Chapter 15

He does not remember the trip back to town. Bits and pieces float through his memory; he must have been slipping in and out of consciousness the whole time.

He remembers hearing Baz and Aster's voices every once in a while.

"Is he… dead?" Aster asked at one point.

"I don't think so?" Baz sounded unsure of himself. "I think he's still breathing."

"He better not die on us or I'm going to fucking kill him."

That had been all before he had lost consciousness again. The next time he wakes up he's lying on a hospital bed. Thankfully, the lights in the room are off, and his eyes can make a quick scan of his environment.

The small bedside table to his left is empty. So is the seat on his other side. The bed is facing towards the door, but it's closed, and the blinds on the windows are drawn, leaving him unable to see if anyone is out in the hallway.

He's alone.

To his right, the monitor makes a beeping noise, and a nurse walks into the room, bringing a strong smell of disinfectant with her.

"How long was I out for?" he asks her as she takes his vital signs.

"A couple hours. If you were brought in around two…" she cranes her neck to look at the clock on the wall behind her, "and it's almost six… Around four hours?"

"Four hours?"

"Honestly, I'm surprised you woke up this soon. I expected you to be out until tomorrow. That's what I told your friends."

So that's why no one was around when he woke up.

The nurse arranges the pillows around him, "So how do you feel? We gave you some painkillers, but they must have mostly worn off by now. But you're not in too much pain?"

He can still feel some level of pain in his leg, but it's a lot more manageable than before he passed out. "I'm good."

"If you feel like the pain is getting too bad, you can click this," she shows him a button on one of the intravenous tubes, "and you'll automatically get administered some morphine. If you need to call for medical assistance, press this," she shows him another button, this time on the handrail on the bed.

He nods to tell her he understands, and once she's satisfied, she leaves, closing the door behind her.

He looks around the room again, but everything is the same. There's nothing for him to do. No one's coming to see him today, and he knows if he turns on the television he'll just get a headache. He's alone with his thoughts.

As long as he can remember, he's always hated hospitals. The long, white hallways with fluorescent lights blinking overhead, the sounds of metal clanging and monitors beeping, the ever present acrid smell of alcohol, and doctors prodding and poking him with all sorts of tools all make him feel overwhelmed, as if his senses were suffering an onslaught from all directions.

When he was a kid and he'd gotten sick, his mother had to drag him, kicking and screaming, just to see a medic. If additional exams or tests had to be done, that would almost, if not always, end in catastrophe. This had only been made worse by his somewhat poor health as a child, meaning his visits to the hospital had been a monthly event back then. Not because he'd gotten sick that often, but his mom had been obsessive about taking him to his monthly check up after he'd gotten pneumonia at four. Better safe than sorry, she said.

As he got older, he wouldn't throw a tantrum anymore, but he still tried to resist it. Eventually, there came a point where his mom stopped forcing him. Still, his wariness towards hospitals had remained, so even now, he tried to avoid them as much as he could.

He'd been successful (accompanying someone to a hospital didn't count), until now.

At least right now it isn't too bad; the lights are turned off and the shades drawn, and the walls muffle any noise from outside, with the only noise being the beeping of the monitor in the room. He can't help but feel a little anxious, and he starts fiddling with the bedsheets. The hospital gown feels coarse on his skin, the air conditioner making his sweaty skin feel clammy, plus the smell of disinfectant the nurse brought hasn't dispersed, somehow becoming stronger as more time passes.

He looks at the morphine dispenser. He's not in that much pain right now, but maybe it can help to calm him down?

He presses the button.

The effect is almost instantaneous. He can feel his body becoming lighter, the pain in his leg completely vanishing. He starts feeling drowsy, and after a while, his eyes close involuntarily and he drifts off into sleep.

~~~

This time when he wakes up, Baz is sitting on the seat to his right. The lights are still off and the shades closed, the only light being a faint glow from Baz's phone screen, which he's holding very close to his face. He's so engrossed in whatever he's doing on his phone, he doesn't notice him stirring.

"What time is it?" he asks, his voice hoarse, making Baz jump and letting out a small gasp.

"You're awake!"

"I wish I wasn't," he groans. The effects of the morphine must have worn off during the time he was asleep, because the pain in his leg is back.

"I'll go tell Aster," he gets up and leaves the room. Most likely, Aster is at the hospital's cafeteria.

As he grows more awake, he becomes more aware of the pain. It's not so much he can't bear with it, but enough to cause him considerable discomfort. He doesn't think he should drug himself again, but the pain is enough that he considers calling a nurse.

Baz comes back with Aster before he can make up his mind.

"Hey," Aster greets him.

"Hey." His voice still sounds hoarse to his ears.

"I brought you some powdered donuts from the cafeteria." Xe passes them over to him. He notices xe's already gone to the trouble of opening the package for him

"Thanks." He gingerly takes one out, biting slowly into it. Truth is, he's not particularly hungry, but he knows both Aster and Baz know about his unease towards hospitals, and xe's probably trying to cheer him up. That's why he thinks he can stomach at least one miniature donut.

"How are you feeling?" Baz takes a seat again, leaving room for Aster to squeeze in next to him on the single-person couch.

"Horrible," he answers truthfully.

"Well, at least you can feel something, so that's a good thing. Means you're still alive and kicking," Aster tells him.

"Ugh. Barely."

Xe lets out a bark of laughter. "You owe me money, by the way."

"What? Why?!" He's barely just managed to avoid death and he's already supposed to be worrying about being in debt? (He has to be thankful that at least his hospital bill will be covered by the Bureau.)

"You got the whole backseat covered in blood; you completely ruined the back of the car we rented. I had to pay the guy at the dealership extra to compensate for the damages."

"Actually," Baz interrupts, "I was the one that had to pay. Both for the car rent and the compensation. So you owe me money."

"Not fair!" he protests, "If I remember correctly, I wasn't the only one covered in blood back then!"

"Mm… Actually, you were. Aster and I managed to mostly clean ourselves before entering the car."

"I was dying!" he cries outraged. "Of course I wasn't able to! Besides, this is your fault too. You could have covered the seats with something!"

"Meh," Aster shrugs, "you might be right. But it's your blood on those seats so… Your fault."

"I'm going to call the nurse to kick you out," he scowls.

"Aw, don't be like that," Baz pokes fun at him, "After we went through all this trouble just to come visit you. Look, we even brought you flowers," he points to the bedside table where a small flower arrangement has been placed in the middle. "Gnocchi even sent a get well soon card."

"Knowing him he probably wrote he wishes I drop dead soon."

"That's… Yeah, you're probably right. But it's the thought that counts, right?"

"Not in this case, no."

Baz opens his mouth, but at that moment, a nurse, the same one from yesterday, comes in carrying a tray. She walks past Baz and Aster, completely ignoring their presence.

"Time for you to eat," she says, placing the tray in front of Kit. There's a plate with some boiled vegetables, a portion of mashed potatoes, and a piece of chicken with some sort of gravy on it. There's also a cup of jelly, a glass of water, and a variety of pills on a napkin. "Take these two," she points out the pills, "before you eat. Take these," she points to three other ones, "right after you've eaten, and this one," she points to the last pill, "twenty minutes after you've finished. You got that?" He nods once. "Good," she then turns around and leaves, just as soon as she had come.

"What the hell do I need to take so many pills for?" he wonders aloud.

"Well, you were attacked by a demon, then got that wound bandaged with Baz's dirty robe, and then got that wound submerged under a bunch of the same demon's guts," Aster lists them off on xeir fingers. "Just getting a wound like that would require you to take a fuck-ton of painkillers, not to mention it was caused by a demon. Meaning you need to take medicine to dispel any evil energy that might have lingered, and even if there isn't any, it's standard protocol to do so. Plus, your wound has a minor infection. So, more pills."

…When xe puts it like that, it's lucky he only has to take six pills.

"Though this whole process could be a lot shorter if there were any Healers around," xe points out.

Healers were exactly what their name suggested. They were magicians that specialised in all things relating to medicine. They were basically doctors, except that when it came to magical-related illnesses, they were able to deal with them directly and quicker than regular doctors, who had to rely on potions and elixirs produced by labs. Medical laboratories would distribute them in the same format as normal medicine, such as pills, liquids, solutions or syrups, depending on the potion or elixir. Once again, they were created by Healers working at the labs; a person with no magical energy was unable to produce them even if all the ingredients were combined in the correct order, since in order to work, the Healer had to imbue the substance with some of their magical energy to create the necessary reactions in the process.

They weren't called magicians though. The main reason being they didn't take the standard magician licence exam. The exam for becoming a Healer was different, and only gave permission to practice magic in the medical field. (It is, incidentally, called the healer licence exam.) Aside from this, the education for becoming a Healer was different. A lot of the requirements needed to pass the magician licence exam aren't taught to them, the same way nothing relating to healing or medicine are taught at the Academy or any other magician school. Even magician apprenticeships didn't include any sort of healing knowledge. It was a sort of unspoken rule.

"If there were a Healer, they could have determined if there was any evil energy clinging to you and gotten rid of it immediately. They could also have fixed your bone a lot quicker. Half the time, even."

Aster would definitely know about it, he thinks, xeir father is a Healer after all. But he lives in the capital, and working at the Royal Hospital, the main hospital in the city, his schedule is always full.

Though demands for Healers are always high, regardless. Which is why there are no Healers in this town; it's too small and cut off from the rest of the world.

"Half the time? How long would that be?"

"It was just a small fracture," (it definitely hadn't felt like "small" fracture when it happened) "it was more like a stress fracture, so normally it would take six weeks to heal? With a Healer you could get it fixed in four weeks. Tops."

"I'm going to be bed-bound for almost two months?!"

"Not bed-bound," Aster corrects him, "you'll just have to wear a cast."

"Oh, that reminds me," Baz speaks before he can bemoan his fate, "Fluorite is coming back tomorrow. After I told her what happened, she said she's coming to talk to you first thing tomorrow."

~~~

"A teleportation array and a dimensional transcendentalism barrier?" the Director frowns. She had gotten straight to business as soon as she had arrived at the hospital, demanding Kit tell her everything that had happened from start to finish. When he had finished, there was a worried look on her face. "You understand what that means?"

He does. First of all, the fact that it was a demonic creature was already worrisome.

There were four main realms: the human world, heaven and hell, the afterlife, and the spirit world.

The human world encompassed everything that could be physically perceived. Even the Lands Beyond, though no human was able to enter them, was part of the human world.

The afterlife was where all humans and non-magical creatures went to after death, either to be reincarnated or to spend eternity there.

When magical creatures died, however, their souls would go to the spirit world, and depending on what they had been in life, would either become pure or evil spirits. Spirits could travel freely between the spirit and human world, some even choosing to live among humans rather than the spirit realm.

And lastly, there was heaven and hell. Very little was known about heaven and hell, except that it was from where angels and demons hailed. Rarely would angels or demons have close contact with humans, and when they did, it would always result in bloodshed. This is why they were classified as grade 4.

Another detail that was also known was that, much like in the human world, there were different "species" of angels and demons.

Angels and demons like they were commonly known were what would be considered the "humans" in their world and were the most powerful among their kind. Other types were simply classified as celestial or demonic creatures. No doubt they must have proper names in their world, but the limited knowledge humans possessed on them didn't include this.

And even though angels and demons had the capacity to travel to the human world, for a creature from heaven and hell to appear in the human world, it had to be summoned.

"The creature was modified by whoever summoned it," he says.

"But it is unlikely a being in this world would be able to tame, or even momentarily control, a creature of that magnitude. Meaning that the summoner must have been something else."

"You're suggesting a demon has appeared in the human world?" he blanches. It had been more than a hundred years since a creature, both angel and demon, had caused a disturbance in the human world.

"I'm saying we should keep the possibility in mind and stay on the lookout for any unnatural activity. But even if it isn't the case that a demon has appeared in this realm, the Bureau must be notified."

~~~

Jessica brings Dee to visit him somewhere around the fifth day.

"Are they going to amputate it?" is the first thing she asks when she walks through the door. She looks eerily excited at the premise.

"They're not going to amputate anything!" he half shouts.

"Aw, man. That would have been so cool."

He splutters. "N-no it wouldn't!"

"You could have gotten a bionic leg."

"Meaning I would have lost my leg! I fail to see how that would be cool!"

"Never mind. You just don't get it." She sticks out her tongue at him. "But we're matching now!" they show him her left arm, the cast is full of doodles after only a week. "You're going to let me draw on your cast right?"

"Um…"

Dee doesn't wait for an answer before she's taking out a couple of pens from her pockets.

It's a whole two weeks before he's allowed to leave the hospital, at which point he's so tired of the hospital food he's even longing for the frozen meals he used to buy at the convenience store during the year he was unemployed. And that's saying a lot, because those frozen meals tasted like salted rubber.

The infection has been dealt with, and any lingering evil energy is gone. Now the only thing that remains is for the bone to heal and the wound to completely scar over.

The day he gets dischargarged, Baz is waiting for him outside the hospital. The nurse rolls him out in a wheelchair, Baz taking over after she goes back inside.

"How does it feel to finally be out in the world again?" Baz asks him.

He takes a deep breath. At this moment, he feels elated. He didn't know how much he missed being able to see the sky and feel the sun and wind on his face before today. "If I weren't confined to a wheelchair I think I would dance from happiness. I swear, if I ever have to eat that shit bland food again…"

Baz throws back his head and laughs. "What do you want to eat, then? We can go."

"Hm…" He thinks about it very seriously. "I think I would really kill for some fried chicken right now."