An Aftermath

"Ugh...." Is it just me, or is it a little discomforting to wake up and find someone wearing scrubs and a stethoscope staring at you?

"How you doing?" He asked me once I managed to prop myself up into a sitting position.

"I refer you to my previous comment." I answered, taking a look around the small room. The quick motion caused a sharp pain in my side.

The doctor proceeded to look at the various cuts and scrapes I'd acquired doing....something. "Do you remember your name?" he asked, his voice casual as he examined a particularly nasty cut on my forehead.

"Jason Roberts." I answered carefully, whatever he was doing to my forehead was making the cut twinge a bit, and I didn't want him to make a mistake because I hadn't kept still.

"What day is it?" That was a bit harder, due to my lack of concern with the date.

"Eh, Friday?" He nodded and turned his attention to my left hand, which was wrapped up in gauze and fairly tight bandages.

"Well, it doesn't look like you have a concussion." He looked at the chart that he'd left on the bed and continued. "All in all, you've got a couple bruised ribs, various scrapes and cuts--including  a nasty piece of work on your forehead, and your left wrist is fractured."

"I've had worse." I muttered sarcastically, doing my best to ignore the dull soreness that was settling over my entire body.

"You have visitors, when you're feeling up to it."

I nodded, and he waved my parents into the room, then left and shut the door behind him. There was the usual stuff you'd expect, my mom falling over herself to make sure I was alright, my dad looking smug over the fact that his introvert son would finally have some battle scars.  But there was something else as well, neither of them asked what had happened, and both of them had this look of pride on their face. But they eventually left, and just as I prepared to face the boredom that would keep me company until the doctor came back, the doors opened to reveal a familiar face. Her!

I suddenly remembered everything that happened, and how I'd gotten my injuries. "How you holding up?" her voice was timid, and very concerned.

"Well, it's definitely the worst shape I've ever been in--" It seemed unnecessary to play the tough guy with someone who'd watched me get knocked out by a sucker punch. "--But I'll live. What about you? From what I remember you were pretty shaken up back there."

"I'm fine, thanks to you." Her voice was bright for a moment, until she continued. "I don't think Tom would've taken 'no' for an answer today."

"You'd think a guy like that would be used to rejection." I didn't personally know this Tom, but I'd seen his type before. "He is, that's why he didn't look all that concerned over my answer, he was just going to do what he wanted anyway."

Maybe the pain meds had me feeling a bit muted, because I wasn't sure I'd heard that right. "You mean he was going to force you to....?" I let the sentence hang unfinished, partly from embarrassment, and partly out of consideration for the girl.

She saw what I was getting at and nodded. "With his friends as well."

The reality of what I'd walked in on in that alleyway hit me like a bullet, everything made sense now, the way this girl had been huddled up against the wall, the proud look my parents had had earlier, everything. "Wow..." was all I could manage to say. It was a moment before I pulled myself together to ask her about her own well-being. "Are you ok?"

She looked confused for a moment before smiling again and answering me. "I'm fine, I just wanted a chance to thank you for helping me out."

I shook my head firmly, despite the pain it caused. "No, you shouldn't have to thank me for that, any self-respecting person would have done the same thing in my place."

She didn't reply to me, and as the silence drew on I looked for something else to talk about. "So what happened after he knocked me out?"

"Someone heard my scream and called 911." She was looking for something in her bag as she spoke. "Tom ran back through the alley when he heard the sirens."

"it seems like you know him, are you going to turn him in?"

She nodded, still digging through her bag, then finding what she was looking for, held an object out to me. I could see that it was my music player. "You dropped this during the fight, didn't you? I picked it up before the paramedics brought us here."

I took it from her and examined it, it seemed unfazed from the day's events, which was lucky, considering that at minimum wage it would have taken a while to get a replacement.

"Tom stepped on your headphones when he ran off," she said quietly, "They were in bad shape so--"

"Forget about it," I broke in, "You seeing and grabbing the player is more luck than I've had at one time in my life. Besides, headphones are cheaper than hardware."

The line got me a laugh and a sincere smile before she said "I need to get going now, the police want to talk to me about what happened."

As she left the and room I leaned back on the bed to await the doctor's return, two thoughts about that afternoon's events occurred to me. The first was that that girl whom I'd rescued--not that you could really call it that--was the same one who'd bought the pop compilation at the music store.The second was that I never caught her name.