Invisible by Marvech93

Chapter 28: Never an absolution

Chapter 28:Never an absolution

Red rubbed his tired eyes, sighing for the hundredth time as he lied in a lonely room in the Viridian City General Hospital. He cast a hundredth glance at the nearby clock. He had been in there one hour and forty-five minutes but it felt like a whole week.

The former champion had been brought to the emergency ward by the paramedics. He had felt very sleepy all the way to the hospital and when an actual doctor had come up to him to check on his leg, he barely registered any of the procedures that were done to him. He figured it must have been because he had lost quite a bit of blood but as they wheeled him up to the 8th floor where he was assigned a room to recover from the incident, the nurse had told him that neither his life nor his leg were in danger and that he just needed to rest.

So, Red was in his hospital bed, a thick bandage around his leg and an IV injecting whatever medication in his veins. It turned out that he got lucky. The bullet hadn't touched his bone or a major blood vessel. It was essentially just a flesh wound. It would be long before it would heal and stop being painful, but, provided that it was correctly cared for, he was at no risk of any permanent sequelae except for a scar. It stung but it wasn't so bad at the moment; probably because of that 'whatever' medication they injected in him.

An hour and forty-five minutes he'd been sitting there, waiting, while his best friend was lying somewhere in this hospital. Red didn't even know if he was still alive. When the paramedics came, Blue was already cold and unresponsive. He tried asking every nurse he saw for his friend's whereabouts but none of them could give him an answer. He told them he could go see for himself; that he could still walk with a crutch or something but the head nurse told him patients were not allowed to visit eachother, especially if one of them was in a critical state. Not knowing... it was driving him crazy. He tried to tell himself that if Blue really was dead, it wouldn't take this long for them to tell him; that they had no reason to hide this information from him but it did nothing to reassure him. The grim possibility of Blue's death hung over him like a stormcloud. He had been in an explosion and a building collapse. He had hit his head and who knows what else... Could someone realistically survive that?

He was tormented by the horrifying image of his friend's injuries which kept popping in his mind. He kept beating himself up, wondering if he could have handled the situation better. If only he'd gotten to Viridian City faster, if only he could have stopped Giovanni before he blew up the whole place... What if he made Blue's injury worse by moving him around too much? Not to mention Giovanni had already slapped and kicked him before that.

It could take hours for him to get some news. Any news at all. But the former champion had no intention of leaving this hospital before he saw his friend, dead or alive.

It was about 2 am when Margaret rushed into his room and nearly ran over to him to give him a big hug. Red returned it gladly, at least slightly calmed by her presence and the knowledge that she was still alive and well. The former champion had called not long after he was installed into his room to let her know where he was. Of course, she was his mom, so she almost freaked out when she heard that he had been shot like any mom would have, but he quickly reassured her that his wound was not that bad. The woman had quickly made her way to the Viridian City General Hospital to check on her only son. Red considered himself to be lucky to have a mother like Margaret. Despite the fact that it wasn't currently the visit hours, the doctor had made an exception just this once because of how serious the circumstances of his hospitalisation were.

When mother and son let eachother go, Margaret's eyes went to his leg where she saw the bandages covering the gunshot wound. When she looked back at his face, she instantly noticed how grave his expression was. Something bad had happened. Something connected to the intruders that had walked into their house. She only knew half the story.