The first coherent thought Kaelen had was the realization of the absence of cold.

It was still...brisk, where he was. But it wasn't that cold, dark, storm he had wandered through. He didn't feel wet or frostbitten anymore.

He simply felt warmth.

And agony.

Blue-white lights painfully tore through his eyelids. Wounds across his arms, legs, and forehead felt simultaneously dry and scabbed over to the point of splintering, and open to the point of bleeding his entire soul. His throat felt raw from screaming, no doubt over the hours or days he had spent in the void.

Kaelen opened his mouth to say something, but all that came out was a shuddering, pathetic gasp for air.

He heard his mother's voice. "Kaelen?!"

Kaelen opened his eyes, but that single movement required too much energy, and he promptly fell into oblivion.

When Kaelen next came to, his body felt odd. He wasn't numb, that much was certain, but his senses were slowed. He assumed from his limited experience with the illicit that he was being given some heavy pain medication. It didn't make the pain go away, it just made it...dull.

This time, he could speak. "Mom...?" he asked, his throat feeling as dry as the air in winter.

"Sweetheart," he heard her say. "Yes, it's me, I'm here. Your father is here too."

His father. As in, not his father. His stepfather. Jude's father. Kaelen's mother was frustratingly insistent on calling him his father, though the bond between them had always been strained.

Kaelen had no capacity to argue this point, however. Instead, he opened his eyes. The figures in front of him were blurry, but unmistakable - ink-black hair on his mother, gray with a few remaining streaks of strawberry blonde on his alleged father.

"What happened?" Kaelen finally asked.

His mother placed a gentle hand on his weak, sore arm. "What do you remember?"

Kaelen's throat was no less dry, but his eyes felt...wet. "There was an accident...I went to get help...and I..." He swallowed hard. "I got hit again..."

He heard a sad smile in his mother's voice "Good, that's good. You're doing great."

Kaelen shook his head, then turned to his stepfather. He may have not been his stepfather's son, but he wasn't going to begrudge him sympathy. "Is...Jude okay?"

"Jude made it out of surgery with flying colors," his stepfather said. His voice wasn't devoid of affection, instead so filled with complex emotions that it was unable to be read. "Everyone sustained serious injuries in the car accident. Everyone had internal bleeding."

Kaelen frowned. He didn't think he would be able to walk so far with internal bleeding. "...did I have...?"

The blur in front of him that was his stepfather shook his head. "No. You got lucky. Some broken bones and most likely a concussion. You did lose a lot of blood, but we were able to get you a transfusion fairly quickly."

That...that didn't make sense. Even beyond getting into one car accident and being hit by another, he knew that he'd had frostbite at some point during his search. Frostbite meant he had to be treated for frostbite. Even if it didn't completely take off a limb, why didn't they mention it?

"Just that?" he asked.

"Jude had a punctured lung, hence the surgery," his mother said. "They think he will make a full recovery."

"No, Mom," Kaelen said, sitting up. "I mean...how long was I out?"

There was a silence, as though they were confused by the question, which in turn confused Kaelen. Why would they be confused?

Kaelen reiterated. "How long was I out? I remember when I got hit by the second car...I...I wandered for hours...days..."

His stepfather tried to interrupt. "...Kaelen."

Kaelen began to get agitated. "How long was I out?! What day is it?!"

"Sweetheart...it's the 12th. August 12th. The accident was only four hours ago."

The air got sucked out of the room.

The event they were going to was on August 12th.

The accident happened on August 12th.

Today was August 12th.

But then...

Kaelen shook his head violently. "No...no that's not possible. I was...I was looking for hours..."

"Kaelen, the convenience store you were found at was just off the highway." His stepfather sat next to him, and Kaelen could hear a gentleness in his voice that wasn't normally there. "When they found you, they went outside and saw the accident."

The accident was...outside the convenience store?

Kaelen was starting to shake. This wasn't possible. He knew what he had been through. The ages he walked through the snow, screaming, looking for help. He knew he had lost track of time after a certain point, but even then, it was six hours until he stopped tracking the hours.

"No. No I swear." Kaelen's voice cracked.

His mother shushed him, as a third blur entered the room, speaking in hushed tones to the stepfather before approaching Kaelen and fiddling with the contraption near him. "Just rest, my dear."

Kaelen felt his whole body get duller. He couldn't feel his extremities anymore. His voice became slurred. "I was gone...for...for..."

His mother's voice began to grow distant. "We can talk about this in the morning."

Kaelen's eyes grew heavy as he managed to say "P...Plea...se..."

He didn't get to finish the sentence. Please believe me.