Beyond the Border | ✔

14 | rule 24

RULE 24: IMMEDIATELY REPORT ANY SIGN OF OUTSIDE MATERIALS LIKE BOOKS, MAGAZINES, OR FOOD. THEY ARE POISON TO THE MIND AND BODY.

✷ C H A P T E R      F O U R T E E N ✷

A week had passed before I was able to haphazardly move my body around without collapsing into a heap on the floor. Mina said she was happy with the progress, but she remarked often that I healed so slowly. Apparently, unbeknownst to me, I was Mina's first human patient.

Scratch that, it goes beyond: I was actually the first human patient to ever be treated here. Mina asked if she could poke and prod around my body to see exactly how things worked. I had wanted to say no, but watching TV caused eye strain, and I had nothing else to entertain me, so I hesitantly obliged.

It wasn't the worse deal to have. Well, not completely. Throughout the past week, I had learned a little bit about the Outside world. I had tried to bring up the topic of witches, but Mina had scrunched her nose up and shook her head at the mention. She remarked that she was not very fond of them after her last girlfriend was entangled with one.

"Why do you ask?" Mina questioned me just as she got done explaining her mishap situation with a witch.

"Oh, I just thought maybe a witch could, you know, heal me completely? I don't know, is that something they can do?" I thought up very quickly; the lie slipped out of my mouth almost as if it was second nature.

It's not a lie, exactly; it's just a means to survival, I reassured myself.

"You've seen those ads?" she grumbled. "I've been trying to petition Theo to have him do something — no anything — about those damn ads. The one on Fifth is the worst. The audacity, some witches think they can take advantage of innocent people by posting ads about all this magic they can do. It's all usually lies, by the way. Most witches don't even know how to light a candle without a match at the ready. Ridiculous. Another reason to stay away."

Mina then went on a tangent about how supernaturals these days relied too heavily on their abilities instead of trusting cold hard facts like trusting magic over medicine. She was so heated up about it that I almost witnessed her shift right in front of me.

Meanwhile, I had approximated I had spent about a week and a half recovering so far from the car crash. I had come to this realization last night when I woke up in a cold sweat from a nightmare. I had less than three months to find a witch, and I knew absolutely nothing about anything. Not that I could do much more than bask in my own misery, but that just piled onto the misery. It was a never-ending cycle.

On the bright side, the cut on my forehead had scabbed over and the bruise flowering over it was gone. My ribs and chest still hurt more than I would have liked to admit, but by now, I was able to better manage the pain. My broken wrist was wrapped up in a blue cast. At least, my sprained leg barely hurt at all; I often forgot that there was anything wrong with it at all. With all this progress, I was slowly being weaned off my pain medicine, and I no longer had to be hooked up to any machines.

My body was healing itself, and it was getting easier to think clearly despite the ongoing concussion I still had. In light of my good progress, I had tried to convince Mina to let me leave the room so I could scope things out, but she said she was on strict orders to not let me wander. Of course, I did not hear about these orders firsthand as that would have required Theo to visit me. Ever since that night he helped me to the bathroom, he had not made an appearance.