OUR FOREST OF THORNS | tbosas ✔️

012 || If This Isn't Love

"Miss Ravinstill," a second doctor stepped out of a saloon further down the hallway Coriolanus was being transferred on. Whoever he was, he seemed to know Daphne and she seemed to know him too. Given how fast that other doctor let her through, Coriolanus assumed this man was someone of importance. "What seems to be the problem?"

"My friend... He needs...," she hurried to say despite her breathlessness, only to find herself at a complete loss of words. Coriolanus caught a glimpse of her eyes then and was choked by the concern he saw reflected not only in their rapid gaze across his body, but in the whole of her expression, scrunched in what he could only describe as complete terror. Was he really wounded that badly? Or was her worry rooted in something other than plain facts?

Regardless of her loss of words, the doctor understood what she meant. "I see," he looked down upon Coriolanus briefly, before looking back in his saloon and making two quick gestures. One of the two younger doctors in there ran out of the salloon and grabbed hold of the bed. If Coriolanus had dared look at the fast passing image of the ceiling illuminated with rudely bright lights, he would have perhaps found the relief of passing out. Instead, his eyes remained glues, the best they could, on Daphne, who ran alongside the bed, with the two doctors, thanking the man in charge — she called him 'Dr. Cellgrey', which finally elucidated to Coriolanus the identity of the man as being the head of the hospital.

"How was he injured?"

"The bombing, at the arena," Daphne was having a hard time forming cohesive sentences while keeping up.

"Ah," Dr. Cellgrey looked back at Coriolanus, just then noticing the red of his uniform underneath a coating of ash. "One of the Mentors. I see. Name?"

"Coriolanus. Snow."

"Were you also there?"

"No, I came here first... I knew if he was alive, he'd have been brought here. And I knew the way the hospital operates. They drug up senseless any patient they don't have time for—"

"Ethan," Dr. Cellgrey snapped his fingers at his younger apprentice as soon as they reached a new, empty saloon. "Get Miss Ravinstill a glass of water so she may calm down. I assume you would like to remain in the room, yes, miss?"

"Please."

Coriolanus had never actually heard Daphne beg either, but there she was begging to stay there, with him.

The five other times he had 'woken up' to some form of lucidity after the small dose of anesthetics he received from Dr. Cellgrey started fading off only confirmed to him that nothing would remove her from that room, not even time, which passed around them in a convoluted and confusing way.

The first time he woke up, the room had been enveloped in a red light coming from the left side of his bed. The sunset seeped through and, since he was bound to gravitate his gaze to the right, towards her, he noticed it recognized the shade of Daphne's hair as belonging to its celestial display on their skies still yet to clear of smoke.

"Ma'am, I have to ask once again for confirmation," Thaddeus hesitated besides the wooden chair Daphne had sat down on, right next to Coriolanus' bed. "Are you certain you would not rather return home and let me watch over the boy?"

"I'm certain, Thaddeus," she answered with a bored sigh.

"Then allow me to stay with—"