As the door closed, John felt like doing a little screaming of his own.
Instead, he kept with the walking, going up and down the corridor. Up and down. Up. . . and down. Eventually, the others dispersed, heading into a nearby classroom, but he couldn't stand to join them.
With each pass by the door that was closed to him, he went wider afield, until the trip took him all the way to exit into the parking area and then back to the locker room. His long legs ate up the distance, turning what was a good fifty yards into a matter of mere inches.
Or at least it seemed that way.
On what must have been his fifth trip down toward the lockers, John pivoted around and found himself in front of the office's glass door. The desk and the filing cabinets and the computer seemed relentlessly normal and he took a strange comfort from the inanimate objects.
But the deep breath was lost when he stepped forward once again.
In his peripheral vision, he saw the cracks in the concrete wall across the way, the fissures spidering out from a single impact source.
He remembered the night it had happened. That horrible night.
He and Tohr had been sitting together in the office, him doing schoolwork, the Brother trying to keep calm as he called home over and over again. Every time Wellsie didn't answer, every time he got voice mail, the tension was cranked up more--until Wrath had appeared with the Brotherhood behind him.
The news that Wellsie was gone was tragic. . . but then Tohr had learned the "how": Not because she was pregnant with their first child, but because a lesser had killed her in cold blood. Murdered her. Taken her out and the baby with her.
That was what had caused these marks.
John walked over and ran his fingertips across the fine lines in the concrete. The rage had been so great, Tohr had literally imploded into a supernova, the emotional overload dematerializing him to some other place.
John never had learned where he'd gone.
A sense of being observed had him lifting his head and looking over his shoulder. Tohr was on the far side of the glass door, standing in the office, staring out.
The two met each other's stare and it was male to male, not elder to younger.
John was a different age now. And like so many things in this situation, there was no going back.
"John?" Doc Jane's voice came from far down the hall and he wheeled around,then ran to her.
How is she? What happened? Is she--
"She's going to be okay. She's just coming out of the anesthesia. I
'm going to keep her in bed for the next six hours or so. I understand she fed from you?" He flashed his wrist and the doc nodded. "Good. I'd appreciate it if you'd stay with her in case she needs to again?"
Like he would be anywhere else.
As John stepped inside the exam room, he moved on his tiptoes, not wanting to disturb anything; but she wasn't there.
"She's been moved into the other room," V said from over by the autoclave.
Before he went through to the far door, he stared at the aftermath of whatever had been done to Xhex. There was an alarming pile of bloody gauze on the floor and more blood on the table she'd been on. The sheet and towels she'd been wrapped in were off to the side.
So much blood. All of it fresh.
John whistled loudly so that V would look over. Can someone tell me what the fuck went on in here?
"You can talk to her about it. " As the Brother got out an orange biohazard bag and started to gather up the used gauze, V paused, but did not meet John's eyes. "She's going to be okay. "
And that was when John knew for sure.
However bad he'd thought she'd been treated, she'd gotten it worse. Much worse.
Generally speaking, when there were injuries sustained in combat or on the field, the information was traded back and forth without a thought-- femur broken, ribs crushed, stab wound. But a female came in, was examined without males present, and no one would speak a word of what had been operated on?