Crash Landing
He doesn't know where he is. A bed somewhere, a semi-comfortable one and not the cot he'd occupied before. He feels like he's been asleep for a long time. The room is white, the sun coming through the window making the whiteness glare in a way that hurts his eyes. Hospital.
How did he get into the hospital?
He remembers being taken out of his cell, walked down a narrow corridor among echoing footsteps and muted conversations. Counting helmeted heads while seeming to stare at nothing, regulating his breathing and heartbeat and listening to his feet slapping gently against the floor. There had been a grimness in the air, a feeling of urgency. Someone spilled the beans, at least that's what he guesses. Now the situation was being...cleaned up.
He can't move his legs. Why can't he move his legs?
"Daddy?" He can barely hear his own voice. He wishes he had a cigarette.
"I think he's awake."
A stranger's voice, and he pries his eyes open despite how much it hurts. There's an angel in his room, her face all eyes and an alarmed sort of concern. The hair color's wrong, though, she's not his angel. He closes his eyes again.
He'd waited to do the spell until they were well away from the hellhole they'd been keeping him in, feeling the weight of the wards lift away from his shoulders like invisible shackles as they walked out of the tunnel. Out of the sterile beams of electric lighting and into the dark of a moonless night, trucks waiting for them. More grunts, the occasional thump of a riot baton against a back or a shoulder.
Death march.
He'd miscalculated, apparently, either did the magic wrong or picked a bad tme for it. The sickening feeling of the truck pitching off the desert road to roll - once, twice, a third time - before landing right-side up is something he'll never forget. Screams, bodies flailing, someone landing on him, blood caking his upper lip from the stress of having to pull the spell off on the fly. Then blackness.
"Hannah."
A cool hand touches his brow, and he lets out a wounded, animal noise. He wants to move his legs, but he can't. The angel is still there when he opens his eyes. He both knows her and doesn't know her, a memory like a phantom creeping across his traumatized brain. The wreck. She must have seen the wreck. He remembers flashing lights, a fire truck, metal squealing as they cut him out of the wreckage. Pain, pain all over, as if he'd been trampled by an elephant.
"My legs..." "They're both broken. You're in traction. Do you know your name?" That was right, they'd taken his ID when they'd carried him off the first time. He'd never heard an angel speak with a British accent before. "O-ol-ol..." His throat's too dry. He turns his head with an effort and there's a pitcher of water and some cups on the table next to his bed. "Drink."
The angel pours some water into a cup, then holds it carefully to his mouth. Her eyes are green, like a cat's. He's clumsy and uncoordinated, and cold liquid spills onto the thin fabric of his hospital johnny. Stupid word for the thing, johnny, whose bright idea was that? But he does manage to swallow some of the water, and it tastes like heaven. Fuck, he's so tired. He must have banged his head.
"Oliver." Much better, he can actually hear himself now. "Oliver Desmond Jerzyck. Am I alive?" "Oh, yes, you're quite alive. When the drugs wear off and you can feel the pain again, you'll be more certain of it." "Where am I?" "Henderson Healthcare Center. You also have a concussion. Can you give the doctors a phone number to reach this 'Hannah' person? You kept calling for her."
"She isn't...she doesn't have a phone." Can you see me, pixie? Do you know I'm all right, if a little worse for wear? You were the last thing I thought of before I passed out. "Are you an angel?"
The stranger's mouth curves into a smile, but she shakes her head. "Not by the stretch of anyone's imagination, Mr. Jerzyck. I was merely in the right place at the right time. The other...occupants...of the vehicle weren't as lucky."
A cold terror suddenly grabs hold of him, right along with a smothering fury, and he hunkers back into the pillows as much as he can, his broken legs suspended by pulleys and bound in casts. "They'll come for me," he rasps, one hand knotting into a fist, and he looks towards the door with an alacrity that defies the pain in his head. "Try to take me back. Government fuckers. Somebody talked, they were mopping up." Now he wants a real drink, something alcoholic, like a good glass of scotch. The machine monitoring his heartbeat is making a noise he can't stand.
The woman looks towards the door as well. She's tall and thin, red hair cropped short, a sharp intelligence making her features even more narrow. "No," she said, and for some insane reason his pulse calms almost at once. "No, I don't believe they will. If they try, they shall not like what they find."
She looks back down at him, and there is silence for a minute. "You're not human." His voice is a whisper, and the woman's well-cut mouth curves upwards again. "I am just as mortal as you, just as human. We shall speak of it later, though. You've been severely taxed. Perhaps when you wake up, your Hannah will be at your side."
"My Hannah." Even the blonde's name is sweet to him, sweet as the water he'd drunk, and he nods. If he sleeps, his head will stop spinning. His eyes slide shut, and he lets the fatigue carry him off.