Who: Owen and Cecilia AND NEPTUNE OMG When: EARLY morning, pre-sunrise Where: Her room, his room
When Cecilia made the mistake of lying flat, she felt as though she were drowning. Every once in a while she would accidentally reposition herself that way in her sleep, and it always ended badly. She'd been battling the pneumonia for a couple days now, no surprise after all she'd been through. The broken ribs complicated everything. She began coughing in her sleep, the broken bones sending a flash of white hot pain enough to wake her. She rolled partially onto her side and tried to stop coughing, but that only made her cough harder.
She felt... something. It was hard to isolate what exactly that was; she was already in so much pain that it was hard to differentiate from all the causes, but this was new. A sharp, stabbing pain and a pressure on one side of her chest. As she continued to cough and still tried to stop each breath was a pain to her. She shifted in the opposite direction, away from Owen, reaching to turn her light on, still coughing, and that was all it took. Cecilia felt as though she'd taken a bowling ball to the chest at an extreme speed. All the breath was forcibly pushed out of her body by a great weight and she collapsed back onto the bed, gasping. Or, attempting to. It was as though an elephant were sitting on her chest and she couldn't take even the smallest of breaths. Her attempts were only a dry wheeze.
She couldn't breathe. Neptune was going ballistic and Owen was scared, and the harder Cecilia tried to force a breath the weaker she felt. She could taste blood in the back of her throat. She was terrified. She knew exactly what was happening and also knew there wasn't a damn thing they could do about it, not here, she hadn't prepared for this, and Jesus Christ she didn't want Owen to see this. Not in front of him, she begged silently, He can't see this, Please God, not here, not now, not in front of him!
Her vision grew dark around the edges. Her fear started to fade, and so did the pain. Things went black.
Cecilia took a deep breath in a state somewhere between awake and asleep, and instinctively she felt a jolt of fear. Deep breaths hurt, had ever since the prison. She tensed and waited for the pain, and felt... nothing.
Well. Not precisely nothing. She felt tired, so tired, and weak and sore all over. But none of the particular pains she had anticipated. Neptune licked her face, and Cecilia opened her eyes. He was sitting at her side, staring down at her, tail thumping happily against the bed. All at once Cecilia remembered and gasped, then froze, anticipating pain... nothing.
Did I dream it? She shifted slightly in bed, moving enough to scratch Neptune's side. No. The details and the memory solidified in her mind, and her heart rate rose as she relived it. Neptune lowered his head and nuzzled Cecilia's head. Cecilia took a deep breath. No pain. No difficulty. Gently, clumsily, she probed at her ribs. No pain. Not so much as a bruise. Her limbs still didn't want to entirely cooperate with her; she had to fight with her own body to work through the haze of whatever drug was coursing through her veins.
She managed eventually to push the blankets back and feel under her shirt. She knew exactly what she was looking for and where, but it still surprised her when she found it. A slight raise of her skin that hadn't been there before. Very slight. Too slight. She'd expected stitches, or at the very least a recent site.
Shit, she thought with feeling, and she fought her way out of bed. She nearly wiped out flat on her face, and she had to lean back against the wall for what felt like forever to fight off a wave of dizziness. She couldn't remember being this groggy the first time she woke up in this room, and that was saying something. After what felt like an eternity, she was able to literally drag her feet into each step towards the bathroom. She made her way to the mirror, leaning heavily against the sink to catch her breath after turning the light on. Still no pain. She was sore, felt like she hadn't moved in far too long a time, but not outright pain. That was all wrong for everything she remembered.
She managed to stand straight - another thing she couldn't have managed on the last day she remembered, or any of the day since the prison. She lifted her shirt and looked at her side. She could see where once upon a time a chest tube had been inserted, but it was far longer ago than she would have imagined. The wound was... well, not a wound. It was a scar.
Shit, she thought with feeling, and she headed for her door. The slow walk from her room to Owen's felt like hours, and she leaned heavily against the doorframe with one hand as she knocked with the other.