Chapter Text
Pain.
All Charlie could feel was pain.
Charlie wasn't unused to physical pain, but this was a level he had never reached before. It seemed to be everywhere, shooting up his sides and wrapping around his chest, stealing his breath. Charlie tried to force it down, contain it, but it only seemed to grow, warping and building until it overwhelmed his senses.
He had plenty of experience pushing down his feelings. Nobody wanted to see his tears. He was always too dramatic, his emotions too big. He had learned a long time ago that it was easier if he made himself small. He needed to make himself small, but the pain was a vast sea, crashing over him. He had no idea how to force it down.
Charlie couldn't even remember how he had fucked up this time. He was always fucking up, never able to just do things properly. Never able to anticipate what was required of him.
Had Charlie forgotten to lock the front door? Had he left hair in the drain or weeds in the flower bed? Burned dinner? Last time he did that he hadn't been able to sit comfortably for four days after Grandma took a belt to the backs of his thighs.
Grandad tightened his grip in Charlie's hair. Tears now flowed freely down Charlie's cheeks. He wasn't sure if some of the clamminess he felt on his skin was blood. Grandad banged Charlie's head against the tile again, and he couldn't think, he couldn't remember what he did to deserve this. He just had to make it through.
The edges of his vision were starting to grow fuzzy, the shadows pressing in. Grandad's mouth was still moving, inches from Charlie's face, so the spit landed on his cheek as he yelled. Charlie had stopped understanding his words a few minutes before, a dull ringing and the whoosh of blood the only thing he could hear. Maybe he was going deaf. There was a week in year seven when he burst an eardrum and he'd had to pretend he could hear so nobody would know. Maybe that was happening again.
The white noise wrapped around Charlie like a soothing blanket. He wanted to sink into it, to let it carry him away, but some latent self preservation instinct was still forcing his eyes open.
Grandad lifted the wooden rolling pin Charlie had been using for dinner over his head.
Fuck. It was the last thing Charlie remembered thinking. Is this how I die?
***
Yelling, sirens, pain, light. Too bright. The pain was everywhere all at once. His face felt sticky.
Someone was touching him. The skin was cold and tacky against his. He wished he could move away, shake his head, but none of his muscles obeyed.
There was something cold on his bare chest. Hadn't he been wearing a shirt? Fear sliced through Charlie's chest. He wanted to roll away, but all he managed was to shift slightly.
Hands, on his shoulders, pinning him in place. Too many hands. What had Charlie done now? Why was Grandad still punishing him? Tears pricked at Charlie's eyes.
Something pinched Charlie's right arm. More noise, more yelling. More hands on him, but Charlie was floating now. The pain was there, but far away. There was a block between Charlie's consciousness and everything else.
Huh. This was different.
Charlie wasn't sure how he felt. The pain had been excruciating, he should be glad to have some reprieve. But now, he was lying at an odd angle, shirt hanging open, hands - strange, unknown hands - pressing onto his skin from all directions. He couldn't fight them off. He couldn't move away. He couldn't even feel anything properly because he was stuck in this drifting floaty realm.
It scared Charlie more than the rolling pin and the thought of dying.
There were fingers pressing now to his face, he thought. Fingers on his eyelids, pressure. They slid in whatever moisture was coating his face. Blood presumably. Charlie prayed it wasn't dripping onto his Grandma’s cream carpet.
The fingers got purchase on his wet, swollen eyelids and a sliver of light shone in. Pain. Why wouldn't they let Charlie rest. Let him die. Anything but this. The light tore at his corneas and then, somehow, more light flooded from a torch into his eyes.
Even in his floaty state, he couldn't bear this. In his head, Charlie was screaming. Yet nothing came out of his throat.
Still, he wanted to writhe in agony, if only he could find the connection between his brain and his body again. He lay there, powerless. The hands were relentless. They shifted his body. He felt himself leave the floor and land on something softer.
What was happening? His grandparents were moving him somewhere?
Fear clawed up Charlie's throat. His sluggish heart remembered how to race. His breaths sawed out faster through his clogged throat.
Another prick, the left arm this time. Whatever it was, it worked faster this time, not just causing that strange fuzziness anymore. This time he was sailing away. Away from his jostling body.
He distantly hoped that those hands were planning to bring him back. He still needed that body.
***
White. White everywhere. White ceiling, white walls, white floors, all whizzing by Charlie.
Shit. He thought. Maybe I am dead.
But then he tried to move his arm and agony lanced through his shoulder. So not dead, he supposed. Surely dead people didn't feel pain on that level?
His surroundings shifted to show some sort of hospital room. People crowded in around Charlie, peering down at him like he was some sort of rare spectacle. More hands grappled at him, and his body was lurching to one side, shifting to a slightly softer mattress.
Another prick, this time his forearm. The monitor over his head lit up and started beeping. Voices drifted over him. Everything was moving too fast, too jumbled for him to parse through. His eyes darted around the room, not able to focus on any one thing.
Nausea rolled through Charlie and acrid bike filled his mouth. He had no chance to turn his head before he was vomiting. It soaked his chin and choked back down his throat, nowhere to go. The voices picked up and then there was plastic in his mouth, suctioning the bile away. He coughed, gagged. Someone was wiping his chin but it didn't help, he still felt dirty. Tears stung his eyes.
A new person filled up his vision. His brain was still foggy, but her honey brown eyes were wide and kind as she stared down at him. He found it grounding to have one thing to focus on.
“Hi Charlie,” she spoke, her voice calm and steady. “My name is Doctor Nelson. You're in the hospital. There was an accident and you got very hurt but we're going to take care of you now.”
Charlie blinked but he didn't look away. He found that he didn't want to look away. This woman spoke so calmly, no room for argument. It was hard not to believe her.
Still, Charlie was uneasy. She said they would take care of Charlie? Nobody took care of Charlie. Charlie tried to take care of himself, but he still somehow fucked it up most days. Some people didn't get the luxury of having someone looking out for them.
Slowly, the rest of her words filtered through Charlie's sluggish mind. She thought Charlie had been in an accident? She thought it had been an accident, what had happened to Charlie?
The woman seemed to see the doubt in Charlie's eyes. “Charlie, you are safe here, I promise.”
Safe. Nowhere was safe. Safety was an illusion. Maybe this was all just some wild hallucination and he was still lying on Grandma’s polished kitchen tiles.
There was another stab of pain, this time through his chest, and more nurses rushed into the room. He'd never had a dream this vivid before. Maybe it was real after all?
Then the kind-eyed doctor's hand came up in front of Charlie's face. His eyes widened, panic tightening his chest. He waited for the blow to come, the pain. Yet, it didn't come.
The hand froze in mid air over his forehead. Charlie was confused. Why had she stopped? He was being such a burden, such a nuisance. She had said he was in the hospital. Charlie was taking up the hospital’s time and resources. Wasting the doctor's time. Why hadn't the blow landed?
His eyes darted back to her face. Her lips were now pinched into a tight line. Her eyes more serious than they had been a moment before, but still lacking the anger Charlie would expect.
Strange.
Then, there was a rise in the voices filtering from the background. People were pointing at his monitor. More machines were rolled into the room. Someone was speaking urgently to Doctor Nelson but Charlie couldn't make out the words. Her eyes shot up to the monitor, before she leaned closer to Charlie again.
“Okay Charlie, there is a problem with your breathing, you're not getting enough oxygen in. So, we're going to have to intubate you.” Her voice was firm, no room for argument.
Charlie didn't want that. He didn't want the machines or the invasive procedures. He just wanted to lie here and be alone. His eyebrows drew together and she must have thought he was confused.
“That means we'll be putting a tube down your throat to help you breathe. It sounds scary but you will be fully sedated the whole time.”
More things Charlie wouldn't remember. How many people would be touching him, manipulating plastic inside his body? He needed to stay awake. He had to know what was happening.
“Doctor Nelson, the fentanyl and roc are both drawn up,” a nurse said. She set a tray on Charlie's bed before grabbing his forearm and looking at Doctor Nelson expectantly. The nurse's fingers were cold and alien against Charlie's arm. He tried to pull away but his muscles were weak and her grip was firm.
Another doctor said something, and the nurse started pressing syringes of clear fluid into the tube snaking into Charlie's arm. When had that gotten there? He didn't want that there.
He tried to reach over and pull it out, but his body wouldn't move at all anymore. His eyelids felt impossibly heavy. No matter how hard he fought, he couldn't keep them open.
His bed shifted to be lying flat, and someone was tilting
his jaw open and sliding something cold and metal over the back of his tongue.
Then, darkness claimed him.