The Fanfiction 2 or Why Does Technology Hate Me So Much?

Chapter 16

"Wait a minute. You're kidding, right?" I said, shocked. The kid shook his head, and I still could not believe it. "How bad is it? Where is he? Why would they do that?"

I was asking too much too fast, and the poor kid was struggling to keep up with the questions being asked,  let alone give us answers. Katherine gently made me shut up, and the kid, clearly frazzled by my panic, collected himself and spoke.

"I don't know how bad it is or why it happened, but I can take you to where he is. I'm not sure the older boys will let you in, though," he said. We agreed to have the kid take us there. I was prepared to just run there, but Katherine made me change into sensible clothing first, sensing I was going to be their for a while.

I rushed and changed, keeping the button around my neck, and ran back out to where the kid and Katherine were waiting. We followed the boy to the newsie lodge. (Well, duh. That made sense. Where else would they bring him?)

The boy ran ahead a bit, and called out to the couple of boys who were hanging around outside, Mike and Ike and a number of the younger boys. They shouted something back to him, and he came running back.

"They say you can go in, but they aren't sure how close you'll be allowed to get. Apparently, Jack's in 'guard dog mode' right now," he told us, and I got the feeling it was serious. (The last time I saw "guard dog mode", Jack was about to fight some dancers, and our blonde French girl friend,Cosette,  literally had to hold him back.)

We went in, and, after Katherine calmed Jack the Guard Dog down a bit, he let me pass from the hallway into the dormitory. Inside, Specs and another boy, maybe Albert, (but who can remember all of their names at once), were standing over one of the beds, doing something that looked like dressing wounds. Crutchie, and (maybe, I really couldn't remember the names of much of anyone, especially at the time) Elmer, Romeo, and Finch were sitting on a couple of beds a little ways away, talking quietly and looking kind of concerned, which made me think that this was serious; they wouldn't be concerned with any sort of mild injuries from some sort of light street conflict.

I edged my way toward the bed, and when the two boys hovering around it saw me, they stopped what they were doing and let me through. I got to the edge of the bed, and holding my breath for what I might see, I looked down and breathed a huge sigh of relief.

He was very beat up, and probably had a few broken bones, but was still conscious! Unable to conceal my relief, I very gently kissed his forehead. 

"How do you feel?" I asked.

"Like the Delancy's didn't win this time," he replied with the biggest smile he could muster.