I eat half the box of owl cookies that Asa gave me and watch a crappy football game with him for a few minutes before my morphine starts to kick in and I space out.
"Micha? Can I ask you something?"
My vision swims, but I manage to turn my eyes in Asa's direction without moving my head too much because my neck felt like it had pins and needles stuck in it and I was wearing this collar thing to keep my neck stable. "Knock yourself out, Owl Boy," I mumble, and I squint at him in the dimness of the room.
"Do I scare you?" Asa asks me, and then he seems to think about it. "Um...does my owl form scare you? Because you screamed a lot when you saw it for the first time."
"I don't know," I admit, my voice raspy like an old man's on his deathbed, "I haven't had time to process it, and this morphine's really strong, so anything I say right now is subject to change. You make a really adorable fucking owl though, man. I mean, once the initial terror wears off."
Asa laughs softly then scoots his chair closer, the metal legs squeaking on the tile floor. A second later, his face pokes into view and I can smell the sugar cookies on his breath, vanilla, and cinnamon. The weird thing about it though, was that I didn't mind him being so close. Anyone else I would have probably shoved away and told them to give me space.
"How are you holding up?" I ask him, my voice a whisper, "I forgot you were in the crash, too."
"I'm fine. Minimum damage to this fragile body," Asa assures me and he sits back slightly, his hands folded in his lap, one of which was propped up in a sling. "The doctor's actually released me two days ago. I broke my collarbone and got banged up a little, but I've had worse."
"Worse than diving face-first into a ditch?" I mumble, and I glance over at him again.
Asa smiles a little in response, but it doesn't reach his eyes.
I could only assume that he was in as much shock as I was, maybe even more. He'd just had more time to process it and sit with it while I was in surgery getting my foot hacked off. My hand travels down at the thought and I touch my thigh, feeling the thick bandages there under the sheets and tubing. Then it just hits me that it was gone, and that it wouldn't be growing back anytime soon.
"It's still there, right?" I ask Asa, my voice high-pitched, "This is a joke, right?"
"What?" Asa stands up, already moving to grab my hands when I reach for my bandages. "Micha, no! Stop!" He yelps, and I start tearing at the gauze with my fingers, a frantic, pained scream bursting from my lips as I begin to dissolve into hysteria.
"They took my foot! Oh my God!"
"Stop!" Asa yells, "Nurse! We need help!" And he crawls onto the bed, landing right on top of me.
"Get the hell off! I need to see it!" I yell, and I shove a hand into Asa's face when he pins me to the mattress with his knees. Despite being much heavier than he was, he somehow manages to keep my hands from tearing, his fingers clenched tight around mine.
"Stop," he whispers, and his face is inches from mine as I lay sideways, tears sliding down his cheeks, "You know it's gone, Micha. And there's no bringing it back."
I hold onto my pillow, chest heaving as I gasp for air through choked sobs, somehow knowing that he wasn't just talking about my missing foot. But I don't have time to keep crying, there's a knock at the door that sends us scrambling.
Asa dives off the bed and I yank the sheets up to my chest and try to still my breathing, just in case it was my dad coming to bother me again about the crash.
"Asa?" A woman's sweet voice calls to him, "Is everything okay in here? We heard screaming."
"We're fine, Ma," Asa replies, "We were just...um...getting excited over the football game on TV."
I roll over and I see a man and a woman standing near the doorway surrounded by a bunch of little kids who were mostly holding onto the man's waist, their little faces peeping at me curiously. The weirdest thing about the couple though, had to be their outfits. They were like, legit hippies, with big pants, long hair and everything. The man even had these small, roundish glasses like John Lennon and a pointy mustache.
Asa's parents, and they were just as weird as he was, no surprise there.
"Micha, right?" The man asks me, and he seems cheerful despite the situation, "Sorry about about the intrusion. We're a little on edge after this whole catastrophe."
I stare at him, unsure of if he was being serious or not. I couldn't remember a time where an adult like my dad or mom, had apologized for invading my privacy. Hell, there had been no such thing as privacy where I grew up, between Robbie and James Dean and a mother who liked to snoop.
"Mom? Dad? Can you go?" Asa tells his parents, tomato red at this point and clearly dying. "You're embarrassing me in front of Micha!" He whisper-hisses, but I still hear him anyway.
"Asa!" A little girl in a green dinosaur costume breaks the awkwardness in the room and she darts towards her older brother, "Can we play kill the mouse when you get home?" She whines, and tugs on the bottom of his shirt, her blonde pigtails bobbing.
Asa shoots me a frantic look, then glances back down at the little girl. "No, Amelia," he replies, his voice a squeak, "I have to do grown up stuff, remember?"
"Are you going to look your newboyfriend up on the internet again?" Amelia asks in her small voice, "You're always staring at his pictures! It's so weird!"
"Amelia!" Asa's mother scolds her, and she quickly steps forward and take the little girl by the hand, "That's enough, young lady!"
"But it's true!" Amelia protests, "Asa wants to build a big nest in a tree with Micha!"
And I swear Asa dies on the spot, the blood draining from his face.
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