Thief of Flesh

Chapter 2-Stranger In White

Light filtered white through the hospital windows. It cast a soft halo around the room as Rosalie flittered around Austin, humming a soft song he didn't remember under her breath. There was a sunflower pen tucked behind one of her ears. Hastily scribbled reminders crawled along her pale, bared arms in bright ink.

Austin's bed was pushed against the far wall, right in the spotlight of the annoyingly bright light screaming through the window. He was dressed only in a checkered blue hospital gown that liked to untie itself in the back. His restless fingers had torn a collection of holes in the hem of it.

"What is that one called?" he asked her.

"It just started coming on the radio," Rosalie said.
"How long ago?"

She paused as she tried to fluff his pillow again.

"Two, three weeks, maybe a month," Rosalie said, quickly tagging her now trademarked "It's actually very horrible" at the end of it. She'd taken to sticking it at the end of anything Austin had missed during his hospital stay. "I'm only singing it because it got stuck in my head. Annoying songs will do that. Now stop your scowling."

He thrust his head back onto his pillow before she could touch it again. He didn't stop scowling.

"I want out," he said for the millionth time.

Rosalie frowned, her fingers twitching to fix something. She settled on the edge of his bed instead, extra careful not to disrupt him.

"I know," she said. "I'm sure you'll be let out soon. When the doctors decide you're healthy enough," adding the last part as an afterthought.

"I'm fine," he said. He wasn't sure why he continued to insist this to Rosalie; no matter how many times he told her, it didn't certify her with a doctor's ability to relieve him. "Everything is healed."

Rosalie turned to him and bit her lip. She looked like she wanted to ask him something, but she glanced away quickly.

"What?"

"Uh," she said. Her eyes glanced toward his stomach. "Is it really all healed?"

"You want to see?" he said.

She nodded after a moment. 

He untied the blue-and-white-checkered nightgown in the back and let it pool at his waist. His abdomen was a stretch of shiny skin raised above the rest. It looked fresh and pink, like the flushed skin of a newborn baby. When Rosalie reached out tentatively and prodded it, the skin was just as soft as one too. 

Her hand shot back, surprised.

"See?" Austin said. "Good as new."

A new voice interjected, "That's very good news."

A woman stood in the doorway. She was draped in a white coat and carrying a clipboard. She looked remarkably like a doctor, but Austin had spent enough time in the hospital to tell that she wasn't. The coat was different, but close enough to fool Rosalie.

"Hello," the redhead said, straightening. She seemed flustered suddenly, and was trying to retie the gown around Austin. 

A few weeks ago, when he'd just woken up from his drug-induced two-month long daze, he had been shy around the hospital staff as well. He had grown jaded though, and even when the not-doctor glanced at his considerable collection of dark chest hair, he only quirked one side of his mouth and locked his gaze on her.

"Come to free me then?" Austin asked.

The woman gave him a fake smile and swept across the room. As she drew closer, he noticed the white coat she was wearing was stamped with the Apex crest of two swords clashing in front of a half-white, half-red camellia blossom.