My One And Only // {Johnnyboy}

Chapter Twelve: Hospitalized

I woke up in an ambulance with some old guy next to me. I immediately started to panic.

"W-where's Johnny?" I asked, barely conscious. I tried sitting up, but the guy next to me stopped me.

"Whoa, easy there. Don't worry, yer friends are gonna be jus' fine." He said, trying to calm me down.

"W-who are you.." I asked. I was completely out of it. I'm surprised I didn't say anything that would've gotten me killed. He answered me, but I wasn't listening one bit. My mind went to Johnny. My boyfriend. I remembered the roof falling. I remembered Dally running in. I remembered Johnny's shriek of terror and pain. I felt like I was going to be sick.

"I-I think I'm going to be sick..." I said weakly. The old guy got a bucket for me. I rolled over and puked my guts out.

"Jeez, kid, you alright?" he asked when I was done. I just looked at him with an expression on my face that said 'what do you think?' He got the hint. He talked to me about "how brave" we all were, but if I'm being honest I was not listening. My mind was on Johnny.

-

We arrived at the hospital and after a quick examination the doctors determined that I was fine, I just needed to take it easy. 

I was escorted out to the waiting room.  I didn't think I'd be getting out of there, since I didn't have a ride home.  But to my surprise, I saw a familiar pair of brothers enter through the door.  Sodapop ran over to me and engulfed me in a hug.

"We missed you, Pone!" he said, sounding a little bit chocked up.  I couldn't help but get emotional myself, if I'm being honest.

When me and Soda finally pulled away, I noticed Darry in the doorframe.  I thought for sure that he was going to scold me for killing a man, running away to a church, then setting that church in fire by accident, but instead I noticed something.  His face ever so slightly glistened in the light.  It was damp with tears.

Now that was something truly terrifying.  Darry always had the same cold, firm expression on his face.  He hardly ever showed emotion.  Any emotion, for that matter.  He hardly ever smiled.  So you can imagine the sheer terror I felt when I discovered that he was crying.

Without thinking, I ran over to him and threw myself at him.  His large, muscly arms wrapped tight around me.

"I thought we'd lost you," he said through tears.  "Just like mom and dad."

That made me think.  Darry didn't hate me.  He was just scared.  Scared that he'd lose me too.  We were family, after all. 

After we finished our little sob fest, one of the nurses came out and told me that Dally wanted to see me.  I excused myself from my brothers and followed the nurse down the hall to Dally's room.

I walked into his room.  He seemed kind of ticked off.  He motioned me to come over closer to his hospital bed.  When the nurse wouldn't leave, he shooed her away.  He wanted to talk to me in private.  Just great.

"Hey, kid, c'mere.  There was somethin' that I wanted to talk to ya about in the church, but I never did get a chance," he said passive aggressively.

"Look, I'm sorry, me an' Johnny were just in the church doing our thing" making out "when we see this school bus come up-"

"Yeah, yeah, I don't care.  Anyways, what I wanted to talk to ya about was Bob."

"The guy Johnny killed?" I asked.

"That's the thing.  He ain't dead."