Page 97 of Walking Wounded

Sadie sits down cross-legged on the floor in front of him, between the coffee table and the couch. Sunlight strikes her dark hair, paints auburn rivers through it. “Hi, Lukey.” She shoots him her slightly-crooked smile, thirteen and still-precious, the way she always is.

Luke pushes upright and it’s like moving through molasses. His brain sticks to the idea of Hal leaving, of the devastation of what happened last night. His dead sister’s presence heightens his misery, sharpens it to an acute physical pain.

“Hi, sweet girl,” he says through an aching throat.

“Hi, bubba.” She curls a strand of hair around her finger. “What are you doing?”

“Oh, you know. Sitting here feeling sorry for myself.”

A frown mars her smooth forehead. “Why?”

He exhales. “Hal left. I think he hates me now.”

“But…he didn’t leave. He’s right here.”

Luke glances around his sad apartment, knowing what he’ll find. “I don’t see him.”

“Ugh,” Sadie huffs. “Nothere. You’re asleep. Wake up, dummy. He’s waiting for you.”

“Asleep…?”

The Russell Senate Office Building. The man…the bomb.

Oh.

Oh, oh, oh.

“Bye,” Sadie says, and she and the apartment vanish, replaced by a deep gray void. He floats. He hurts.

Is he dead?

Is Hal here? Sadie said he was, but…

He registers voices, somewhere beyond the flat landscape that holds him hostage. Quiet murmurs, low beeps, shushing of fabric. Hospital sounds. He knows them, but he can’t understand why he’s here. Why he…

A glimpse of light, through his fluttering, gummy lashes. And once he catches it, he doesn’t want to let it go, fights off unconsciousness with fists clenched and teeth bared.

A squeak of shoe treads on the tile, a rustle. And then a hand, big and gentle and comforting, on his forehead, smoothing his hair back. There’s Hal; that’s him. He’d know those fingerprints anywhere.

“Hey.” His voice sounds intimate and choked in Luke’s ear. “Hey, man, you there? You waking up?”

The bomb, Luke remembers then. Not with any coherence. He remembers the flash, and the heat, and the way it felt like his ear drums sizzled into crispy black fragments. The absence of sound. One glimpse of Hal’s panicked face.

“Is he awake?” someone else asks, a little farther away.

“A little.” Hal’s voice catches and jerks. Worried, so worried. “Luke? You there, sweetheart?”

“Ugh,” Luke manages, though his throat feels raw and bloody.

“Good,” Hal says. “That’s really good.”

Luke feels Hal’s lips against his forehead, and then the darkness comes rushing back.

~*~

The next time he wakes up, he realizes that’s what he’s doing. The fog lifts and he forces his eyes open, and he’s aware – partially – of his surroundings.

He’s in a hospital bed, IV lines snaking down to his arm, TV murmuring quietly to itself: aFriendsrerun. He glimpses dark, nighttime sky through the cracks in the blinds; feels the chill of AC and the insistent throb of his own heartbeat inside his skull. It’s a double occupancy room, but he’s alone. At least, there’s not another patient with him. The curtain divider is pushed back and Hal, fully-dressed, dozes on the bed closest to the door.

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