Bullet to the Heart

Ethan Hunt sat at his desk at Santa Fe High, twiddling his thumbs as his teacher droned on about Geometry. All that he was thinking about was Alyssa, the girl who sat in front of him. Almost the entire 10th grade knew that he liked her, but he couldn't bring himself to ask her out. He was drifting off to sleep on his desk when the teacher called, "Ethan, what is Slope-Intercept form?" He searched his mind, knowing that he had learned it in Algebra 1, but he couldn't figure it out.

"Ummm... Is it y=mx+b?" he asked.

"I don't know, you tell me," the teacher said

"Yes, yes it is," he stated.

"Very good, Ethan. You got lucky that we were talking about review, I could tell that you weren't paying attention," she said with a slight brightness in her eyes. He looked down at the floor and then looked back up, smiling. "Ok students, back to class." She talked about algebraic proofs and logic, and he paid attention the whole time. 10 minutes later, class ended and he walked to lunch. He was sitting with his friends when everything around him started to fade and he heard a buzzing noise in his ears. He remembered falling to the floor, and only solid black after that. He woke up in an ambulance with a cast on his arm. His arm throbbed, and he couldn't move it. He looked up and saw his mother's concerned face looming over him, watching everything that he did.

"Ethan, you're up! I was so worried about you, I was called by the school because you had a seizure during lunch. It's getting worse," his mother said.

"Mom, I'm fine. What's wrong with my arm?" he asked, already knowing what had happened to his arm.

"You... you fell on it when you were having a seizure and it bent backwards. At least, that's what the Paramedics think happened to you," she replied with the usual brightness gone from her eyes.

"It's ok, mom. It's not that bad, and this is only the first time that I've had a seizure when I was awake. I did forget to take my meds this morning, so..." he responded.

"No, no, it's not your fault. You should have taken your meds, but everyone makes mistakes sometime or another in their life. You'll be fine," she said with shaky breath. She smiled a little bit and some of the brightness in her eyes reappeared. They arrived at the hospital and he was checked into the Emergency Room. He was put into a normal room and they attached some monitors to him, but he had no idea what they were. A doctor walked in and the nurse that had been there walked over to stand next to the doctor.

"Ethan, is that your name?" the doctor asked.

"Yeah, that's me," he responded.

"You have fractured your joint, and your arm will not sit straight ever again unless you let us operate on you and set the broken pieces of your bone into place. Do we have permission to do this?" the doctor asked Ethan.

"Do whatever you need to, I don't really want to have a crooked arm or an unworking joint for the rest of my life."

"Okay, thank you. Nurse Elise, prepare him to come into the OR."

"Yes, doctor," Elise replied happily as the doctor left the room. "Ok, this will hurt a little bit, but I'm going to put an IV in you so that we can deliver the anesthesia," she said as she put the catheter into his arm and taped the tube on so that it wouldn't move. She pressed a button on a small remote-like thing, and said, "Ok, the doctor will be here to take you into the Operation room soon." She left the room and left Ethan thinking about what could happen and what could go wrong. A different doctor than the one from before walked into his room and smiled.

"Ok Ethan, so we're going to take you into the OR now. I'm Doctor Jones, and I will be operating on your arm," said Doctor Jones.

"Wait, I thought that that last doctor was going to operate on my arm!" Ethan exclaimed.