Love at Sea (Finnick Odair)

Chapter 3

His face was damp with tears as he stared at the ceiling of the windowless, grey room he'd been in for the last two weeks. He'd been partly catatonic. He could barely stay awake. But there was no relief in sleeping. In his dreams, he could hear her. Hear her screaming for him. Pleading for him to come back for her. But he could never move. He'd been electrocuted by the blast. Stuck on the ground unable to even reach out for her.

"How are you doing Finnick?" Katniss' mother asked as she wrote notes down on her chart.

"I just want to sleep."

"You only just woke up Finnick. Let's try and get to 10 minutes before we sleep again?" she encouraged.

"Is there any news?" he asked, his eyes flickering with hope.

"No," she replied sadly, and his eyes went glassy again. "I told you dear, when there's news you'll be the first to know."

"I want to go home."

"You know that's not possible," she squeezed his arm lightly in comfort.

"Why can't I be with the others?" he asked. "With Tyler and Buck."

"Finnick... you know why we had to separate you. You were... disruptive to the others."

"But Buck's always grumpy," Finnick complained like a child. "He always threatens things like that. But I promise I'll keep the crying quiet. Just let me go back!"

"You were disruptive for Tyler as well. And you know it wasn't just the crying that was bothering them, dear."

It wasn't Finnicks fault. He didn't know he was screaming out for Taiya in his sleep, keeping the whole ward from getting a good night's rest. But Buck threatened that if he heard the boy yell one more time he'd smother him with a pillow, so instead they moved Finnick to a private part of the hospital.

"Do you know when Plutarch will send the rescue team for Taiya?" Finnick asked.

"Finnick, I already told you. There's no news."

"Oh yeah," Finnick slumped in his chair as he remembered they'd already had this conversation.

He tried to stop the tears, but they started flowing. It'd been two weeks and as far as he could tell, there was no intention of launching a rescue mission anytime soon.

Katniss' mother immediately began adjusting some buttons on a machine and Finnick felt the morphing flood his veins.

"Just get some rest," she whispered before leaving the room, allowing Finnick to slip into drug-fuzed, traumatic oblivion.

*********************

"Thanks for coming," Finnick mumbled as he looked at Tyler and Buck. "It's been ages since I've seen anyone from home. I appreciate it."

"We've been here every d..." Buck began before Tyler elbowed him, silencing his words.

"Not a problem Finn," Tyler smiled.

It'd been 4 weeks since the arena blast. Tyler and Buck had been released 2 weeks ago once District 13 was certain they were no longer going to threaten people's lives to get what they wanted. An immediate rescue mission for Taiya. It took Plutarch weeks to get it through to them that doing so would be dangerous for everyone, including Taiya. They both made it a rule to visit Finnick every day, but the man could never remember their visits the next day. The doctors weren't sure whether his memory and concentration issues were a side effect of the arena blast or his mental instability.

"Katniss says she'll stop by as well," Tyler added.

"That's nice. She was here yesterday," Finnick nodded half-heartedly.