Ten | newtmas

twenty six

TRIGGER WARNING: Once again, Newt's mind is in a dark place. Mentions of s*icide. Be safe. All the love. xx

I'm dead.

    That's my first thought. Because, at first, I don't feel anything. Not even necessarily conscious. So, I come to the decision that this is death.

    Strangely enough, I don't mind it. I'm not scared. Then again, I'm too out of it to be scared. If anything, I'm disappointed. It's uneventful. And I have this unbelievable fog clouding my brain—if that even matters when you're dead—so I can't really comprehend... well, anything.

    That is, until a little bit of the fog clears with a little beeping sound that grows louder and louder into absolute chaos.

    Then, the world crashes down around me.

    My eyes open and something tears in my chest. I know where I am. It's not home, it's not TIMI. And it's certainly not the afterlife.

    Memories flood through my brain. Gally pushing Thomas, Thomas bumping into me. The car. Feeling like my heart stopped. My tens.

    I look down at myself and there's a blanket covering me, so I can't see anything. But I feel something.

    My foot. It's killing me, and it feels like I'm wearing a shoe. After my mind clears a little more, I rationalize that it must be some sort of wrap or cast.

    I'm in a hospital. I don't know what happened exactly, but passing out seems plausible. Passing out sounds good right about now. Have I walked anymore? What number was I on again? How many steps back did I take?

    Nobody is in the small area—just a bed with curtains around it—with me. I feel everything closing in, and my head starts pounding. I can't be here. I don't want to be here. I need to finish my tens, figure out where I was. My brain won't shut off.

    Suddenly, I become aware that I'm mumbling. After that, I become aware that my mumbling is louder than I thought it was.

    A curtain flies to the side to reveal a nurse, and she rushes towards me, speaking into a device pinned to her shirt. I can't hear her over myself. I can't hear myself over the rushing of my blood to my head.

    "I'm not supposed to be here." I break the chain of my mumbling to get the one coherent thought out, my eyes brimming with tears.

    "I know, sweetie," the nurse says. Her words are kind, but her voice is cold. Everything is cold.

    Every word that comes out of me now, isn't me. It's some panicked, broken boy far away from where I am. It's the same boy whose parents told him they were getting a divorce. He won't stop talking. He won't stop crying.

    "What happened? Where am I? Where are my parents? I shouldn't be here, I shouldn't be here. What happened to my leg? What number was I on? Get me out of here, I need to get out of here." The words cannot physically stop flowing out.

    "Just relax, okay? You're a little hurt, but you'll be alright," she says, but I don't listen.

    I keep talking and talking as she messes with something next to me. It's like I'm trapped in a box with no room to move, and there's a fire growing in the corner. I can't do anything to stop the burning, I can't do anything to lessen the pain.

    My last thought before I'm hit with a wave of sleepiness, is that maybe whoever saved me from that car didn't save me at all.

The next time I awaken, it's with a visit from my parents. Aka, the last people on the planet that I want to see right now.