The Wright Way

Chapter 13 - The Wright Way

I can't remove Joshua's hands wrapped around me without hurting him, so I opt for steering both of us back into the examination room. The doctor and the nurse are still there, watching us with amusement, but at least the room will provide cover from the rest of the spectators, including Mike and Lagana.

When we reach the door, he finally unglues himself from me, and I can breathe again. He looks up at me, his eyes wet and shining, his face still bearing a few smudges of soot, even though someone clearly tried to clean him up. His long hair is a tangled mess and is slightly shorter on one side, some of the ends curled and burned. His face looks mostly unharmed—I had it pressed to my chest while carrying him out of the fire. There're a few pink areas, but most of his skin has already faded to the usual pale color, now slightly tinged by blue—the result of oxygen deprivation.

"Oh, fuck," he mumbles, his eyes searching my face. "Ethan, isn't it? Oh, fuck. Ethan, thank you. Thank you so much, Ethan."

"Just get into the room, will you?" I push him through the doorframe, fearing the spectators will do something cheesy like bursting into applause. Thankfully, we make it out of their sight without any further embarrassments.

Inside the room, Joshua continues to babble, his fingers digging into my arm.

"Oh my, it was so awful. I was always afraid to burn, you know, it's like the worst death possible—I mean, drowning must suck, too, but burning?" He shudders, his eyes fixed on me, wide, unblinking. He's clearly still in shock. "I hoped I'd suffocate before I burn. I hoped I wouldn't feel anything. But I was feeling things, you know?"

His face screws into a grimace that suddenly throws me back to the days when I babysat my younger cousins, to that moment between the child making a face like this and when the actual screaming begins. In that moment, if you're fast and lucky, you might throw in a toy or some other distraction and avert the tantrum.

There're no toys to assist me now, so I just watch helplessly as large tears start rolling down his cheeks. I look around for help, but the doctor has already turned away to look at come documents on the table, and the nurse only rolls her eyes at me.

"He's been like this since we got him, on and off," she says. "Can you calm him down?"

"Just leave me alone, will you?" Joshua snaps at her. "I've had enough torture for one night." He turns back to me, wiping his cheeks with the back of his hand, smearing the soot. I suppress the urge, also from my babysitting days, to lead him over to the sink and wash his face.

"They made me do a chest x-ray, and they keep poking their needles at me—that's enough! And I'll have none of that tube-in-your throat thing!"

"Sir, bronchoscopy will allow us to check your airways for damage—"

"There's no damage," he says, although the way he sounds out of breath tells a different story. "I just want to go home."

"You have no home," I say. "It's burnt down."

There's a tiny pause as all of them look at me. Then, the doctor shakes his head and gathers the papers from the table.

"I'll be back in a few minutes. I'm afraid we have too many patients at the moment to be dealing with this. Have some rest in the meanwhile." He walks towards the door as he speaks, and, when he passes next to me, he nods at Joshua, as if asking me to take care of him.

"I saw that," says Joshua, but the doctor is already out of the door, and the nurse is following him.

"Please, try to calm down," she says, squeezing his shoulder lightly before leaving the room. "We're just trying to help."