The next few days are a blur of doctors and specialists coming in to poke and prod at my mangled leg.
Mostly, they talk over my head about fitting me for a prosthetic foot later on so I could play football and walk without using a wheelchair or crutches, but I knew I'd never touch another field again. Maybe it was my pride speaking, or maybe I just knew it was pointless to try, but I refuse to listen to anything the doctors had to say about my potential future.
The weirdest thing about it all was that I don't see Asa for almost a week, which makes me wonder if he thought I was some kind of freak now that I was hobbling around on crutches. This was an amusing thought, considering the fact that he was a kid who transformed into a bird.
By the time Friday rolls around, I'm looking at the door every time it opens, waiting for him to show up with his dumb cookies and weird overalls with assorted hippie patches all over them. I even sit by the window and set out leftover pieces of my dinner, wondering if it would entice his owly self to swoop in on one of his hunts.
But he never shows.
"I told the crew to make some adjustments to the house. Our porch has a ramp now, and rails."
I poke at my sad little breakfast from the cafeteria downstairs and halfway listen to dad explain the recent updates to our house now that I'd ruined his plans for a contemporary house. The eggs were dry and pale like cauliflower, and the toast felt like cardboard sliding down my throat. The only good thing was the fruit cup and orange juice they'd provided, but that was almost impossible to mess up.
"Are you even listening to me?" Dad questions and he sits forward, raking his hand through his curls. "Micha, this is important! This is going to be a huge adjustment for all of us!"
"Yeah? Well, I'm the one who lost a foot, so I'm not sure what adjusting you and James Dean are going to have to do," I say, and I fork a bite of dry-ass scrambled eggs into my mouth and shoot him a glare. "Maybe we can move again, huh, pops?"
Dad seems taken aback by that, and then a little angry, which was understandable. "This is hard on me, Micha," he murmurs, "I nearly lost you. I blamed myself for not giving you enough attention and letting you run off. If you died, your mother never would have forgiven me."
He stops and I stare down at my breakfast, my jaw clenched.
A second later, I hear him get up and leave the room without another word.
I shove my breakfast aside as soon as he's gone and grab my crutches from where they're propped up next to my mattress. "I'm so over this fucking hospital!" I hiss through my teeth, and I swing my leg over the edge of the bed, then push myself up, hopping on one foot. The crutches helped majorly, but it still hurt like a bitch when I stand.
I hobble towards the door and make it out into the glaring white hallway. The only other person there is an old man sitting in a wheelchair, his eyes glazed over as he mumbles something about needing chocolate pudding to save humanity. Everyone else was tucked away in their rooms, and the nurses were busy checking on other patients.
I tap my way down the hallway in my warmup pants and white T-shirt provided by the hospital, Asa's necklace hanging from my neck. I probably looked like an escaped crazy person, but I didn't care at this point.
I needed fresh air. Sunlight.
I make my way toward the elevators and hit the button to go down, the crutches digging into my armpits painfully as I stand there and wait, freezing cold and furious. This place was a nightmare of smells and sounds and the insistent beeping of monitors and quiet coughing drove me up the walls at night as I tried to sleep.
The doors slide open and I step forward, but as I do so, someone comes out of the elevator at the same time and we crash into each other. There's a frantic squawk, blonde hair, and flailing arms, then I'm falling on top of Asa Moon and we're crashing to the ground.
My crutches skid across the floor and Asa makes another frantic sound from beneath me, then his hands push at my chest. "M-Micha!" He sputters and he has one leg in the air.
"What are you doing here?" We both chorus, then we shut up when the elevator doors close, leaving my crutches behind in the hallway. Fucking hell.
Asa and I untangle and I sit up, touching my leg gingerly to make sure I hadn't ripped anything open in the process of falling. It hurt pretty damn bad, but nothing was bleeding, so I guess it was alright.
"I was about to head up to your room," Asa admits, and he scoops up a plastic baggie from the ground which now contained several smushed, brown blobs. "I figured you were hungry, so I baked you some brownies. But um...we kind of landed on them when we fell."
We both stare down at the flattened brownies in his hands, then I laugh and he laughs too, relieved. A second later, he helps me stand up as best as I can and I hold onto the railing.
"Where the hell have you been?" I ask the weird owl boy as he punches the button to go back upstairs so I can grab my crutches. "I was starting to think something bad happened to you."
Asa turns to look at me, his eyes widening innocently. He had a tiny yellow flower tucked behind his ear, and he smelled strongly of honeysuckle. "I was an owl," he admits sheepishly.
"For a whole week?" I question in disbelief.
"I have my needs," Asa huffs, and he lifts his chin a little, "Why? Did you miss me?"
I clamp my mouth shut at that and roll my eyes instead. "Shut up," I mumble, and I turn to the doors when they slide open again. Truthfully, I had missed seeing him and his annoying self. There was something compelling about him, and it wasn't just his ability to become an owl.
Asa runs to grab my crutches, then quickly comes back.
"Where were you going anyway?" He asks me curiously, "You're still in your hospital clothes."
"Oh," I take the crutches from him, "Breakfast was shit, so I figured I'd go look for something decent to eat around here before I die of starvation."
Asa laughs quietly and tucks a piece of nonexistent hair behind his ear, a habit I assumed that he'd picked up from when he did have hair. "Do you want to go have lunch with me?"
"I thought you'd never ask," I reply, and I wobble out of the elevator with him.
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