Momma's Little Soldier

Chapter 24

Opening my eyes felt like a chore, an impossible one, that's how heavy they are and my body feels like it is being pushed into whatever surface I am on. Once I slowly got my eyes open, I squinted them at the giant florescent light made my eyes burn, these aren't Dauntless infirmary lights, taking my time to adjust to the light. Just from the ceiling alone, I knew this wasn't Dauntless, so where am I? Moving my head to the left, I noticed a small blue end table with a basket that had a few things in it, well the color blue was a dead give away, why did they bring me to Erudite? Moving my head to the right, I saw all the wires that hooked up to my heart monitor (which was beeping extremely loud) and my IV bag, my eyes traveled to the door that opened up and revealed a nurse. She looked to be in her early twenties, her brown hair up neatly in a high bun, and she was wearing Erudite blue scrubs, I watched as she walked towards me and flashed me a small smile, "Oh good, you're awake. I'll go tell your family and get your doctor." She walked out of the room without saying a word.

Just a few moments later the same nurse came in, only this time with my mother, Max, and Eric following behind her, "Oh thank god, you are awake." Max's relieved tone made me let out a breathy chuckle. "You can't get rid of me that easily," I looked at the three of them, "can someone tell me why you put me here in Erudite?" I asked, wondering why I couldn't just recover at Dauntless in the first place. Eric looked over at the nurse, who was finishing changing my IV, "Can you give us a minute?" She nodded her head and continued to gaze at him before she left the room, I felt a wave of jealousy, but it quickly went away when I locked eyes with Eric. He didn't even give her a second of his time, all he did was stare at me and I can see the look in his eyes, fear. "Ash, do you remember anything before you woke up?" I thought about it for a moment and everything hit me all at once, the thought of everything that happened that night make me sick. How can someone be so twisted to want to kill someone just to make it to the top? "You don't have to answer that right now." Eric's voice held a slightly gentle touch to it, something a bit unnatural for him. "Is no one going to answer my question?" I snapped. Max placed a hand on my shoulder, "We thought you were going to die, Ash, you lost a lot of blood and you've been in and out of consciousness for days. It was safer to have you transferred here where we knew, you were going to survive." My mom scoffed and my face scrunched up. "Care to enlighten me, mother?"

She looked pissed off more than Max and Eric, at least they were relieved to see me awake and alive, "Because of the fact you almost died, you have been pulled from initiation." You would think a mother would be happy to know that her child is okay, but not my mother, I became just another chess piece the second I went to Dauntless. "Pulled?! Are you insane?! No, that isn't happening." I lifted myself up, flinching from the pain. "I never said she was pulled, Jeanine. I just said if she isn't okay when she wakes up, then we would have to pull her from the physical side of things." Well, at least Max was going to give me a chance. "Look at her, does she look okay to you Max?! My daughter was almost killed, I think that means she isn't going to be okay."

"I think your daughter is old enough to make her own decisions on if she wants to be pulled from this or not. Unlike you, I know for a fact she can come back from this." Eric and I locked eyes and for the first time, I felt a wave of comfort wash over me. With Eric I have only ever felt complete shock or butterflies in my stomach, this is something I could definitely get used to, I gave him a half-smile as a way to say thank you. I looked back over to Max and my mom, showing the fact that I am pissed, "Let's get one thing straight, no one tells me that I am fragile and no one makes me quit when I have just started. Now what's going to happen is you will take me back to Dauntless and I am going to finish this, am I making myself clear?" I looked between the three of them each one impressed by my choice to stay despite what happened. Whatever happened to me is done and in the past, right now I need to focus and figure out how to move on from this, it shouldn't be too hard, right? "Well if that's the case, I have some paperwork to fill out and I will talk to your doctor-" Right on cue, my doctor walks in. He is a decent-looking man, brown hair, dull blue eyes, although that might be because he is wearing a dark blue doctor's coat over his white scrubs, he isn't bad looking for an Erudite, "Oh good you're all here. I wanted to talk to everyone about Sasha's condition." I shook my head. "My name is Ash, not Sasha," I stated and he nodded his head. "My apologies, anyways, Ash seems to be doing well with the blood transfusions so we don't need to worry there. The bruising and swelling have gone down tremendously on her brain, but the only thing we can't fix is the scarring that will most definitely occur on the chest." That's right, the piercing. My hand traveled up to where it used to be, but all I felt was a bandage to keep it from bleeding out, now it was all hitting me, I felt disgusted a little bit ago, but now I feel angry and fragile at once. How could I let someone like him go as far as to almost killing me? Why didn't I just stop him before it got worse? "How much longer until we can bring her back to Dauntless?" Max asked, but I was still lost in thought, my hand not leaving the bandage. "We would like to keep her for one more night just to be safe, but to make things go quickly tomorrow, you can sign some paperwork right now if you would like?" I heard the doctor leave with whoever followed behind him, but I didn't bother to look up and see.