LOTF: Before and After

Phase 3: Chapter 24

The sound that woke Ralph up was startling, for lack of a stronger word. He laid on Jack's bedroom floor, a twinge of sun shining through the closed blinds, making it just light enough for him to make out the shadows of the objects in the room. He was sitting up before he even realized he was conscious; on guard, alert. It had been six and a half months since the rescue, and he still failed to sleep through any sound he could consider potentially threatening.

Ralph looked around him and realized Jack was gone. The noise that had woke him was coming from someplace else in the house; and sounded like something heavy had been dropped. The next sound Ralph heard was shouting (it was hard to tell who's from three stories up), followed by the slam of what must've been the front door. Ralph decided against investigating or even leaving the room. Instead, he crawled up onto Jack's un-slept-in bed and grabbed the throw blanket from the edge of the bed, wrapping it around himself. He sat in wait as he prepared for the possible escalation of whatever he'd heard, but it stayed silent.

A few minutes later, Jack came up and opened the door thoughtlessly, abruptly, loudly. Ralph flinched before seeing who it was, and when he did he finally let his breath go.

"Shit, sorry" Jack's head shot up as he found Ralph sitting on the bed. Ralph started at Jack, who used his elbow to turn on the light. Unadjusted to it, Ralph covered his eyes.

"That's real bright" Ralph pointed out as he covered his unprepared eyes.

"Sorry" Jack said quickly, propping himself up against his dresser.

Ralph uncovered his eyes and let them wander to Jack; specifically the bloody wound on his wrist he was holding a blood-soaked gauze of paper towel to, then up to Jack's face, where Ralph noticed a dark red bruise swelling on half his cheek.

"What happened to you?" Ralph asked with dire concern, hopping off the bed and hurrying over to the injured boy.

"Ah, nothing" Jack waved a dismissive hand at the worried brunette.

"It's not nothing" Ralph insisted in a sappy little voice, gently tracing Jack's bruised face with his fingers. The blond flinched at the sudden pain. Ralph let go and crossed his arms over his chest. "It's not nothing" he repeated more firmly this time. "What happened to your arm?"

"I'm not playing your little game of twenty questions" Jack responded hotly.

"Jack" Ralph said sadly, staring down at the incision on his wrist. The gauze was completely soaked through, and blood was starting to drip onto the carpet. "At least let me help you."

"I know first aid" Jack insisted.

"Clearly" Ralph motioned sarcastically to the blood dripping from the wound down his arm.

"I fixed your broken arm up real good, did I not? After barely surviving a plane crash, in the middle of the ocean, on a lousy lifeboat nonetheless" Jack smartly reminded him.

"Well I think you cared a lot more about me than you do about yourself" Ralph harshly suggested. Jack couldn't find the words to argue.

"Come 'ere" Ralph insisted, and Jack surrendered, stepping forward to bridge the gap between them. They stood a mere half foot apart as Ralph gently removed the gauze, the excessive mess of blood making it hard to see where it was all coming from.

"Jesus Christ" Ralph's eyes went wide. "Come" he added as he gently held Jack's wrist up and used it to guide him to the bathroom next door.

He started to unravel more than half the toilet paper on the roll hanging beside the toilet and layered it up into a much thicker piece of gauze than the one Jack had come upstairs with. "Does it hurt?" Ralph asked before he was about to apply the toilet paper gauze.