Chapter 66 - Seven Days
Third Person
The surgery lasted quite a few hours; all the muscles in Tris's leg healing in abnormal positions and many being re-injured from her death-defying leap off of the hospital bed.
Tobias didn't leave the hospital for a while after the whole incident was over.
He sat on the floor for at least an hour, staring into space, utterly confused in a state of shock.
He didn't let Indy out of the bathroom he had put him in during the incident either. His whining eventually died down, but his toenails still scratched the door in almost a pleading, apologetic manner.
He didn't want to face his dog.
He felt bad.
Gossip and drama had made its way from the Erudite hospital to the Dauntless compound before he had ever even stood up from his place on the floor. Stories telling the sharp jaws of his dog tearing through his girlfriend's cast and injuring her all over again, and stories where the dog had been taken by the hospital to be put in the shelter for its brutality.
Of course, none of those were true. For the oh so brutal dog continues to whine in the bathroom it was shut in before it could have happened, and the dog only snapped because it was scared and trying to protect her.
The only issue was, the dog didn't know he couldn't protect her from herself.
Hours passed, and in the world Tobias was in, everything was still.
In everyone else's point of view, their worlds were traveling faster than anyone could ever imagine.
Surgeons worked endlessly for hours, keeping the girl from bleeding out, or regaining consciousness.
There was a point of time where they had almost unanimously decided it was time for the leg to be amputated, for it has betrayed her body, and it will never be an ally ever again.
If it wasn't for the voice of one doctor hiding in the dozen, speaking out and telling about the fighter this girl is and always has been, they would've gotten rid of it; defeated her enemy for her.
So the process proceeded, and the puzzle of putting the muscles in her leg back together was labored over for many hours.
In the Dauntless compound, rumors spread like wildfire.
According to most of the compound, the girl's leg had already been amputated.
Some said the dog bit it off; her bones and muscles being so weak, it was weaker than gnawing on a dog bone.
Josh, the leader of the Dauntless compound, knew these rumors weren't the case, for he had known the dog ever since his owner had received him, and the worst he had ever done was confuse a bug for a treat.
The IB group has gotten absolutely nowhere, and their meetings have been put on a hiatus. None of them know what they're looking for, and what they thought they were looking for had already been proven or proven impossible to understand.
It wasn't long until the rumors were spread around to the other two main factions involved in the chaos that has erupted almost the past eight months since the refugees were rescued from a miscellaneous underground mansion in Kentucky.
West, the leader of Candor demanded that himself, along with Erudite leader, Mark, and Josh of Dauntless meet immediately in the Dauntless compound. He actually decided that this was going to happen while he was in his vehicle on his way to the Dauntless compound.
Arriving outside of Josh's office door was a move that accurately reflected his blunt personality.
It was just minutes after his arrival that Mark showed up, not really having much choice for he wanted to know what caused West to begin an uproar.
"I want her arrested." Were the first words that came out of West's lips.
Silence.
Neither man knew how to reply, and neither really wanted a whole argument that made absolutely no sense for this girl has always been innocent,
"I want her arrested immediately." West says again, making his point clear.
"You can't arrest a person with no valid reason. She at least, at a minimum, needs to be tried first." Josh stands up for the girl, for West's accusation makes no sense to him.
"No valid reason. Ha. She's staged everything. Now, just days before her trial, she happens to go insane, throw herself off a hospital bed and land on her injured leg, get mauled by a dog, and somehow come out breathing but not well enough to be put under trial. How convenient," West remarks.
"What do you want from her?" Mark speaks up, fuming on the inside, but managing to keep his cool externally.
"All I want is for the city to be safe. With her around--"
"With what caused her to be harmed in the first place is what causes this city to be unsafe." Josh cuts him off. "If you wanted what is best for this city, then why do you deny the investigation that could not only protect our city, but also save an innocent citizen's life."
"Citizen? She's a refugee, Josh. She doesn't belong to this city." Mark snarls.
"She was first in her Dauntless initiation class just over five years ago, for your information. I will not let that be easily forgotten, for she is, and always will be a member of my faction. I don't care how the hell you run things back at your faction, but here, things such as receiving such a high ranking in initiation will not be forgotten."
Silence.
"Her trial will resume as scheduled, no matter her condition. Am I clear?"
"Are you clear?" Josh snarls. "The real question is am I clear?"
West storms out of the office, slamming the door behind him as he leaves to return to his faction. It is the last time anyone will have heard from him for seven days; for the trial of the innocent girl was scheduled a week from this day of chaos.
His motives continue to be unclear to everyone.
No one truly knows what goes through that man's head.
But he is out for revenge; what for, is also a mystery.
He will not stop to prove the innocent girl to not be so innocent.
But she doesn't know that as she wakes from the anesthetics that she was given beginning to wear off.
She does not know the horror that awaits her in seven days, as on this day, her eyes slowly open to a blank room with herself being on a bed completely lowered to the floor.
She doesn't realize everything that will happen.
She has no way of knowing;
No way of knowing that seven days of peace will earn herself a lifetime of pure hell.