Untimely

Chapter 26

"You were supposed to get off there!" I shouted, wrinkling the map and sitting back in my chair.

"No, it said Route 34, that was 36!" Steve retorts, turning on the turning signal to get into another lane.

4 hours into this road trip and we're already fighting. He was stupid enough to give me the map. I have half a mind to shove the map in front of his face, after we stopped for gas and gained this little piece of the flat world. I can not believe, how bad Steve is with directions. I mean, we've already made four wrong turns, which has made the destination arrival time to be estimated for 3.

3 in the morning.

It's only 8 pm now!

"Steve, take the next exit" I ordered, my patience running very, very low.

"I'm turning around" he seemed to be looking over past me and at the line of trees along the highway. But I was too tired to argue anymore, and too hungry. Suddenly, I felt very sick to my stomach. As if it was beginning to eats itself into a scrunched, air tight blob that shrivels into a pea sized sphere if left empty too long. And it had most certainly been too long.

I'm going to puke. I can feel the way it tingles with cheeks and back of neck. I instinctively reach for the door handle. "You gotta stop the car" I warn, shaking my head and swallowing carefully.

Any wrong move could be when I loose what's keeping me conscious.

"I can't pull over" he sounded angry too, but I could almost feel his expression change when he looked over at me.

When the car was completely stopped, I flew my door open and crawled out, not on my feet. No, my feet were no longer working. My hands and knees had to carry me to the wet grass. I didn't care if I puked anymore. I wanted this feeling to go away.

"Poison?" Steve was right there, kneeling, but still above me. I shook my head. "Gun wound?" And I shook my head again. He paused for a minute, "when was the last time you ate anything?"

Bingo, Rogers. Congratulations.

I felt my muscles contracting themselves tightly against eachother, trying to push nothing up into my throat. It hurt so much. Every muscle was tensed in keeping my body perfectly still. If anything- anything moved, I felt as if something would snap or break in two, and I would really die. But that didn't happen. As nothing came out of the small pea sized stomach, I felt my head start hurting, pounding. But not a hard to bare pounding.

Just a very soft, uncomfortable pounding.

Things were growing blotchy in my eyesight. My hands, Steve's knee, the grass itself seemed to have disappeared. And what remained of my hands was resting on- on nothing. It scared me. Blackness and nothingness seemed to be right in front of me, but an invisible floor was keeping it away. I can see how close it is. I did not want the floor to break, but I could feel its fragility with every twitch of my fingers.

Suddenly, a hand grabbed my shoulder and pulled me backward, but not as if I was facing something that could not be faced. I could not move, and my eyes felt heavy. So I closed them, and gave in to a darkness I was familiar with.

/

(3rd)

Steve placed Halo in the back seat. He wasn't sure what the best position was, so he just lie her across all three cushions and hoped nothing would go wrong. Then he climbed into the drivers seat, started the car again, and got off on the next exit, now trying to find a place of medical or food and water itself.

Even he knew, however, that starvation is not simply treated by food. A small hope in him prayed that Halo could handle it with only that, because that was all he had to offer as he pulled into the first gas station he saw. Steve had never dealt with something like this. He only needed one meal a day to fight armies, but her? The least was that he understood a human being that was not tested on, or sent into a training program to fight assassins.

Of course, she was trained for such a job.

Steve only grabbed a small amount of food, and two bottles of water. He knew somewhat that if someone is in fact starving, eating a lot at once can kill them if the lack of nutrition hasn't already. He payed for the items, and walked quickly back to the car.

Halo had not moved.

First, Steve sat her limp body up, as if she were just another passenger in the back seat. Then, he tipped the water to her lips, seeing if the coolness would trigger consciousness.

But Halo did not move.

The Captain was afraid of dripping too much water down her un swallowing throat. Afraid of drowning her, perhaps. But he tried again, only one small drop of water.

It was not as if she had come back to life, where she took a large gasp of air and coughed and sputtered until she was able to take what was being offered. No, it was not like that. Halo's lips closed, as if she was holding onto that drop because to her, it was indeed her last one. And then she turned her head, no longer letting it fall to one side or the other.

"Is there more?" She was not deprived of water, so her voice sounded just as it had before.

"There's food too" Steve wrinkled the grocery bag with an apple, bag of chips, and two oranges in it. And then, Halo's eyes were open.

"Give them to me" she ordered insistently.

Steve reached into the bag and handed her only the apple. Hoping she would be able to bite into it. "All of it you, baffoon" he finger pointed to the bag. Captain chuckled and took the bag away, shutting her door, and getting into the drivers seat.

"Eat that" he ordered, starting the car once again. "And then look at the map"