The Waiting Room

Chapter 5- Sharp Edges and Bloody Wounds

The breakfast had disappeared, and we were just in a yellow chamber with a large chandelier, discussing about our situation. But the chandelier looked a whole lot bigger than in the morning. In fact, the whole room seemed smaller. What was this crazy nonsense? Probably clausterphobia. I mean, I had just arrived in the Waiting Room for a ‘couple’ of days when now I was captured by Death, and he was threatening to kill us. Then I terrible thought occurred to me. The doctor only knows if I'm dead or alive. What was this? Was I still ina coma? Or was I considered dead? I looked up at the chandelier with boredom to only see that it had gotten bigger. A little scared, I tapped James's shoulder.

"James," I whispered. He looked up at me and I pointed to the chandelier. Not only had it grown but everything about it looked sharp. Not like it was in high definition, but like the edges of the chandelier were sharp and refined. Almost like…knives? His face paled.

"Phaedra," his finger pointed to a shrinking door. What was going on with this place? It was definitely too soon for a test. Right? I could hear James’ message clearly, 'run.' We sprinted to the shrinking door. But as we did, the chandelier went into maniac mode. It started producing small, sharp knives where the candles were suppose to be, and chucking it at us. Well there goes the thought of this all not being a test. We dove to the floor trying to reach the door, when it disappeared. No way out. My eyes widened. This was survival. I caught my breath, and tore my eyes away from the disapeared door to the knives scattered on the floor.

It seemed James and I had the same train of thought, because we  sprinted to the knives and grabbed them. I thanked the lucky starts that we had shoes on. The sharp knives were spalttered everywhere like broken glass and not to mention the knives flying at us. As the robot glared at James, I threw mine at the chandelier to divert the attention. It bounced harmlessly off of it, and the robot chandelier zeroed on me. Great. I dodged as it threw a knife at me. But it skinned my right calf as I threw myself to the ground. White hot pain seared through my leg and forearms, as I fell onto more knives. I groaned out in pain. I tried to stand, but as I moved my arms, knives would just dig further into them. Blood started oozing out of my calf and my arms.

I took a chance to glance behind me towards the robot and James. James's eyes opened wide as he saw my bloody hands, and for the most part body. He then went into attack mode. He stood over me and chucked his knives at the chandelier. Then, the chandelier fell from the ceiling and went on four legs. James started slashing the beast-like chandelier with all his force. But the thing was fast, and it crawled away before James could hit it again. It actually came scrambling to me. But, James was my protection. He threw his knife into the back of the beast and it slowly shrunk down. James did it one more time until it closed up, then it vanished. I let out a sigh of relief, as the knives on the floor started disapearing.

 I turned around to look at him, his eyes was filled with worry when he caught a glimpse of my leg and arms. Actually I got worried too when I saw them. I had been too much of a coward earlier, that I hadn’t actually seen the extremeties of the wounds. There was a cut through my jeans and I could see through it was just full of blood and was extremely red and painful. Since I was in just tanktop, my wounds were clearly visible and painful. James held his hand out and I took it. I started to stand up, but the muscles in my arms spased.  I just fell back again. James grimaced, but then sat next to me against the wall. He put his arm around me to comfort me. It was then that I saw a cut running from elbow to his hand.

“James!” I exclaimed. I had been too caught up with myself that I hadn’t even seen if James was fine. He seemed to snap out of his thoughts, and glance down at his arm. He furrowed his eyebrows.

“I-I didn’t see that,” he murmured to himself. He winced as he lightly touched his wound.

"You don't think this Death guy has medicine, do you?" I asked, to make light of the situation.

He smiled a bit and it reminded of the smiles and laughter he had before we came here.

I smiled back at him. The cuts couldn't be that deep could it? I experimented by rolling my jeans up to reveal the cut. It wasn't deep, but it was bloody. The ones on my forearms weren’t that bad, but James’ looked pretty serious. The blood had stopped a bit, but it was hard to tell because he cuppedhis hand over it.I looked at James anxiously, but he wasn’t looking at me. I scanned the room to look for anything I could use to help my leg. No surprise, nothing. I groaned and closed my eyes, leaning my head back onto the wall. A thought kept pestering, this was only the first test and I was already injured. The hope that was bottled up immediately crumbled.

   I looked over at James, his head was bent over and he was pulling something out of his pocket.  He pulled out a long bandage and commenced wrapping it around my leg, his eyebrows deep in concentration,

"I think this may help until we have anything else," he murmured. He tightened the bandage and I sucked in a shaky breath and winced. He looked up at me with an apologetic expression. He quickly did the same with my arms. After he was done, I snatched the bandage away, and commenced warrping it around his wound on his arm. He grinned at me.

"Well that should keep it together to quicken up the healing time," James said, sounding unsure and a little bit worried. I shrugged it off and laid my head on James's broad shoulder. A sudden thought occurred to me.

"James, how did you get the bandage?" I asked, looking at him.

"My friend and I were going to teepee a house..." he trailed sheepishly. “I hadn’t really found use of it in the Waiting Room, and I was planning on throwing it out, actually. I didn’t though.”

The atmosphere became a little too silent after that, so I decided to start a conversation,

"Where do you live?" I asked curiously.

"Well I live at the same place as you. Portland, Oregon. Well ‘lived’." James muttered the last part to himself, but I caught it.

"How did you know I lived there?" I asked in a small voice. He smirked down at me,

"You mentioned it once to the boys so I guessed that's where it was," I rolled my eyes at him but continued to get to know him.

"So, do you have any siblings?"

"Well yeah there's Anthony my big oaf of an older brother and Sarah the next Hannah Montana for a younger sister. My parents are split up but their names are George and Amy. Well I don’t know now. My parents are probably…gone. I just hope my siblings are okay," he whimpered, while he talked about his family his eyes grew darker and his voice was tinged was sadness. I immediately felt bad for bringing up his family and decided to change the subject, but not before James asked,

"How about you?" I looked down slowly at the floor and felt sad that I wouldn’t see them for a long time, but I wouldn't let it show.

"Well my younger sister's name is Sydney, and she's the best sister you could ask for. My mother's name is Lucilia and my fathers name was Cadeon. He passed away when I was thirteen. My neighbor Malia could be considered as a family member because I saw her almost every day when I was younger," I smiled a little as I thought of my family and good old Malia. Or, at least she was good. James’ lips turned up into a genuine smile that I hadn't seen in so long. I decided to make more conversation,

"So... What's your favorite color?”