The Player's Twins (Book Two of The Great Age Plague series)

Chapter Ten

When I arrived at the hospital, I was greeted by sad grey lights that matched sad grey eyes. Josh sat in the waiting room, wearing a new pair of clothes including a soft looking ashy sweater and a pair of plain blue jeans. Overall, he looked frail, but not the same kind of frail I had seen him in a month ago-- his shoulders were up despite his ghostly figure and he smiled gently upon my entrance. I smiled back and my stomach flipped. Was that one of the babies kicking or was I nervous? Slowly, I entered the waiting room, but was intercepted by a male nurse wearing scrubs. He didn't look a day over fifteen, and I assumed his father probably owned the place, as he stood with strength and confidence despite his young age.

"We need you to sign these before you go ma'am," he said professionally. I nodded and followed him to the front desk, which was placed in the center of the room with chairs on either side of waiting guests. My eyes wandered to Josh as I paced over to the desk, but he was no longer staring my way, but rather looking into his hands as if studying the lines on them. Trickles of dread rained down from my heart into my stomach, but I silently urged myself to stay hopeful.

"He still looks pretty thin," I said to the nurse as I began to fill out information about Josh's birthday "Is he going to be okay?"

"Yes ma'am," said the nurse, and I winced a little at his formal tone. I was not used to being called ma'am and it scared me-- it made me feel just a little bit too grown up.

You're about to have twins stupid, it's time to feel grown up. The thought wandered in without my consent and I sighed, continuing to fill out the paperwork as the nurse spoke.

"For the next two months, it is recommended by the doctors he visits the center once a week for outpatient therapy in addition to continuing group therapy sessions. Also, you may need to feed him some extra food, up his calories to about two thousand eight hundred a day. When he went through withdrawals, we couldn't get him to hold anything down, which is why he is still so thin," explained the nurse as I filled out the rest of the paperwork. I nodded, handed him the clipboard, and in return got handed a packet of paper stapled in the corner. The nurse leaned over the green mosaic counter and pointed at the top of the packet.

"We have information about therapy in here as well as some recommended home treatments," began to the nurse before flipping to the back "We also have the billing in the back along with payment plans" He flipped to the final page "And finally, we have some times for group therapy listed here as well as emergency hot lines listed. That should be about everything, do you have any questions?" I shook my head "no" and gently took the packet from him, blushing. After all this time, talking to strangers still made me nervous, which was only piled onto the nerves I felt about seeing Josh after a month. On top of that, my mind was scrambling to figure out how we would pay for all this therapy, as well as the extra food to keep Josh healthy. Hell, the whole damn country had just begun to no longer need food rations, with country teens farming like pros in no time and stocking up the grocery stores, but I still barely knew how to grocery shop for Cally and I, much less a recovering meth addict. With my head spinning, I held onto my pregnant belly and made my way over to Josh.

"H-hey," I said nervously. Josh looked up coldly, meeting my eyes with a dull smile. It was like looking to the beginning of a fire-- just a dim as the ending coals, but with potential to grow into a powerful flame. Josh was still in there, somewhere.

The father of my children, the first man to know me sexually, and hopefully, one of the loves of my life, was no longer imprisoned inside the mind of a drug addict. While not nearly fully recovered, the Josh I knew had been set free again, and was just beginning the uphill battle in finding his old self. I would be lying to say it wasn't painful to see Josh this way, wishing in my heart that this had all never even happened in the first place, but I could see that I made the right decision to bring him to the hospital. Now, he needed me just as badly as I needed him, and I would do anything to get the sexy, funny, outgoing, fun-loving player I knew back with me. It was going to be another rough journey, but if anyone could do it, we could do it.