Ficlet: Sticks and Stones
They all thought Eliot was invincible, the strong and silent one always ready to jump into the way when one of his team were in danger of getting their ass kicked. He did so with ferocity and determination and all hits he took were for the team. Eliot didn’t mind the pain. It was a twitsted badge of honor to wear the buises of a righteous fight and all black eyes faded with time.
But some things weren’t as simple. Some prices were higher than others and Eliot bit down on the hilt of his bowie knife as they jostled him when trying to heave him out of the van with kid gloves. It didn’t matter how careful his friends were, it hurt like a bitch even when he held perfectly still but his eyes rolled back in his skull as his friends pulled him out.
Someone was screaming and it might be Sophie or Hardison, he couldn’t tell and it didn’t matter really as long as they would stop whatever they were doing to his body and just shoot him in the head now, please.
When he was picked up once more he could taste blood in his mouth. He couldn’t tell where it came from and he had no chance to explore because that moment someone grabbed his leg and he fainted.
*
There was something on his leg that made moving it nearly impossible and the bankets caught in it regularly making him flinch with pain. He opened his eyes and stared across white bed linens towards a white wall. For a second he thought he might be in heaven as a vision of Parker in a white nurse’s outfit personified before his eyes.
Then nurse Parker cocked her head at him with that patented out-of-this-world frown. “If you die can I have your weapons?”
No dream then. The pain should have been a good pointer. “I don’t like guns.” It was the weirdest post knock-out conversation he ever had and he blamed the lump on his head for the fact that he actually accomodated Parker’s madness.
Parker just shrugged obviously taking his answer seriously before bouncing over and flipping his banket away as if he were wearing anything more than a short hospital gown.
Eliot bristled, trying to cover himself fully with the shirt blue and white cloth but flinched half way through the movement as his left arm and leg burned up at the movement. He fell back panting at the pain and blinking onto the ceiling slowly. So there was a good reason he was in the hospital then.
He turned his head sidewards finding his arm in a cast and his mind assaulted him with a flash back to the moment he had stopped an iron rod from opening little Parker’s skull with one swift snap… with his own arm. There had been a crack like that of dry wood breaking and pain had flared up in his arm and hand.
He was weary to look at his leg. The pain had been immense and he remembered blood and several loud cracks. He swallowed and let his eyes travel downwards. His leg was thick and swollen, red, blue, purple and green and there was a contraption of metal bars connected to several foot long pins sticking in his leg - yes IN HIS LEG! - holding everything in place. Some places were covered with gauze and Eliot suspected that was where his broken bones had pierced the skin.
“I think they want to turn you into a cyborg…”
Eliot looked at Parker, sweet, crazy, naïve Parker, and then back at the external fixator stuck in his bones. At least he had a hot - if crazy - nurse and she seemed to find it rather cool.
*