Alexander woke with a start and sat up, immediately regretting his action as nausea washed over him and pain needled up his arm and through his nerves. “Hnng,” he doubled over, cradling his arm gingerly.
“Does it hurt a lot?”
Alexander jumped and let out a yelp of surprise and pain as he jostled himself, scurrying back against the head of the bed. Anna sat next to him on an old wooden chair, her hands folded neatly in her lap.
“I—I uh…” Alexander glanced around, taking in his surroundings. The first thing he noticed was the hospital bed he was lying in followed by the patch on the shoulder of her soft black turtleneck sweater. He couldn’t quite make it out in the moonlight—which was the next thing he noticed. Dapples of moonlight scattered across the floor and the end of his bed through the leaded diamond-shaped panes of an old Gothic arched window across the aisle. To his left was a wall of thick hospital curtains behind which was the faint glow of a lamp and the clacking of a mechanical keyboard. To his right, behind the woman, was a long hall lined with more beds like his own—yet most of them were covered with drop-cloths. It was only the last four or five that were uncovered. “Uh…” he was starting to panic. “W-where am I?” he asked.
Anna smiled softly, “You’re safe, that’s all you need to know,” she said, patting his knee lightly. “Dose,” she called out to the curtain in a voice louder than Alexander expected from her.
The curtain swept back with a snap to reveal Sonia, cross-legged and barefoot in her office chair, one hand on the curtain—the other removing a bud from her ear with the first three fingers. A green sucker was clutched between the knuckles of the other two. What sounded like epic metal was blasting through the headphones. “Is the brat up already?” she arched an eyebrow. “Unbelievable,” she muttered, slipping into a pair of lime green crocs under her desk. She discarded the now paused phone and headphones next to her keyboard and popped the sucker back into her mouth. She sounded less surprised and more annoyed.
Sonia strolled over to the bed as she snapped on a pair of medical gloves, and without introduction, took a hold of Alexander’s left wrist and checked her watch, muttering something under her breath.
“I’ll go let Ghost know our guest is awake,” Anna said after a moment. When Sonia made an incomprehensible noise of acknowledgment, she turned away to head up the hall. “Oh, and Dose,” she turned back a moment.
“What?” Sonia grunted in annoyance.
“He’s a guest. Be gentle,” Anna said carefully, turning away. Once she was past the doors at the other end of the infirmary, Sonia dropped Alexander’s wrist and grabbed at his other arm, dragging it towards her.
“Owowowowow! Watch it, will you!?” he snapped, trying to pull away from the woman, but her grip only tightened.
She reached over and flicked a switch at the head of the bed. An overhead pot-light blinked on, showering Alexander in light. “Stop whining, you’re already an adult,” she said flatly, now unwrapping his bandage.
“It doesn’t mean that it doesn’t hurt!” Alexander replied in kind.
She looked up at him, her cool blue-grey eyes meeting his. They stared at one another a moment before Sonia returned to her work. “You’re ballsy,” she mused with a smirk. “Ballsy—but stupid.”
Alexander balked, but before he could say something, a voice interrupted them from Sonia’s right. “She’s complimenting you, just let it slide,” Erik said from a doorway that Alexander hadn’t noticed before. He stepped in behind Sonia, looking over her shoulder for a moment at Alexander’s injury. He rounded to the other side of the bed and grabbed the chair, tuning it on one leg with an expert spin. Erik then sat backwards on it, eyeing the boy.
“Err...” Alexander dropped his gaze from Erik and awkwardly glanced around, finally settling somewhere on the bedside between them. “Where am I, who are you, and what happened?” he finally asked.
Erik scoffed lightly, “Concise and to the point. No wonder Dose likes you,” he mused. “As for your questions, this is a witch hunter organization; I am the base commander, Ghost; and you were attacked—frankly, you’re lucky to be alive.”