SLEEPSONG (BoyxBoy)✔️

Chapter 177

Chapter One Hundred and Seventy Seven

"Does it hurt?" Erika worriedly asked, poking my cheek as she watched the dark-haired, yellow-eyed nurse apply some sort of disinfecting ointment to my legs. I was squeezing the metal bars of the bedside so tight that it hurt my bones, refusing to look down.

"No," I said through gritted teeth, sweating profusely. "I can't feel much of anything below my knees and my legs look like under cooked bird meat."

Miss Clifford, the nurse, gave me a sympathetic look as she tended to my healing flesh.

"You'll be all right," she said, raising the ointment. "We're treating you with a special salve that only the denizens of the Underground have access to. It'll greatly lessen the scarring and prevent a vast amount of contractual skin damage. You'll be fine."

"Don't tell him he'll be fine until he can get up and take off running," Tobias snapped, earning some sour looks from Sebastian and the woman tending me. "Don't give me those looks."

"Sir, unless you want to wait in the hall, I suggest you keep the negativity to a dull roar," the nurse said with a forced smile. "Please and thank you."

Sebastian smirked and my nephew let out a grumble but I hardly noticed since I was too busy trying not to puke my guts out.

Five days had passed since I'd first started drinking blood from Sebastian, and a full nineteen had passed since the rescue attempt. Time had blown by without me even really noticing it was happening. It was literally the eighteenth of December.

Christmas was in a week.

A time I'd been daydreaming about going on shopping sprees for lovely gifts was being spent here, now, lying in a hospital bed with my legs being tended to. I still couldn't forget the moment I'd first seen them... the entire memory had had been burned into my brain like my new scars.

When I'd been woken up by Miss Clifford, who'd finally unraveled my legs to apply the ointment for the very first time, I'd nearly vomited during those first few moments. My lower thighs and the skin above and even on my knees had been covered in blistering red streaks, scarlet welts that looked horribly gross and hurt like hell. The worst sort of second-degree burns.

I hadn't wanted to look any lower, where the scorching must have been the worst.

But I'd needed to.

So I had.

Surprise-surprise, that time I'd actually vomited which had panicked Miss Clifford, the on-hand nurse who'd been assigned to take care of me, and had prompted Richard to throw a trashcan at my face--which had not been helpful, not at all, since it had nearly knocked me out.

Both of my legs from my knees to my feet had been covered in stiff, whitish-brown burns with fiery red rings extending up and around the sickly off-white parts. Third-degrees, according to the doctor on staff at the time. "Whether or not he'll ever be able to extensively use his legs again after those burns, and the inevitable damage to the leg nerves, remains to be seen."

His words still rang in my ears. Four days had passed since then but I could't, wouldn't allow myself to believe it until I had no choice but to accept it as true.

Not until I was healed and I could try walking and test my actual mobility.

It was all I could do now to avoid thinking about how mangled my limbs looked. Most of the minor burns had already faded thanks to the treatments I'd been given and the occasional deep licking from Sebastian whenever the two of us had a bit of alone time in the hospital room.