Blood, Sweat, and Schradieck

Chapter Fifteen - Alyss

The world is soft, and dark, and warm, and fuzzy. Alyss quite likes it. For an indeterminate while, she floats motionlessly on soft, unseen clouds, buoyed up by an invisible force. Somewhere inside her mind, she sighs, and quiets herself into oblivion again.

It might be a few seconds, or minutes, or hours, or even an eternity before she wakes again. It's no longer fluffy, and the clouds are gone. There's a repetitive beeping sound, harsh in her ears, and it keeps her tethered to consciousness, no matter how hard she tries to drift away again.

Somewhat annoyed that she's awake (and will be for awhile, if she has any idea), Alyss takes a deep breath and prepares to open her eyes.

The pain hits her like a brick. Her head is pounding in exact time with the beeping, creating a hellish metronome. Her chest aches terribly, and every breath is a struggle. And worst of all is her leg. It feels as if her entire left leg is on fire, burning slowly and inexorably, agony lancing up through her hip.

With a stifled cry, Alyss opens her eyes to white walls and a white ceiling, in a completely foreign environment. She doesn't know where she is, and she begins to panic. She can't move much because of her leg, but her breathing begins to quicken and become shallow, morphing into hyperventilating.

She's vaguely aware of some sort of alarm going off, and people bustling around her, and then there's a paper bag over her mouth and nose. A moment later her breathing slows in spite of itself.

The bag is removed, and a plastic oxygen mask is replaced over her face. A woman in a white coat bends down over her, her eyes insistent.

"Alyss, my name is Dr. Hanne. You're in the ICU at the hospital. I know you're scared, but I need you to calm down before you hurt yourself even more. And you're not by yourself, dear. Your teacher is here with you."

Alyss sees Mrs. DuLacy next to Dr. Hanne, and feels her teacher grasp her hand, and the sense of relief she feels is so overwhelming that she begins to cry.

Mrs. DuLacy must be close to tears herself, but she manages to keep herself composed. She sits close to Alyss, murmuring softly and stroking Alyss's hair, until Alyss has cried herself out.

"You're going to be okay, Alyss," Mrs. DuLacy tells her. "Dr. Hanne says you'll make a complete recovery. It'll just take some time."

And then Alyss remembers. "No!" she gasps. "I don't have time! I have to compete!" She tries to sit up, but a searing pain from her leg renders her horizontal again. 

Dr. Hanne holds her shoulders in place to keep her from trying to get up again. "Alyss, I need you to lie still," she says. "Your leg is very badly broken, and you need to keep it still so it can heal."

Mrs. DuLacy squeezes Alyss's hand. "I'm sorry, dear, but there's no way you can compete. There's always next year."

Alyss feels herself close off. It's too painful to imagine, that after all this hard work, she gets nothing. Not even a chance to try. She knows if she cries, she'll never stop, so she just buries all emotion deep inside, where it can't hurt her or anyone else. She stares at the ceiling, and she hears herself say, as if it's coming from far away, "Who will compete in my place?"

"Cassandra Regan," Mrs. DuLacy says. "She was the alternate."

For awhile after that, Alyss is vaguely aware of what's happening around her. Nurses bustle in and out. Dr. Hanne checks on her, and even tries to speak to her a few times, but with no response. Mrs. DuLacy sits quietly, holding Alyss's hand. They even move her after a long while, wheeling her bed out of the room, down some long hallways, into an elevator and back out, and into another room in what Alyss surmises is the main part of the hospital. 

The activity around her continues. Alyss hears everything, is aware of everything, but reacts to nothing. Halt comes after awhile. He squeezes her hand, brushes her hair out of her face. "How you doin', sweetheart?" he asks.

She doesn't answer, doesn't even show that she's heard him. She can see his face fall out of the corner of her eyes, and she knows she ought to feel terrible, because out of all people, Halt is the one that has always been there for her, has always supported and protected her. She's always felt safe with him, because she knows that he'll never let anything happen to her on his watch. 

They both know he feels that he's failed her this time.

A little bit later, Halt disappears, and her friends - or are they even friends anymore? - congregate around her. Will makes to reach for her hand, and for the first time, she speaks.

"Get out," she says.

Her voice is utterly empty and emotionless, but Will reacts like he's been burned. His hand springs back, and his eyes fill with tears.

As if he doesn't know what he's done to her.

A/N: Drat. That's my last prewritten chapter. We'll see how much time I have to write - I'm working thirty hours a week, plus preparing for (another) competition - but I have the storyline finished in my head so at least that's out of the way! I'm planning to finish this book and hopefully the next one over the summer so the entire story is published before I start college in August, because I REALLY won't have any time to write then. At least I'll be finishing up school in the next week or so.