But he spoke up, "No, Dean, I want to hear it; screw that, I NEED to hear it," Chase shakily spoke with barely formed resolve.
There was a fire in his eyes I had never seen before. Nothing had changed. He still looked sickly, but his eyes were full of life and energy. So I told them everything, every single detail, all the way down to the fact that I still was trying to pull tiny shards of glass from my arms.
By the time I finished, the fire was gone from Chase's eyes and replaced with intense pain.
"Mr. Fairaday, they can still replace his limbs, right? Like, he won't have to be in a chair or anything, right?" Desperation rang out in his voice as if he were clinging to every word he said in disbelief.
"We won't know for sure until the doctors can look at the situation as a whole. While we were able to recover both his arm and his leg, whether or not they can be re-attached is something that the surgeons will have to determine." As my Dad spoke, I watched Chase Deflate.
"All right, that's enough talk for now; let's head on over to the hospital. But you should both prepare yourselves for what you might see."
Hearing this, I spoke up for a second. "Dad, I have a question. You said that y'all found his arm AND his leg. Where was his leg at?" The question had been nagging at the back of my skull for a while now.
Hearing the words spewing from my mouth made my Dad frown before examining me thoroughly.
"It was still on the gas pedal," Narrowing his eyes for a moment, he put the key in the ignition and started the car.
The ride to the hospital was impossibly long for something only 10 miles away; it seemed like light-years. However, my mind was wiped for a second as I realized we were speeding through traffic with the lights and sirens on, which is something I've never gotten to do.
Watching all the cars get out of our way as we sped past was surreal, given what I had just experienced, but it has stuck with me all these years.
Once we got to the hospital, my Dad radioed in to determine Tristian's condition, and the response was grim.
The second Tristian was brought to the hospital; he was immediately transferred into the operating room.
Luckily or unluckily, my Dad somehow pulled some strings, allowing us to get close enough to see the surgeon's work from a distance and a window.
Which, to be honest, sucked; we couldn't even see him, just the frantic movements of the doctors and nurses as they set to work trying to repair the damage the crash had done to his body.
After watching the doctors work for about 25 minutes, my father decided it would be better if we moved to the hospital's waiting room.
In my opinion, the waiting room is the absolute worst place in any hospital; it's like a holding pen for upset patients and families; they herd us all together so we can grieve at each other.
I watched a family with their youngest son, who had just broken his arm, take out their frantic rage at a nurse because their son hadn't been seen yet.
The father became increasingly agitated as the nurse tried to calm him down.
"We have been waiting hours; my son needs a doctor RIGHT NOW!" The man yelled at the innocent nurse. I watched as the nurse hurried away in tears because she had just been yelled at for doing her job and trying to calm him down. Being the Gentleman I am, I couldn't just let her go off crying. So I followed her out into the hallway to stop her for a second.
"Ma'am," I said, getting her attention; she was in her early 20s; and couldn't have been much older than I was, and upon her turning around at my urging, I couldn't help but notice how pretty she was, even if her face was covered in tears.
"Yes, sir, how can I assist you?" She said, putting a tissue into her pocket. She had been trying to dab at her tears not to affect her makeup. As she spoke, her voice quivered slightly.
Because of her body language, and the trailing tears dotting her face, I knew she was upset by what the man had said to her assumingly before I arrived.
"Don't let them get to you. They are just aggravated because their kid is being a whiner, I've broken my fair share of bones, and it's pretty easy to tell it's not actually broken. He's obviously the prissy son." Contorting my face into a goofy smile, I limped around, acting hurt. This caused her to giggle and smile.
"See, that's better; you're so much prettier when you're smiling. I'm Dean." I said with a warm smile while extending my hand to her, which she then took gently and shook.
"I'm Kristina and smooth; I'll give you that one, so long as you don't ask me for my number next." This time it was me who snickered.
"If circumstances were different, I would probably do so, but unfortunately, we are in a hospital, and I'm not sure the old couple over there have enough time to wait for you to jot down your number for me, so I'll take a rain check."
That drew her attention to the old couple in the corner of the waiting room who looked upset but weren't about to say anything anytime soon, especially after the outburst that just happened with the not-so-broken-arm kid's father.
"Very smooth indeed, blondie." Winking at me, Kristina hurried off to the old couple.
Knowing I could leave the situation long enough to flirt with a cute nurse threw Chase off. When I sat back down, he wouldn't talk to me and kept giving me dirty looks the entire time.
I meant to ask him about it, but I wasn't given the opportunity because the Doctor came into the room before I could speak and began looking for My Father, Carleigh, Chase, and me.
He called my name since I was the one who gave it to the nursing staff. "DEAN, DEAN FAIRADAY!" The Doctor called out, looking around the waiting room.
"Right here, Doc." Waving the Doctor down and standing up, I greeted the middle-aged man before inquiring about Tristian's condition.
The situation wasn't as bad as I had initially believed. The Doctor informed us that physically, for the most part, he is out of the woods; he will survive, but they couldn't re-attach his severed arm and leg.
He said that the damage to the two was too significant, and if they were to try attaching them, they would never work correctly, so they opted to fix the damage and stitch him all up. But it looked like he was going to be ok.
Carleigh and Chase sighed loudly, and with good reason; this meant the family wouldn't be broken.
The Doctor looked at me and said, "Thanks to your quick action with the tourniquets; we were able to save him; if you had not been there, he would have died before we would have even been able to treat him. Good job, son".
Carleigh grabbed me and started kissing me all over my head and crying, saying I had saved her son. But Chase had a different reaction. I could see in his eyes that he was jealous that I had held his brother and not him.
The look was gone as soon as I noticed it and may have only been in his eyes for an instant, but that instant was just long enough for me to see.
To this day, I have never forgotten that look because that was the first time in our friendship, no, our lives, that he had ever had any kind of hostility towards me.
He was angry that I was the only one who could move and that I was getting all the praise from his mother.
Adding on to these facts, my ability to separate myself from the traumatic situation long enough to flirt with the nurse created something within him that would one day cause a lot of trouble for me.
That day's events would be the seedling that would eventually grow into a hatred stronger than any force we thought possible. A hatred that would one day decide the fate of the entire planet
---
:: Explosions shook the underground base violently, causing one of the small shelves on the wall to tear lose from its bindings and spilling its contents onto the floor::
"Damn it, Sir; the Naturalists are closing in. Their artillery installment moved a mile closer to us, causing the shells to sink deeper into the bunker." First Lieutenant Nile looked panicked as he sat down at the table beside me.
"We will be fine, Nile; that still puts them roughly 20 clicks away. They haven't breached the red zone yet, and we still have plenty of time with the terrain on our side." I said while looking from my first lieutenant to the two men sitting before me.