to ask for help, to proud to admit that she wasn't the strong one anymore. All of Piper's life, Pam was always the strong one, the single mother, the soccer mom, the best recipes and the most coupons, but not in this hospital. Not in this dreary, draining, dreadful place where souls faded and flesh died.