Swooped | ✓

Chapter 32: The Chicken Before the Egg

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When I woke up, groggy and disoriented, my aunt was in the room with her youngest child sitting in her lap. They were talking in hushed tones, my aunt telling the little girl about all of the beepy things in the room, commenting lightly on the stale, sterile smell of the room which the girl didn't like.

Death, that's what hospitals smelled like to me.

I was hardly dead right now, though, as my aunt noticed me trying to sit up, quickly plucking her child up under the armpit and placing her on the chair as she got up.

"Culver! How are you feeling? Let me call for the nurse," my aunt said in hushed tones, smoothing back the hair on my forehead which clung and probably smelled. 

"Where's Milo?" I asked, voice raspy as I looked down at my empty hand. "How... How long has it been?"

"It's morning," my aunt said gently, frowning. "Milo called us last night, we only got to see you after you got out of surgery."

"Where did he go?" I asked, my aunt giving me a small smile, patting my good arm tenderly. 

"He went home. His mother picked him up. He, uh, said that he'll be back later today, though," my aunt said, my smile beginning to mirror hers, though strained with discomfort. My arm didn't quite hurt, but I suspected that I had been dosed with painkillers that seeped into my veins via the drip jutting out from my skin. 

Not the kind of piercing I was contemplating getting. Tongue, yes, and maybe nipples if I was feeling really adventurous, but not an IV stud. They did nothing in bed besides keep me incapacitated.

And alive, I supposed.

My aunt asked me about how I was feeling again, until the doctor and nurses came in. The surgery went smoothly, but it would take a few months to heal completely. So, for now, I had to do with a pale blue cast that was begging to be graffitied, and a whole lot of pain killers.

My aunt had to leave in the early afternoon to pick up her other children from school, my littlest cousin giving me a kiss on the cheek before they left. With how smoothly the surgery went and how I was feeling quite fine, the doctors just wanted to monitor me for a few more hours, and I could leave later that evening, given that someone could take me home.

Milo came about forty minutes after my aunt left, his face as stormy as it had been the previous night, though his eye bags were significantly worse. He looked like he hadn't had a great night's sleep, and he was wearing the same clothes as yesterday, seemingly not bothered to have found anything else. He was still stupidly handsome, though, even if he looked like he hadn't slept since conception. Lucky bastard.

"Couldn't get your beauty sleep last night?" I teased as my best friend walked in, hands stuffed in the pocket of his pants. "You should get the doctors to hook you up with whatever they doped me with. Knocked me right out for the night."

"Don't joke around, C," Milo said, voice snapping like an elastic, smarting my skin. His eyes widened at his tone, and he frowned at himself, shoulders stiffening. 

"Why so serious?" I asked, doing my best Joker impression while patting the space on the bed beside my legs. Milo stared at the spot for a second, before robotically planting himself there, taking his hands out of pockets to brace on either side of him. I smiled lightly, picking up the marker that I had asked a nurse to give me that had dropped onto my lap. I had been doodling on my cast before Milo walked in - quite terribly, considering my dominant hand was the one in the cast. 

"Come on, you can be the first to sign it," I prompted, uncapping the marker and flipping it between my fingers like a joint, extending it towards Milo, who was silent. Glum. Angry. Scared. "Milo. Sign it."