If you're looking for an adventure in the morally grey, and a crash course of the human condition, this is the story for you! What is good and evil? Where is that line drawn, and who decides that? Packed with humor, danger, feels, and awkward relati...
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The sun was streaming into his eyes and he groaned as he tried to turn. It didn't get him far, and he cracked open his eyelids to see that he was wrapped in a blanket and on some sort of bed with railings on it. Turning, he saw the IV attached to his arm and then everything spiraled as his head hit the pillow again.
This was a hospital.
"Try not to move so much." Nathan's eyes were drawn to a familiar voice and he tilted his head to see Allen leaning against the door frame. "You've been out for almost a week, so it'll be difficult to move at first. You have a hole in your side too, though it's stitched up and healing now."
Nathan touched his side where he remembered the searing pain and blood. What had happened to everyone? Panic consumed him, and he grimaced, clutching the bed post as he fell into another spell of dizziness.
"Calm down." Allen came over to the side of the bed. "No one else was hurt, aside from Rick. Just take a few long breaths, calm down, and look in the other direction."
The other direction? Flipping his head around, he met with a pair of watering mocha eyes that mirrored his own, and tears lined his eyes.
Sitting there, in a chair pulled up to the side of his bed, was his mother. She was just like he remembered her, her long hair tied up behind her head into a ponytail, darker than his, near black. A blue shawl was draped over her shoulders, and by the blankets around her, he could tell that she had been sleeping her. The tears in her eyes lightened them as he dipped his gaze to the dark circles under her eyes. Had she not been getting sleep? Was it because of him?
The first instinct he had was to reach for her, but then he leaned away and clutched the opposite railing, too afraid to speak. During those several months he had not once tried to contact her. By the time he had been thinking about doing so, everything had exploded into where he was now. How could he explain that to her?
Nathan whined of pain as Allen wrenched his head back toward his mother.
"This woman has been sitting here all week, Nathan." Allen's voice dripped with spite as he firmly held his head in her direction. "Have the decency to look at your own mother."
Nathan trembled as he awaited her judgment, the truth he had been putting off again and again until there was no other choice but to face it. It was too difficult and he closed his eyes to keep from knowing what she thought of him now. Now that he was a criminal. A light touch to his face ripped them back open and his mother's hand rested gently on his face.
"It's all right, Nathan." The sound of his mother's soft voice that he hadn't heard in months. "You don't have to say anything right now if you don't want to. I'm just happy you're alive." His mother's voice cracked, and tears slid down her face heavier than before. "I was so worried about you. I know you well enough to know that you are ashamed of everything that has happened. I'm not angry with you. I know you had to deal with it all by yourself because you didn't want to burden me with your troubles."
