Cold Fire Rising

Chapter 15

Chapter Fifteen

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Donatello had finally taken to sleeping in his bed, at night, only mildly disturbed by nightmares and night terrors.

Professor Honeycutt, after assuring him multiple times, sternly, that he would take on some of the research, had practically ordered him to sleep in his room or he would "be bodily removed from the lab and dumped unceremoniously on the floor of the bedroom."

All right, then.

Donatello awoke, screaming, again, and in the dark he couldn't tell whether or not his hands were sticky slick with blood and mucus. Or sweat. It could be sweat. He rubbed his fingers together. Okay, it was sweat. So that had been a dream, and the surgery on his baby brother had been three months ago, and said brother had in fact been awake, active, and recovering for the last fourteen weeks. Also, said brother had psychic powers.

Also, his hands had been inside his brother, and he had no real idea what he'd been doing, except somehow his hands understood, and somehow he had stopped blood flowing and fluids building and fluids leaking and a lung from filling with blood and a lung from staying collapsed and how the absolute fuck had he done all that, he could barely remember.

His dreams remembered, so he didn't want to dream. But not dreaming would eventually result in a slow loss of sanity. So he kept sleep-inducing tea near his bed, tea that would knock him out, but the terrors still happened... just now with less intensity.

Donnie sighed and rubbed his face, and a tiny exasperated gasping sob escaped him. He wasn't even seventeen and there he was, performing desperate emergency on his own sibling with an android and a human who knew less than he. Damn it, he was an engineer, not a doctor. He only played the family doctor because science was his baby and medicine came across most science. Hells, Raphael was probably better at wound care since he smashed things so much. Leo had learned how to suture after he took up needlepoint with Splinter and April, "for meditation purposes." And Mikey battered himself skateboarding enough that he carried his own mini first aid kit. But none of that compared. He had seen lung tissue, struggling. He had seen how bone had blinked at him through flesh and tissue. He had been shaken to his core and he was still surprised he had maintained himself. No wonder he had bits of lost time here and there. April had helped him drain the lung and intubate. His hands had started shaking. She had smiled at him through her surgical mask. He had not passed out. The whole time, he had been wishing he could close his eyes and lie down. But he knew he never could, never.

Donatello shook his head fiercely, grunting, his head clearing. He looked at a clock. It was eight in the morning. Really? All right, then. He got up, worked through some warm-up katas, meditated until he was able to disperse whatever gruesome images were still in the front of his mind, and got dressed, ready to science the day until his brain fell out.

First, breakfast. Then, video games. Then, maybe—

He had opened his door and stepped into the hallway right before he heard the heavy crash and the startled howl. Then,

"Not my fault! I swear!"

"It was floating, jackass, of course it was your fault! Why else would a frying pan float around and smack me?"

"I didn't mean it, Raph!"

"Intent is bullshit, Mikey!"

"Guys, easy! Raph, it was totally a misdirected thing, and Mikey, next time, swerve it away from people's heads."

In unison: "Sorry, Leo."

Don blinked. Michelangelo was already levitating things outside the infirmary? But...