Familial Ties (Rise of the Guardians)

We Were Friends

Jamie was in a damn hospital bed. The doctors had sewn up the split skin on the back of his head and he now had a bald patch that would take a few months to grow back in. His mum was seated next to him, Sophie back at school now that the weather had cleared. The doctor stood at the foot of his bed, informing him of his condition now that he was awake.
"You took quite the hit," she said. "You were unconscious for a couple of days with a subdural hematoma - a bruise on your brain." Jamie looked over at his mum, confused. A couple of days?
"What happened?" he asked, his voice hoarse with disuse and sore from the tube they had just removed from his throat.
"We don't expect you to remember," the doctor assured him. "With an injury like yours, you would've lost a decent amount of memory. It may come back to you over time, or it may not. The brain is a very complex system." He relaxed his head back against his pillow and stared at the ceiling. He had an overwhelming sense that there was something he had to remember, but he just couldn't.
"You were conscious when you came in," the doctor continued, "which means your friend found you very quickly after your injury - you're very lucky, you lost consciousness as we were transferring you to a bed. We had to intubate you and perform a surgical drain to release the pressure in your skull. It'll take several weeks for you to recover, I'm afraid, but your prognosis looks good. You have full function of your body at least, which is surprising given the other concussion you were still healing from."
"Other concussion?" he asked, eyebrows drawing together.
"You were in a car accident the day before this happened to you," his mother said, reaching for his hand. Jamie turned his head to look at her, blinking in confusion. "I'll tell you all about it once the doctor is finished." The doctor nodded and continued.
"We'll have to keep you here for a while, until your brain heals. A couple of weeks, probably. And, I'm afraid, you're going to have to hang up your hockey jersey for good now. Contact sport is a no go for you." Jamie sighed; he had expected to hear that last part.
"What am I supposed to do instead?" He asked, and the doctor smiled at him ruefully.
"You have a lot of life left to figure that out," she said. "We were also initially concerned about that bruising on your neck - it's consistent with strangulation, we can see the fingers of the hand that choked you. Thankfully, your attacker didn't tear your windpipe, though I'd imagine it'll still be quite stiff and sore for a while." Jamie instinctively brought his hand up to his own throat; it was a little stiff, but with all the meds in his system it didn't seem to hurt. He wondered how bad the bruising was. "I'll leave you to it for now - the nurse will be by in a few hours to give you more pain medicine. Please press the call button if you need anything in the meantime."
"Thank you, doctor," his mum said as she left.

"You just can't seem to stay out of trouble, can you?" said a voice from the door. A uniformed police officer was striding into the room with a smile of recognition on his face.
"This is Officer Rowley, he took your statement after the car accident," Jamie's mother said, noting his confused expression.
"Oh," Jamie mumbled, "maybe I just wanted to see you again." He shot a grin at the man, who returned it.
"Now, the doc has warned me you won't know anything, but I do have to ask a few questions as a formality if that's okay."

~

Jack had spent the last few days hiding; he wasn't ready to face the Guardians. He had kept a low profile, suffering in the immense heat of the Australian Outback. He knew they would never look for him there, given his absolute distaste for the country without snow.

Night had fallen and he found himself sitting on a rocky outcropping, staring across the horizon and trying to pretend he was in that circular stone room in the North Pole. That felt like a lifetime ago to him now; longer even than the three hundred years he'd been alive. He sighed and drew his eyes up to the Moon; he'd been avoiding that these last couple of nights, too, but tonight it was full and the light bounced against the red Earth beneath him.