She Will Persist

33

Axel

"What's wrong with her?"

Cal silently took the silver stethoscope out his ears and draped it around his neck, then rubbed down his face with one hand.

"Cal," I pressed.

"It's her head mostly," he began. "Physical trauma from her time with the Sytengco's bruised some parts of her skull and her brain. I'm still going over the MRI scans, but there's damage to her hippocampus, basal ganglia and frontal lobe, which is why she's having memory gaps, why her energy is so low, and can't quite coordinate her movements. The tracker that Flagg created based on the leftover technology in her eye damaged her amygdala and the top of her spinal cord just from where it was placed at the back of her neck. She also has a pulmonary contusion, and one of her ribs has been out of place for a while and has started to splinter. The parts that broke off punctured some of her internal organs, which explains the bleeding. An old gunshot wound in her side went untreated and is now infected. I don't know how she managed to keep that a secret. But I presume you knew about it?"

I nodded. I knew about that last part. I had no fucking clue what a hippo-something was. 

"And she didn't want to bother me, so she dealt with it herself?"

I scratched the back of my neck. "Yeah. I'm sorry. I should have told you, I just, she didn't want me to, and I promised her, and like —you know how she is...." I trailed off and swept a hand through my hair. I'd been doing that so much lately I'm pretty sure it looked like a wave of mud at this point. 

Cal nodded and continued to look tired. "No, I get it. It was stupid, but I get it."

I leaned forward in my chair and began to wring my hands together slowly. They were clammy and trembling like a vibrating phone. "Is she gonna die?" I whispered.

Cal's dark brown eyes looked directly into mine. "Axel I know you're not a kid, so—"

"I've never really been a kid Oakleigh. Tell me the truth," I commanded.

The Irishman let out a small breath. "There's a small chance."

"How small?"

"10%."

My chest locked up. A shrill beep sounded in my ears. The air around me suddenly felt hot and suffocating. "Of dying?" I whispered.

Cal shook his head slowly. "Other way around." 

-

Adira

"I'm seeing double," I joked, blinking the sleep out of my eyes.

Both boys immediately sat forward and leaned their forearms on opposites edge of the hospital bed I was in. I struggled to shift myself up a little more, muttering 'it's okay, I got it,' when one of the boys tried to help me prop my back up against a pillow. Finally I managed it, sinking my shaking limbs deep into the soft surface. "Okay, so let's see here," I said, glancing between the two brunets on either side of me. I pointed to the one on my left, "dick," I said, then shifted my gaze to the one on my right, "and less of a dick."

Harrison mimicked a shot clock buzzer on my left. "Wrong."

On my other side Axel broke into a grin. "Nah, I think she got it this time."

"Hell yeah I did," I cried, then burst out into a coughing fit that left every part of me raw. Axel stood up and grabbed a glass of water with a straw from the table beside me, then passed it over to me with sympathy in his eyes. It was always his eyes that even when I was sedated off my ass that made me able to tell him and Harrison apart.