The Freshman Tease ✓

33. Everything hurts

Lincoln

"I think you two should go home for a bit, you look terrible," Ray says, putting his hand on my shoulder. "We'll stay here."

Tina is so exhausted she can't lift her head up. "N...n-no."

"Tina I think you should go home," I pat her shoulder, "you've had a rough night. First your grandpa and now Katie. We can check on him every once in a while for you."

Ray helps her up. "Come on I'll drive you home." She nods and slowly leaves.

After they leave, Stephanie sits down next to me. "You still love her don't you?" she whispers, resting her head on my shoulder and patting my wrist

I'm slightly taken aback. "Yeah...I do. How did you know?"

"It's the way you've always looked at her," she smiles slightly, "it's never changed, from the first time you told me about her, to yesterday, when we were listening to her speak. Please tell her when she wakes up."

I nod as she pulls me into a comforting hug.

Katie

Everything hurts.

Why does everything hurt?

I struggle to open my eyes. It's so bright.

I blink a few times, and the room slowly comes into focus. I'm in the hospital?

"She's awake!" I hear a voice call.

I look around. Lincoln, Stephanie, Ray, Tina, Leena, and my parents are in the room. Everyone looks tired but relieved.

"What happened?" I croak, my throat feels hoarse.

"You were in a car accident honey," Mom says.

I have very little recollection of driving recently. In fact I have very little recollection of what happened recently in general. I look down at my body, I see two casts and a bunch of scratches and bruises on the parts of me not covered by the hospital gown. "Makes sense."

Dad chuckles, "I guess your sense of humor didn't get hurt."

"We're so glad you're OK," Leena rushes up to me, "your parents and I woke up to frantic voicemails from Lincoln."

"I saw the news about the accident first," he explains with a pained look on his face, "I called everyone."

"This poor guy was hyperventilating in the hallway," Tina smiles slightly, patting his shoulder.

I'm a bit amused. "Thank you Lincoln," I say gratefully. "How did you manage to find Leena's and my parent's numbers though?"

He and Tina look at each other and laugh a bit. "It involved a bit of Facebook stalking and going through a very long chain of people."

My heartbeat quickens slightly at how caring and thoughtful they are. I assume I'm not in great condition, so that's probably a bad thing to happen right now.

A young doctor walks in. She looks a little surprised at the number of people in the small room. "Hello Ms. Sato, I'm Dr. Data, I'm glad to see you're up," she says with a smile. "Your vitals are doing remarkably well considering the trauma your body went through. Unfortunately, you have a broken leg, broken wrist, and a couple broken ribs. We're going to keep you here for a couple more days just to monitor for any signs of head injuries."

"Thank you Doctor," I nod. I don't know how severe the accident was, and I don't really want to know right now.

"Lincoln you should probably go get some food," Stephanie advises, patting his back.