Envelope Challenge

Chapter 8 - Another Player

I can't post tomorrow so here you go.

At the hospital, the doctors gave her some drugs that didn't do anything with the numb state she was already in and messed around with her stitches. They might have been removing them; they might have been putting more. They could've even been ripping her scalp in half to dissect and probe her brain. She had no way of knowing through the fuzz that was her body, the unending nothingness that was so terrifying to her.

After the doctors had released her, telling her to "take it easy for the next few days and take out the stitches in 7 to 10 days," Nathaniel and she were sitting in one of the waiting areas while she composed herself.

"Sorry," she eventually whispered into the shoulder that she was leaning on.

"About what?" he asked back after a moment of silence.

She searched for words and flailed her arms around. "All this: the hospital, the letter, not being able to look for the next instructions. All of it, everything."

A moment passed and she wondered if he was going to answer her or not. She was more than shocked when his hand suddenly appeared in her vision a split second before he flicked her forehead. Her hand flew to her head and looked up at him in shock after lifting her head from his shoulder.

"Is it normal to flick someone who just got stitches?" she demanded, shock lacing her voice.

"I don't care. It's not your fault about any of this. I'm the one that got us in the accident in the first place."

This time she flicked his forehead. "How many times do I have to say it's not your fault? It's those masked freaks fault."

Someone who was passing by them stopped when they heard that comment. As Polly turned away from Nathaniel to look at her, she saw that the person was in fact a she. She was small, probably coming in around five feet even, but she was muscular. Polly was sure that she would lose if she took her on in a fight. She had brown hair pulled up into a bun and had her arm in a sling. And she was staring directly at where they were sitting with curiosity and shock evident in her hazel eyes.

"Can we help you?" Nathaniel growled rudely, which earned him an elbow to the ribs. "In the nicest way possible of course," he amended to avoid another elbow into his sensitive abdomen.

"Did you...?" She trailed off and looked around before stepping closer. "Did you just say masked freaks?"

"Yeah...?" Polly drew out in confusion.

"Did you get letters too?" The words rushed from her quickly, as if revealing a deep, dark secret, which, honestly, the letters were.

Polly was about to answer when Nathaniel silenced her with a tight squeeze of her hand. "Sorry," he told her. "I don't know what you're talking about."

The new girl reached for her bag, being careful not to jostle her sling, and pulled out the envelope. Just like theirs, it was torn open, but her crest was intact because she'd cleanly sliced the top of the envelope. The snake wrapped lion roared at them and Polly's eyes flicked up to hers.

"Is that what happened to your arm?" she asked before Nathaniel could silence her again. The groan he let out told her he didn't appreciate acting on her own like that.

The girl squealed. "So you do have the letter! I hadn't met anyone else who I could tell had one so I was beginning to think this was a prank or something, but now that I met you I know that it's not and that's so awesome because it means I'm not alone and nobody likes being alone right? When I was attacked by them, I figured someone just hated me, but now I see it's not that and that's pretty awesome!"