Okay, so he had actually been shot: Beneath a staining of orange and some dried blood, there was a small round hole over to the left of his belly button. It didn’t hurt. In fact, nothing in his body felt bad—other than a damp patch at the small of his back, which he instinctively took to be where he had bled out.
His mom put her hands on him, patting at his arms, his shoulders, now his cheeks, as if she couldn’t believe she was touching him. And she was talking to him, his father, too. He could hear them pretty well, and he supposed their words made some sense. But he really couldn’t track anything—
“Rahvyn!” he shouted abruptly. “Where is Rahvyn?”
What if she’d been hurt—
“She’s…” His father couldn’t seem to go on.
“Amazing,” his mom finished.
For some reason, this brought out a fresh round of emotion from them both, their hands clasping his, their words rushing out faster.
“Where is she?” He glanced around and saw all kinds of clinical equipment, but nothing else. Not even a chair for someone to sit in. “Is she all right?”
Okay, yeah, sure, fine, they’d kind of answered that—he seriously doubted that anyone would use the word “amazing” if she’d had a bad injury. But he’d feel better if he could just see her.
“She saved you,” Murhder choked out. “I don’t know what she did… but you were… gone.”
“Gone where,” Nate asked. And then he licked his lips. “Can I have something to drink—”
He barely had the request out and his mom was lunging across to a stainless steel sink like if he didn’t have a cup of water in the next two and a quarter seconds, his internal organs were going to fail on him and ooze out the back of his gunshot wound.
As she went to bring a white plastic cup to his mouth, she spilled some on the blue sheet that was draped over his lower body. His hands were steadier than hers, so he helped hold things, and after he finished what was in there, he stared down at his abdomen.
And half expected to see a little arc of H2O coming out of his second belly button.
When he seemed to be water soluble—no, wait, that was the wrong word, and “water resistant” wasn’t right, either—he held the cup out to his mom. He didn’t even get to the first syllable of the request for a little more. She rushed back at the sink, and this time, her hands shook less during the handoff.
He drank three cupfuls, and the taste was magical. Cool and pure. No chemicals.
“Water retention,” he announced. “Or maybe retentive, if that’s a word.”
His parents looked at him in a way that made him wonder if they’d be less surprised if his head spun around.
Patting his tummy, he said, “I’m holding water. No leaks.”
His mom sniffled and wiped her nose with a paper towel. “That’s right. No more leaking.”
“We thought we’d lost you,” Murhder whispered.
Meeting the stare of his father, Nate had a thought that he didn’t really grasp or appreciate what had happened to him. It was as if his parents had been watching a different movie: His had been on cable, where there were commercial breaks that were kind of boring, and a storyline that had a little drama, but nothing that knocked your socks off or was all that revelatory or surprising.
Theirs had been a raw documentary on war atrocities that had won an Oscar for Worst Heartbreaking Thing on Film Ever.
“Are you okay?” he asked, looking back and forth between them.
“We are now,” his father said. “Now… we’re okay.”
It was at this point that he could finally see them properly. His adoptive sire was still so menacing-looking in all that leather he always wore outside of the house, his red-and-black hair sticking straight up as if he’d been pulling his hands through the stuff and nearly ripping it out. His mom was smaller, but no less strong, even if her normally direct honey-colored eyes were watery and her I’m-a-scientist clothes were rumpled.
“I feel all right,” he told them. Mostly because he was trying out the response in case, consciousness and lack of pain to the contrary, somehow he wasn’t. “I really am.”
On the floor, all around the table he was on, there was bloody gauze and discarded medical equipment. Clearly, someone had saved his life—and worked hard doing it.
“I really am okay.”
Nate hugged both of them—and then wondered how long he had to wait before he could ask to speak with Rahvyn. He didn’t want to be insensitive to his parents, but he had to see her. He just really wasn’t going to believe anyone but himself when it came to making sure she was all right—and not just in a not-been-shot sort of way.
If he’d seen her almost die in front of him like that? Even if she wasn’t that into him, it would be terrifying. Especially as he knew she’d had trauma in her previous life. Lots and lots of trauma.