Pain. That was all I could feel. In my leg, my hand, my arm, my stomach, my head, my eye, my face, my shoulder and my foot. I tried to breathe slowly and deeply and heard myself cry out-my stomach hurt with every breath, I lay my head back down and turned it to the right. A drip sat in my arm and I could feel myself starting to panic. If there was one thing that scared me more than woodlands, it was needles. I began to breathe quickly which just made my stomach hurt more and I coughed, I could feel hot tears pricking my eyes and heard someone coming towards my bed.
I lay back down, shaking and defeated and feeling as if my reputation and pride would never recover. A doctor leant over me and gently pulled my eyes open, shining a bright light into them. "Stay lying down," he instructed as I tried to get up once again "follow my finger with your eyes if you can," he began to move his finger horizontally across my eye line, I followed and felt a tugging sensation in the right side of my face. He nodded, seemingly happy with my eye movement ability and unhooked a clipboard from the end of my bed. "Well," he said, "You want to hear the damage?" With a heavy heart I nodded. He took a breath.
"You have at least four broken bones, a possible sprain, two fractures, twenty-four stitches in total and a black eye," he told me "Broken bones are: three of your lower ribs and you've cracked Talus bone in your right foot. You've fractured your shoulder blade on the right side and there is a very deep cut across three of your metacarpals, you have sixteen stitches in the palm of your left hand, six above your right eye and two on the back of your head-don't worry, we only had to take an unnoticeable amount of hair off. Your knee may be sprained and there is likely to be some ligament damage" I was carefully feeling the back of my head, I could feel the two stitches but no bald patch which made me sigh with relief, which in turn hurt my stomach.
I lay there dumbly feeling ashamed of myself. I cringed as I imagined the scene, as I imagined the thoughts going through everyone's head when they had seen me almost bleeding to death after being attacked by a single Venator just after they had finished fighting off at least two each. I wasn't sure what I would do with myself, how I could recover from this without seeming like I'm trying. I heard the door open and in walked Dan, when he saw me looking at him he walked even more swiftly over to me, his cloak billowing powerfully and majestically behind him.
He got to my bed and smiled sympathetically, I looked at him and he could see the shame in my eyes. "It's okay," he said quietly, but we both knew that it wasn't.
"I'm an idiot. I can't believe I couldn't fight, fighting is the one thing that I am good at, it is the one reason that I don't get kicked out of this island for good!" I sighed, feeling the deep pain of genuine shame and embarrassment.
"Don't be silly," he said in a firm tone "You know it's not like that. You're a good fighter, we all know that's what got you here in the first place. You had lost a lot of blood, no one could fight under that kind of—"he stopped, he almost used the word "weakness", but stopped himself before he had said it, unfortunately, the damage was done. He said no more, just picked up my chart and read through my ailments. Not even Dan could make me feel better, in fact, he had somehow made me feel worse. I lay there for hours feeling angry and ashamed.
Finally, when the doctor had been and gone, I made a decision to funnel that shame into determination. I sat up, stifling myself from screaming in pain in the process. I closed my eyes and pulled the drip out of my arm, shaking as I did so. The blood bag was empty and creased and only my own blood now slithered onto the sheet. I slowly and carefully moved my legs over the side of the bed. I was wearing a long hospital gown, zipped at the back and my cloak had been left folded beside my bed. Stiffly, I got up and squealed slightly as my right foot touched the ground. I took a deep breath and put all my weight on my feet. I took a moment to relax and then, being careful not to interrupt the stitches on my hand, I grabbed my cloak and slowly put it on. It was the middle of the day and I was unlikely to run into anyone, as most Cerberi spent the days asleep and the nights awake.
