The Undaunted (Book Two) [ON HOLD]

Chapter Five: Side Effects

Okay, instead of having an MRI scan, I changed it to a PET scan after doing some research.

Also, this chapter contains spoilers to John Green’s beautiful novel The Fault in Our Stars.

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(Chapter Five: Side Effects)

I wake up with the sounds of slow beeping sounds filling my ears and I realize that I'm back in my room with the lights dim. There's an oxygen mask on my nose and mouth and a pulse scanner is on my forefinger. I look at the window and the sky is already dark and the buildings already have their lights on.

   The comforter covers my stomach to my feet and I notice that I'm wearing a different set of clothes. I'm now wearing pajamas. Holy crap. Someone took off my clothes. Whoever did this is dead.

   Geez. How long was I out? It's like having a coma again.

   "You've been out for days," Stark's voice startled me a bit. I look around and find him by the door.

   "Days?" I repeat and the heart monitor goes up. "How many days, to be exact?"

   He starts laughing. "I'm just kidding."

   "Not funny." I give him a death glare.

   "You've been out for ten hours, actually," Bruce clarifies as he enters and he walks towards me.

   "I'm gonna pour myself a glass of scotch," Tony says. "You guys need anything?"

   "Can you please get her a glass of water?"

   "Sure thing." Finally, Stark leaves the room.

   Bruce walks a bit closer to me and asks, "How are you feeling?"

   "My head is fine now," I answer. "What was that about, anyway?"

   "I hope you won't mind but I ran another PET scan on you while you were unconscious," my eyes widen at the thought of him being the one who took my clothes off. "Don't worry. Pepper was the one who changed your clothes." Still, she shouldn't have done that.

   "What did you find?"

   He walks to the computers and pulls off a screen that looks like a glass pane. My mouth opens to protest because I think he broke it. But it seems that he knows what he’s doing. He turns it on and images appear (I can see through it due to the transparency). Then, he taps on several stuff and finally, walks to me. "See, this is the PET scan we did the night you woke up." The screen shows an outline of a human figure, which is me, and I could see my organs. Only they're all shades of blue. Then, I recognize this huge cut on my liver and stomach. That must be where the glass hit me during the fight. Bruce taps another button and I could see in the image that something yellow is moving in my arteries and veins. "The color yellow represents the antidote."

   "Okay," I utter, not having a clue if that's bad or not. "Should I be worried?"

   He shakes his head. "No. That's what it's supposed to look like." He faces the screen back to him and types stuff on it again. "What you need to be worried about is this." The image still looks like the one he showed me a moment ago but this time, the yellow stuff reaches my brain and it's flowing faster.

   "What's happening now?"

   "The antidote somehow got unstable and it reached your brain, more specifically your parietal lobe that's associated with your movements, orientations, recognition and perception of stimuli."

   "It somehow got unstable?"

   "Somehow. I'm sorry to say but I really 
don't know what could've caused it yet."