the alternatives ⇒ tmr trilogy & newtmas au ⇒ COMPLETED

Chapter Seven

The door burst open, cutting Thomas off from revealing any of his many thoughts. The slivers of ideas, not quite put into words yet, swirled in a jumbled mess around his mind.

Then he looked towards the door.

The Alternatives had come to save him.

"Tommy! You're bloody alive. We didn't think ya would be after... y'know..." Newt was the first to enter the room. He gave Thomas a knowing grin. Newt was the only Alternative he could really consider a friend, after their adventures together.

The others he was still warming up to.

"After what?" Thomas asked naively as the Alternatives crowded tightly around him, banishing Loretta to the back of the hospital room.

"You don't shuck remember?" Minho blurted. "How could you not remember what happened?"

"Sorry." Thomas said ashamedly. "I don't."

"Wanna know?" Alby questioned.

"Yeah. Sure." Thomas prepared himself for the backstory of his hospital visit. The backstory of his finger.

"It started when..."

"Lemme do it!" Minho broke in. "So, we bagged some fireworks. Went to that ol' shuck park, the one with all the smokers and drinkers."

Newt flinched.

"We set 'em off. Real fun until the Greenie over here started whinin' like a shuck baby about 'is little hand. I look over, and you're bleedin' buckets."

"Newtie here's got the sense to run over to the shuck convenience store and call the ambulance. Good call, cuz who knew what would've happened if we let that thing bleed."

"We came in 'ere the day after, and every day since. It's been three weeks after the incident. You got your finger chopped off. It was infected or somethin'. They tell us you've been in a coma ever since they found out your heart stopped workin'. Now you're up. How you lived, I got no shuck clue. These klunk-for-brains doctors, I tell ya."

Thomas was silent, taking it all in. He only had a few memories of being at the hospital. The doctors talking about taking his finger, then the first time he saw the policewoman. The doctors coming in, telling him about his heart. Then, according to Minho, he'd been in a coma. In shock. And now he was awake.

"We gotta get out of here." Thomas said to the group, and Alby nodded.

"Who's that?"

Minho's voice rang clear as the boys fell silent. Thomas looked to where Minho was pointing.

Loretta.

"It's the shuck policewoman from the firework night." Minho revealed. "She stalking you."

Thomas glanced at Loretta, who's eyes were welling up with glistening tears.

She sobbed, "I just want you to remember,"

He looked around at the boys, then at Loretta, and felt guilty for a second. What was he missing? Thomas knew for sure that he had never seen Loretta before.

For sure.

Burrowing deep into his brain, into his memories, Thomas weaved through the dark labyrinth that was his mind. Searching the memories, reliving moments through his mind's eye.

Then he stopped cold, lurching to a sudden yield.

The only events he could replay were the ones that had occurred in the past month. His mother, with her strict regimen of beating him up every single day. His last few days at school before meeting the Alternatives. All these memories were fresh and packed with raw emotion. Stress. Fear. Anger. The others, well...