Page 74 of Styx & Stones

CHAPTER THIRTY

STYX

Iopen my eyes andstare up at the apparatus overhead. Three mechanical arms housing monitors, lights, and other annoying equipment that makes entirely too much noise, hovers over me.

Great.I’m in the fucking ICU.

I swallow hard and lick my cracked lips. My breath labors, and my throat is scratchy and dry. A small tube rests under my nose, forcing more oxygen into my body. I lift my hand to remove it, but my limbs are heavy with morphine, and I miss.

Alaska. Where is she right now? Did she make it through the surgery? I don’t remember anything past Mom getting me to the hospital and the wait with her parents.

I glance over at the corner of my room. My mom and dad are sleeping in hospital chairs, side by side, her head on his shoulder, his resting against her crown. Their hands are joined. For a moment, I just watch them, wondering if my recent brush with death will be the thing to bring them together. Will they comfort one another when I’m dead?

I feel like shit. I lift my head from the pillow and try to find my call button. What I find instead is a new Hickman line poking out of my chest.Fuck. As if I didn’t look like Frankenstein enough already, now I have more tubes sticking out of me. I glance at my torso. From armpit to neck, I’m covered in bandages. I try to move, but agony rips through my muscles.

“Mom?” I cry out.

She startles. So does my dad.

“Hey, there’s my baby boy,” Mom says.

“Hey, champ.” Dad rubs the sleep from his eyes. “Welcome back to the land of the living.”

“What happened? Did Alaska make it out of surgery already?”

“Yeah, honey. Surgery went great. She’s in the ICU too.”

My room is flooded with artificial light as a nurse bustles in from her station behind the glass sliding doors. “Hey stranger. Nice to see you awake.” Her face is vaguely familiar, but I don’t know this woman at all. “I’m Maggie. I took care of you after your resection a few years back.”

“Oh,” I say, annoyed at the intrusion more than anything. She continues to check my vitals, and jot her findings down on my chart. I just want her to go away, but she starts up a conversation with my dad about his college football team. “Mom, I need to see her.”

“Woah, you’re not going anywhere, young man.” Maggie pushes a button on the monitor beside my bed. “You gave us all quite the scare. We’ll need to run a few more blood tests, and you’ll need a few more rounds of antibiotics before you can leave this room.”

“But I’m fine.” I yank at the oxygen tube under my nose. Maggie touches my hand, obviously telling me to stop.

“Let’s leave this on a little longer,” she says. I don’t fight her because I don’t have the strength.

Mom sighs. “Honey, you had sepsis.”

The entire world turns on its axis. “What?”

“You went into septic shock, your port was infected.”

“Shit.”Oh fuck.An infected port is no joke, but sepsis?How am I still breathing?

Maggie tuts, as if she’s my goddamn mom. “Language.”

“They removed your port, but they had to clean away a little of the tissue that was infected too. The doctors say you’ll need physiotherapy to strengthen your right side.”

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