Chapter Text
He felt like there were a thousand voices screaming at him when he woke up, and when he opened his eyes he finally understood the phrase “a blinding headache”. Blinking to shut out the light for a moment, he could hear someone rustling papers by the foot of the bed. When he opened his eyes, he could make out a figure in a white coat and stethoscope. The tall woman wearing them asked,
“Can you hear me?”
He nodded, the movement triggering pain in his chest. He groaned a bit.
“Can you move your hands and feet for me?”
With an effort, he made a rough movement with each, and he could hear her pleased grunt.
“You were shot, and you’re recovering. You’ve been with us a few days, and it will take some time to get you back on your feet. Rest. There’s a button on the bedside if you need extra pain relief. It’s morphine, so only use it if you need it. But do use it if you need it, pain will slow the healing.”
He managed to croak, “what happened?”. A man who he hadn’t seen at the left of the bed came up and swabbed his mouth with a wet sponge on a stick. He tried to cough, but the pain in his chest brought him up short.
“Just rest, there’s plenty of time to go into that later.” the doctor answered. The second man pressed the button at his bedside and a machine near his head gave a beep in response. He could feel the warmth spreading from his hand, and he started to blink.
When he woke again, the light was different, paler. It must be night, he thought. Everything was quieter, and his headache was only a dull presence, not like before. He moved a bit and groaned. Again, someone came up to him from the left of his bedside; this time a woman, wearing scrubs with a friendly pattern of a children’s cartoon. She swabbed his mouth again and reached behind him to fluff his pillow.
“What time is it?” he asked.
“About 3:30. “ she replied.
“How long have I been here?” he asked, “What day is it?”
“It’s been about six days,” she replied, “So today is the third. You’re making good progress, but you still need to rest.”
“What happened? I remember going to school, starting to teach my fourth period, and nothing after.” He remembered the doctor saying he’d been shot. “Was there a shooter at school? Was that what happened? Are the kids” he closed his eyes “are the kids okay?”
He felt her hand on his arm. “Yes, there was an incident at your school”. She squeezed his arm a bit. “You and two other teachers went out to the hallway to slow the shooter down. Your class is okay, and they are hoping to see you soon. The other two teachers are here too, recovering.”
He had an overwhelming moment of relief, but something stopped him. He opened his eyes again and asked “My class is okay? Was anyone hurt?”. The machine beside him was beeping now, and he could feel her reluctance. Unbidden, he saw a sudden flash of a child’s body, face down. He knew the backpack, though. One of Marcy’s students, Joey something. Maybe twelve. He began crying, sobbing at the vision of that small figure, bent on the ground. The beeping got louder, more urgent, and the woman took her hand away.
His head was screaming with pain as the woman stabbed at the button at the bedside. He thought he would explode with rage at the damned stupid guns. They cut down students and teachers and made everyone so vulnerable, so afraid. He pictured them all melting into slag, little harmless puddles that couldn’t hurt anyone anymore. As the morphine haze took him again, the rage subsided, and he felt a brief moment of satisfaction that he’d solved the problem, and then sank back into sleep.