I'll need a vacuum.

23

I woke up AGAIN in Shoko's infirmary. It was becoming a habit... a bad habit. It was the end of the day and I was alone. I felt sluggish, and my first instinct was to touch my stomach. There were bandages on it, but I could breathe and the pain was diffuse. They had to give me a drug to alleviate it. It took me a moment to realize.

I was alive !

I couldn't believe I had been so lucky, and that my glorious career as an exorcist didn't stop at my first mission. Now I just had to figure out what was going to happen to me, because I didn't feel at all ready to go back into battle as things stood. Usually, my small injuries due to my clumsiness took a month and a half to disappear, so a huge hole in my belly ? I was going to have to wait a year before I could laugh again without hemorrhaging, right ?

Shoko entered, ending my interrogations.

"Awake?"

I nodded, my throat too dry to attempt an answer. She poured me a glass of water, then sat down across from me. I was still too weak to get up, and I felt the tugging of the bandages on my chest. I drank cautiously, but still spilled a lot of it on my hospital top. Hey, was that new ? Shoko answered me before I asked her.

"We had to rush you to the hospital, hence your outfit. I proceeded to a treatment before, to make you hold the blow, but the damage was too complex for me to treat them myself, and Yaga sent you there so that they heal you. You almost died, Molly."

"Yeah, I realized that. I had a hole in the middle of my chest."

I winced as I said that, the pain erupting as soon as I started talking. I must have had a hell of a lot of stitches. I was going to get a nice scar on my little tummy... .

Shoko was looking at me with unusual seriousness. However, this was not the first time that I found myself hospitalized.

" We screwed up. I'm so sorry Molly, we should never have asked you to go without experience. It was a mistake."

I didn't answer. What was done, was done, and I felt lucky enough to still be breathing. The anger would be for later, I must have already realized that I had come close to death, what, a third time ? In a month, that was a lot. Too even. I clutched the sheet in my fist weakly, containing the tears that threatened to come out. I was tired of risking my life for nothing, and constantly getting hurt. I wanted to resume my quiet life, without problems, and without curses that try to bump me off as soon as I poke my nose outside.

Shoko seemed to understand my confusion, and we were silent for a long time. Fatigue came over me all of a sudden, and I felt my eyelids grow heavy. The last thing I saw was Shoko's pained look, pulling the covers up to me and apologizing in a whisper.

*

It took me several more days to recover, and I alternated between drowsy vigil and heavy naps, due to the anesthesia of my operation. They took me back to school despite my condition, because I was supposed to be dead and missing, and couldn't stay in a public place. Fortunately, I was stabilized enough to spend my days in the infirmary. Shoko explained to me that I had suffered several hemorrhages, but that the most important one, which should have killed me in a few minutes, had been stopped just long enough for them to operate on me and fix all this shit. She had applied a little of her power to hold together the fragile blood barrier that I had built before passing out, and which had literally saved me. Kamo had helped me indirectly, and I felt indebted. I hoped he was well after the catastrophic end of our mission.

Yaga came by to apologize to me several times. They did not know that another more powerful curse was present, and this event put a stop to the other missions temporarily, the time to check the tools of detection of the curses. They couldn't afford to lose exorcist students for lack of reliable information.