More time together (Grahamfield)

A bond made of Amber

Inside the ambulance, Ms. Grant kept holding Max's hand all the time, which made her feel a bit calmer. When they finally got to the hospital, Max was quickly placed on a wheel bed and taken to an ambulatory room. Ms. Grant stayed at the reception.

The coldness and the smell of the hospital instantly reminded Max of Jefferson's dark room, making her feel uneasy again. Her eyes moved everywhere, trying to find any comforting spot, but it seemed impossible: the sight of those metallic medical equipments around her were triggering a lot of bad memories.

The voices of the hospital crew sounded indistinct to her. She only started to come back to herself when a doctor approached her face and pointed a flashlight to her eyes, to check her eye pupils. After a few seconds, he turned the flashlight off and started to test Max's reflexes, while asking some questions such as her name, age, address and so on, to check her level of consciousness. She closed her eyes and answered to all of the questions laconically – she just wanted to get out of that place as soon as possible. A few instants and a lot of neurological tests later, the doctor spoke to Max: according to him, she seemed fine, but would have to stay some hours in observation.

Max wasn't counting on that, since she knew she was fine, at least physically. Her heart and mind were devastated, and there was nothing a doctor could do to fix it. Max tried to argue with the practitioner, but he insisted: he was obligated to follow that protocol and it was for her own good.

The doctor left the ambulatory room, ordering two assistants to take Max to a bedroom. Frustrated, she rested her head on the pillow, while a man and a woman pushed her wheel bed out of the ambulatory, through the hallway. This time, though, the hospital environment didn't trigger any of her dark room memories – in fact, she didn't even bother about it now. Fear had turned into anger and determination.

.....

Warren and Kate arrived at the hospital about ten minutes after the ambulance, since he had to stop at some traffic lights. They met Ms. Grant at the reception, and she told them that Max seemed fine at the ambulance and was now being examined by the doctors.

Warren contacted his mother, and a couple minutes later she showed up, visibly worried: the news about the Blackwell incident had already spread over the hospital and possibly the whole town. She hugged him and asked if he was okay. He nodded, but seemed quite nervous. Stammering a bit, he told her about Max, asking his mother to take care of the girl. She knew her son well and saw in his eyes that he was really concerned: that girl clearly meant a lot to him. She promised her son she would take care of his friend and went back to the hospital's interior.

....

As soon as the assistants left the room, Max jumped out of the bed and picked her bag, looking for her cell phone. She was eager to call anyone who could tell her what was going on at Blackwell at that moment. A lot of questions were popping inside her head: where did they take Chloe? Was Nathan arrested? Was Jeff... uh, anyone else arrested? Besides that, she wanted to talk to her parents, who were in New York for a week vacation, as soon as possible. Despite they didn't know about Chloe for the last five years, Max knew she was like a daughter to them, like she was to William and Joyce.

She finally found her cell phone, but it was out of battery, probably because a lot of people called her right after the event. Max leaned on the bed, feeling defeated. For a second she considered using her power to sneak out of the hospital, but the vivid reminiscence of the tornado made her give up of the idea: "enough of time manipulating for now", she thought.

She decided to look for a public phone. When she was about to open the door to leave, a nurse entered the room. A couple of swear-words popped into Max's head: she feared the doctors might think she was mentally confused and should take some sort of sedative - that would make her situation even worse. However, for Max's surprise, the nurse didn't scold her; instead, she spoke kindly to her, asking if she needed anything.