#ftdc

(featuring OC's Rowan and Victoria)

TW: Broken ribs, hospital, ghost, bruises, sprained wrist, IV drip, needle mention, heart monitor painkiller mention

Masterpost

Rowan regained consciousness slowly. At first, the only thing he was aware of was how he was somehow unable to fully draw breath. It was as if his chest was constricted somehow.

The second thing he became aware of was the stabbing pain and the sensation of bone grinding together whenever he tried to inhale too forcibly.

He groaned softly, which led to the discovery of a third thing: the plastic oxygen mask covering his mouth and nose. He then noticed the softness of a bed beneath him, a blanket overtop him, the bandages bound tightly across his chest and around his left wrist. The fingers of his left hand twitched automatically with this newest discovery, and cold flames licked up his arm as a result.

Rowan’s eyes fluttered open. The harsh lights overhead threatened to blind him, and he squinted at his surroundings. He lay on his back in one of those hospital beds at an angle that wasn’t completely flat but not straight upright either, somewhere in between. The ceiling was made of foam squares with tiny black dots—or were those holes? He couldn’t tell—and the walls were a dull white.

As Rowan studied the walls, trying to determine if they were textured, a… figure… of some sort detached itself from the exact spot on the wall he was staring at. He barely made out the outline as it moved from one side of the room to the other before vanishing through the opposite wall. He blinked in shock, expecting to have felt some boiling unease at the sight of the specter. So the ghost was harmless…?

He continued his sweep of the room. A complex machine rested to the left of his bed, one of the screens displaying what he assumed was a heart monitor, beeping softly for every second that passed. An IV drip next to it almost drew his attention to the needle embedded in his arm, but he forced himself to look to the other side of the room.

On his right side was the door leading out to the rest of the hospital. Next to the door were two chairs, with the space for a third chair left empty. As his eyes finished moving to the right, he realized why. The chair had been moved closer to his bed, and sitting in it, with eyes closed and head resting at an uncomfortable angle against the wall, was Victoria.

Rowan stared at her, listening to the constant beeping of his heart and the distant whirring of some other machine nearby. Two cuts on her face had been cleaned and bandaged, and several bruises in various shades decorated what skin was visible underneath her loose band shirt and jeans. More time passed until he sheepishly realized he should probably let her know he was awake.

“Hey,” he said, wincing. Speaking hurt a lot more than he thought it would. It didn’t help that his throat felt like sandpaper. The oxygen mask fogged up when he talked and muffled the sound slightly. “I think this place is haunted.”

Victoria started awake, blinking rapidly as her eyes readjusted to the bright lights. “Oh—uh—you’re awake!” She gasped out when she noticed him staring at her.

“Uh… yeah.” He slowly inhaled, trying not to disturb his injuries. “...Did what’s-her-name break my ribs?”

“Yeah. Pretty badly, from what the doctors told us. They’ve had you on some pretty strong painkillers for hours now.”

“...ah… that would explain the ghost I saw.”

She squinted at him. “You saw a ghost?”

“Uhuh. Came right through that wall over there.” He lifted his right hand to point at the spot where it had emerged. “And passed through the wall behind me.”

Victoria stared at the wall he indicated. “Well…” she said softly, “I was about to tell you it was the painkillers, ghosts aren’t real, but I honestly don’t know what’s supposed to be real and what isn’t any more.” She turned back to him. “You weren’t really in a coherent state when we managed to get you here. All the blunt force trauma messed you up pretty badly. What do you remember of the fight?”

Rowan grimaced. “I remember Granite or whatever-her-name-was got pretty pissed off when I kept dodging the big rocks she was throwing, so she focused her efforts solely on me… and I saw Sam… and then…” he shrugged and immediately regretted it. “Ugh… think those painkillers are wearing off… where is Sam anyway? And Ollie?”

“Waiting room,” Victoria said casually. Standing, she stretched, making a face as her sore muscles and bruises protested. “They wouldn’t let us in at all, at first, but we insisted. They only relented on the condition it was one at a time and we wouldn’t try to wake you up. Ollie’s gonna be so mad when he finds out you woke up and he wasn’t there.” She glanced at the door. “Speaking of… I should let the nurses know you’re awake.”

She crossed the room to the door before pausing with one hand on the knob. “Don’t… do anything stupid.”

Rowan rolled his eyes. “Since when have I done anything stupid?”

Victoria smirked and left the room, the door silently shutting behind her. Rowan settled back and focused on breathing with as little pain as he could manage. An impossible task, perhaps, but doable. Once he got another dose of pain meds.