What He Wouldn't Give (Unedited Version)

Chapter Twenty-Two: It's All Down Hill From Here

Chapter 22...It's All Down Hill From Here

Run... That's all he could do at this point. Run... His legs carried him down the road as fast as they could. Run... What was he running from?

Eli woke up sitting up feeling the pain from falling asleep in a hospital chair. Eli remembered sitting down for just a second while waiting for the technician to tell him when the doctor would be able to see him. He remembered getting a phone call from a worried doctor late last night about something that happened to Luke. The doctor wouldn't tell him right then and there 39what was wrong so Eli came in the next morning early requesting to speak to the same doctor.

Sitting up straight Eli took in his surroundings looking at the slightly sickening cream colored walls with stains of blood and a multitude of other substances that he would rather not know what they were. The walls had been scrubbed multiple times, but the stains would rather stay where they were leaving the memories on the wall of the person with a cracked skull, fractured appendages, inmates who tried to fight off their officers and punched the wall or were slammed into it by the officer to make them surrender and the various other events that took place in the waiting room. He looked at the ceiling noticing many broken lights and then his eyes swept to the floor which made him pick his feet up as the bile rose in his throat. He decided he needed to get out of the waiting room and walked up to the front desk.

The man at the desk gave him a finger signaling one minute as he was on the phone with someone. Groaning Eli stood impatiently waiting for the phone to be put down and then the man's attention should have been directed at Eli. If the light music didn't drive him crazy, it most likely would have come from the guy behind the counter who took another phone call making Eli wait. Then the guy left never attending to Eli as his shift was over and he had no responsibility to helping Eli out. Holding back derogative language, Eli waited for the girl to notice him waiting by the desk and hoped she would help him out unlike the guy before.

The girl noticed Eli standing and walked over to help him. She called the doctor's office phone and he picked up letting it get known that Eli should head to his office on the second floor room 392. Smiling and saying thank you he ventured off toward the elevator anticipation on the tips of his fingers with each step he took. Would this be the moment he found out he was eternally free from Luke's watch or would it be something else?

A couple of knocks on the door alerted the man sitting in his chair looking over Mr. Carters file that his patient's son was here. Eli's hair on the back of his neck stood up as he stepped into the office he avoided since he learned of his mother's dead close to three years ago, but not quite three years yet. Thoughts flit across his mind as to why he received an urgent phone call. Picking on chair to sit in out of the two, Eli sat with his hands in his lap avoiding looking at the doctor.

Suppressed memories of the room broke through the mental barrier Eli put in his mind and he shivered involuntarily as the doctor spoke.

"Last night Luke's EKG began to flat line. His body seemed to be fine with the transplant, but as seeing the events from last night his body might be fighting against it. I thought I should let you know that we are doing a surgery tomorrow to help the body accept the new organ and if everything goes well and Luke keeps himself away from alcohol he should recover just fine, but incase everything goes the complete opposite I wanted you to be aware that at any second he could slip into cardiac arrest or just flat line."

Eli knew the words shouldn't have affected him as he never cared for Luke after his mother died due to his abusive alcoholic ways and anger, but something seemed to knock his breath out hearing that he could lose the last member of his family that he knew about. Eli never visited any grandparents so he assumed and had been told they died. Both his mother and Luke were from single child families so no aunts or uncles Eli knew about. Eli wondered how he would react if Luke actually did die. He always hated him, but death wasn't pretty. Pushing aside those thoughts the doctor and Eli spoke for a couple of more minutes before the two were shaking hands and Eli was climbing into the truck on his way back to the house.