CHAPTER 4
Oh my gosh! What happened? What’s going on with Gale? Will he be ok? These are the thoughts running inside my head while I’m walking to the bedroom to wake up Peeta.
“Peeta, Peeta!”
“What? Its two in the morning.”
“Gale got shot! I saw it on t.v.!”
“What? We need to go now!”
“I know, I’ll start the hov-”
“There’s no time for that. We need to teleport to the Capitol building now.”
“What about the kids?”
“I’ll stay with them then. You have to go see Gale right now!”
“OK.”
I rush to the teleporter and set the destination to the Capitol building. It takes me about five minutes to get there. When I arrive, I ask everyone where Gale is.
“Do you know which hospital Gale Hawthorne is in?”
Ignore.
“Excuse me, can you please help me find Gale Hawthorne?”
Ignore
“Do you-”
“I don’t care!”
Nobody helped me. Finally I saw Cressida, my film crew director when I was the Mockingjay. I didn’t even ask and she told me where the hospital was. Overwhill Hospital, 23 Aldjoy Lane, City of Fairbain.
I arrive there and I wonder if Gale is still there? What if he died? What if they can’t do anything for him? I walk over to the lobby desk and tell them I want to see Gale Hawthorne. They say that he is in this hospital which makes me a lot less nervous. They tell me he is in room 87B.
I rush to the elevator and rush to the eighth floor and go into room 7B. I see Gale in there and he is sleeping. I let out just about the biggest sigh of relief I can. He’s okay. He looks fine. His chest is all wrapped up in a bandage, but other than that, He looks exactly they way he always did.
I walk into the room, and sit down next to him in a chair. I kissed his cheek and his eyes slowly opened up.
“Sorry to wake you up.”
“Nah, it’s OK.”
“So how are you feeling?”
“I’m fine, I guess. I lost a lot of blood though.”
Well obviously he lost blood, but I didn’t say anything.
“So what the heck happened out there?
“Oh nothing.”
“Tell me.”
“OK. I followed what you said and I went on my own path. I said I didn’t want to marry Valorie and everyone was mad for that except for her. I also did this because I’m the president, not them.”
“I agree, but you really didn’t have to take it that far that they’d want to kill you.”
“I don’t get it. First, you say to do what I want, and then you say I have to listen to everyone else?”
“Look, sometimes you have to compromise and listen to their ideas, too. Everything can’t go exactly the way you want it to.”
“But I don’t like their ideas. They’re planning to make poor people pay more taxes than rich people. I know how hard that is. We’ve both been through it in 12. Think about it Katniss. Poor people who have barely enough money to buy one meal a day have to give up all their money for the Capitol, who is filthy rich. We were lucky, Katniss. We knew how to hunt and we befriended the peacemaker. We had it better than most people in 12!”
Gale was right. We did have it better than everyone else.
“Quit.”
“What?”
“I said, quit. Listen, if you give in to their corrupt ideas, Panem will be exactly the same as it was before. Whatever you, Peeta, and I did wouldn’t even matter anymore. If you go with your own ideas, they’ll kill you.”
“But I have to try,”
“You did! And just look at what happened. What did we achieve?”
“You’re right. I guess I just have to leave, die, or listen to the other members of the Capitol.
