Elijah (MxM)

Chapter Sixteen

I awoke to the brightest white light I had ever seen, my vision swirling in and out of consciousness. The light kept getting brighter and brighter, closer and closer until I felt it incapsulate me completely.

Fuck, I'm dead, aren't I?

But I started hearing noises, sounds of people talking, and started feeling a cold breeze enveloping me like I was in a freezer. I felt myself shiver, then take a breath, my eyes finally fully opening to encounter the bright light only to find that it was the fluorescence of a hospital room and not God or whatever I thought it was. I groaned, smacking my lips together, tasting the putrid dryness of my mouth, my throat sore. I started realizing that everything was sore, my head, my face, my chest, my legs.

Yup, I'm definitely alive.

I shifted in the hospital bed, feeling the needles in my arm poking and prodding me. I winced, sitting up to take a better look around me. Excruciating pain shot up through my body and I yelled out, shaking with cold. Nobody was there, the room was completely desolate of life besides my own. I turned to my right and saw a 'call for help' button and slowly reached over to press it. It lit up but didn't make any noise as I slumped back down on the bed, exhaling a sharp exclamation of pain. The doctor took his time getting to me, sliding open the door about five minutes later wearing a surprised expression.

He looked down at his chart then back up at me. "Kit, you're awake. You go by Kit, right?"

I nodded feebly, before letting my head flop back down on the pillow. "What's going on?" I tried to ask but my voice was incredibly hoarse and broken.

"You're in the hospital, you were beaten very badly." He approached, flashing a flashlight in my eyes and telling me to follow his finger. "How're you feeling?"

"My chest hurts," I murmured as he put the blood pressure cuff around my arm.

"That's because you have two broken ribs." He told me, checking my pulse next. "The worst of it is over now. You were placed in a medically induced coma for a week to make sure you had no damage to your brain. All your charts and scans came back clean but on top of your ribs you suffered a broken nose, dislocated jaw, severe damage to your retina, and some fractured teeth." I struggled to wrap my brain around all of this, moving my tongue around in my mouth to feel that one of my molars was gone. The doctor took a breath, "we had to pull one of them. With a trip to the dentist, the other one should be okay. Are you in any pain?"

I would've laughed if I could. "Yeah."

"Because of your history we were advised to go light on the medication but now that you're awake, it is ultimately your decision." He told me with a sort of judgment in his tone.

"I want more." I could barely force out, everything hurting horribly all at once.

"I will raise your dosage for comfort." He wrote something down on his notepad before speaking again. "We've been informed to call the police because this is an assault case. You can decide if you want to press charges."

"No—" I blurted, "no police. Not yet." I wasn't really sure what to do. I couldn't even begin to remember that night right then, nor did I want to. I didn't want to see the aftermath.

"I will give you time to think about it." The doctor said, pushing up his glasses. A nurse popped into the room really fast and whispered something into his ear before departing. I gave him a strange look and he gave me a fake smile. "Your mother's here, she's going to be excited to hear that you're awake. Can she come in?"

I hesitated, swallowed, then nodded.

He walked off and an eternity later I watched my mother walk up through the window, looking more stressed than I had seen her in years. Her hair was frazzled and the circles under her eyes were darker than usual but nonetheless, she smiled when she saw me awake, her face lighting up. "Kit!" She ran up to me, too afraid to touch or hug me in case of hurting me. "How're you feeling?"