Chase listened as his mother addressed Hokee. She apolgized, she said DocProf should've been there sooner, and that she didn't feel like fighting. She also said "ass". Chase might have gasped. His mother said "ass"?! That was a bad word! Chase leaned over, and peered at Gemma from around and under the bed, gaping at her quite blatantly out of Hokee's line of vision.

"Mumma, you said a bad word," Chase pointed-out. He stared at Gemma for a few measures, then ducked back to his hiding spot at the foot of the bed.

Michael did a very Michael-like thing and dumped the puzzle onto Chase's lap. Then he seemed to have second thoughts, picked it up, wiped it off, then set it back down again. The residues. Most kids his age, and some big kids and adults, didn't understand his power. Of course, none of that mattered in Gemma's adapted aura.

Chase picked the thing up lightly, and began to fuss with it. He wasn't exactly a savant when it came to puzzles, so it was mostly directionless fussing with the puzzle. Sure, Chase liked puzzles, but he liked puzzles that he could solve.

>> “You’re a nice person.”

"Thanks, Mikey," Chase mumbled, smiling faintly. His teal-blue eyes flickered a friendly pink as he glanced at the other boy momentarily. Chase redirected his attention to the puzzle, didn't get much of anywhere with it, and held it up to the older boy, "Could you please show me how it's done?"

Hokee was rambling about something like apple pie and the number four, but Chase wasn't paying attention to him. Chase wasn't pleased with Hokee at the moment, so he was going to focus on Mikey instead. Chase and Mikey could play, Hokee could be a butthead to Miss Gemma rather than to Miss Gemma had her son. Chase wanted none of it.

>>"Mumma, you said a bad word,"

Gemma looked down at Chase; she could tell he was still upset about what Hokee said, and now her words too. Oh well. Gemma had never been too strict when it came to bad words. So many kids had a great variety of them by the time they got to her...

"I'm sorry baby" she smiled at Chase a bit "Mama's just tired."

>>"........two apple pies.... and.......... a...number 4."

It was so quiet she couldn't even hear it first. But then, he said it again, and she finally caught up to what he was saying. He was pointing a brush at her this time, but the words were the same. Different car, different situation. Same stubborn brat who ended up being her responsibility, whether he liked it or not.

"Sure" she smiled a bit, and reached out to touch his forehead. It was one of those motherly instincts that make you hate seeing a kid in pain. "We'll get you home, get you healed, and the meal's on me. Sounds good enough?"

Michael didn’t really have any issues with bad words. He knew a lot of them from his father, but he still had disliked hearing them. Nevertheless, Michael ignored them. He was very good at ignoring people when he wanted to, and he moved closer to chase. He pointed to the silver metal things and then he told Chase in what way he should move them to get them out. His words were really only meant for the little boy, so he was quite calm at the moment.

Michael’s eyes shifted slightly to look at Hokee’s bed, and then he leaned over and whispered to Chase. “You could make a cool fort with a bed that moves.” He was avoiding the actual hospital situation because it wasn’t something that made him feel happy. Therefore, it was less important.

Playing with Chase made him feel a lot more normal, so he would keep his efforts focused on that. The boy blinked as he watched Chase fiddle. “No the circle’s gotta come out of the square. Otherwise it’ll get stuck in the triangle. The square gives more space.” Though it was still a mumble, the improvement in his speaking habits was moving really fast. Now that he had people around him that made him feel safe at least.

Hokee’s words mixed with the lady’s words confused him. A number couldn’t be a meal, right? Maybe they had a secret code or something. He shrugged it off and started to nibble on the collar of his shirt. It was a subconscious gesture, but it was indicating that maybe he wouldn’t mind a little bit of food. It wasn’t as though it would be bad if he gained weight, either.

Things were starting to make less and less sense. It had to be the increase of medication he was experiencing, though what control could he have. His mind couldn't shift away from the taste of McDonalds, eating something for real and not the crap which sat on the tray for him half the time. Eating healthy, teenager....they just didn't exist together. An IV of milkshake would be nice, or even straws made out of french fries. With a rumble of his stomach, his head rolled slightly.

Something was on his head, something freezing cold, so cold it dove down into the depths of his marrow. His eyes didn't bother to open at all now. There was to much work needed to do that, more then he could afford. Mumbles of conversations took place under his feet, but the words were so far off he couldn't hear what was going on. The soft words that came with the cold touch against his flesh were even gargled a bit. How would he ever know what was said, who was talking.

"..I...."

Beep..beep..beep.beep.beep.....beep..beep.beep.beep.......beeeeeeeeep..beep..beep

The once grumble of his stomach shot through his body as the feeling of nausea sunk in. How could he want McDonalds right now, he hadn't much interest in the hospital food for the bit of time he was awake. IVs did all the work for him. Tubes in his nose, his heart monitored beat for beat, who was he kidding. His IV free hand twitched on his side. Lifting it up a bit, his fingers stretched out to thin air. "..don't...not.." His head rolled a bit to the side. Under heavy lids, the muscles twitched about trying to push free.

"Don't leave."

>> "I'm sorry baby... Mama's just tired."

Chase shrugged and went back to playing with Michael, still fussing with the puzzle.

>> “You could make a cool fort with a bed that moves.”

Chase looked at the bed, eyes flickering with a mild delight. Yeah, it would make a cool fort.

"It could be like... a tank," Chase mused quietly, "Totally incognito."

This was, of course, a contradictory statement, but Chase didn't seem to care.

>> “No the circle’s gotta come out of the square. Otherwise it’ll get stuck in the triangle. The square gives more space.”

Chase huffed faintly, and looked at all the pieces that were in his hands. It made no sense to him. He'd never been good at understanding things when people were giving him verbal instructions. He just got confused. He held the puzzle out towards the older child, and murmured back, "Will you show me?"

Chase was a visual person. He liked to see things. Verbal, not so much. Up above, the Mama/Hokee interactions continued, to which Chase paid little attention, until Hokee pleaded with someone not to leave. To this, the child was automatically aware, rising up onto his knees to peer over the foot of the bed. Mama didn't look like she was going anywhere, and neither Chase nor Michael had moved. Chase looked at Hokee silently, his brow stitched, before sinking back down. Who was leaving? He couldn't be pleading for Chase's mommy to stay, because he didn't like her. Chase would save that question for later.

>>"..don't...not.. Don't leave."

She couldn't say she was not surprised; even in his current state, she was prepared to see Hokee stubborn as usual. But in the end, she was right. He was still just a kid, without a family to look after him. And the pain in the ass he was, she still kind of liked him.

"I'm got going anywhere" she smiled a bit, reaching the rest of the way and holding his hand lightly "We are all staying right here. Get some sleep, Hokee, you'll feel better soon."

He looked at Chase, for a moment wondering what “Incognito” meant, and then shrugged it off. It was probably some thing that he said when he talked to his other friends a lot. The little boy took the silver thing and then faced Chase, careful not to be pointing towards the beeping monitor at the same time, and started to solve it. As the lady talked, Michael did something that actually interested him, seeing as Hokee was someone he didn’t know.

He looped the little silver objects through the proper areas, and managed to slide them all apart, then he set all of the pieces on the ground in front of Chase. He was bored now. The puzzle was all done. Maybe the lady would have some more. He looked down a bit, and then at the Lady.

Sitting up, he poked his head up over the bed, and he looked at the lady, though of course not in the eyes. “I need a new puzzle.” This was something he wasn’t afraid to ask at all. Puzzles were the most magical thing in the world, and so it was quite obvious that she would have one too, right? Maybe she had a harder one.

Fingers and a palm soon filled the out stretched hand. To tired and to medicated to know for sure who or what was there, he just had the slight knowledge of he wasn't in the room by himself. To many hours had past where the cold hospital arm wrapped itself around his body, way to many hours. His hand dropped under the weight of the other hand and his eye lids didn't bother to rustle at all. The irregular beeping continued fluctuating between rapid and normal.

Sleep seemed like a great idea right now. Just fall into the cocoon and drift far away. To wake up and have a new body, to feel fresh and new again. He wasn't big into butterflies, but for some reason over the last few days drifting in and out of consciousness he was starting to understand them a bit more. Highly unlikely would be him leaving his state looking beautiful and radiant. He was more of a moth, unwanted and destructive. There was a use for him, just he didn't know what it was.

"Imafa..." The voice mumbled into the air.

At the nurses station just down the hall, an exchange of conversation was beginning to unfold. Nothing new and exciting just the normal chatter that went about. Little giggles and gaggles of swooning eyes circled together as the hottest gossip flew from their lips. Nurses were just paid school girls at heart.

>> "I'm got going anywhere. We are all staying right here. Get some sleep, Hokee, you'll feel better soon."

Chase smiled to himself, and kept focused on Michael, though his attention was on his Mama's voice. This is what he'd wanted-- to remain in the hospital room, even if he was a little annoyed at Hokee. Chase forked the puzzle back over to Michael, and Michael began to solve the puzzle fluidly, shifting the various parts of the knotted metal until it was wholly untangled. Michael set the solved puzzle down before his younger friend, and Chase simply gaped.

"I wish I could do that," Chase murmured. Michael peered towards Gemma from behind the bed, and Chase mimicked him. Michael informed her that he needed a new puzzle. Chase was silent.

Time transpired, Hokee dozed, and Chase realized how boring a hospital room could be. Luckily, he was skilled at humoring an idle mind, and he had Michael there to suffer along with him. Mostly, Chase just wandered around the room, lingering towards the door that fed out into the hall, and looking around, learning the layout of the room and surrounding areas. Once, Gemma cautioned him to not wander far, and Chase didn't. He did, however, linger in the doorway. Anyone who would come into the room would have to get past the guardian of the doorway, first.

The devil, as they say, is in the details. Any fool could toss a doctor’s jacket on, along with a stethoscope and pretend that they are a doctor in a hospital. Any fool, and when it came to leading people on, David Maxwell Duckland was no fool. People expected doctors to know things, medical things. Nobody ever questioned the background people in a hospital, the janitors, the cafeteria staff, the interns. Unless you have a doctorate and have completed your residency people thought that you knew nothing. Getting the proper color scrubs was easy. Scrubs were now something between pajamas and sweatpants, a general use loungewear that anyone could get. Even an ID badge had been no issue. All he really needed was a lanyard and a blank badge attached to it. Sledge had carefully twisted the lanyard and pinned it to his scrubs so that it looked like his tag had just gotten twisted around. There were a few pens in his pocket of the clicking variety, along with a syringe with a trick needle.

As he pushed the gurney past the nurses’ station he ducked his head as if embarrassed. They were whispering and gossiping about him, he knew that. That British accent of his had come in handy as Alistar had said it would. The angle he was going for was the awkward new orderly, which would excuse any mistakes he had made thus far. Going in the room alone was a mistake, he knew that much. There really should be a doctor present for this, or at least another orderly. His protégé might claim to be a doctor, but she was undeniably small and would be more harm in this job than help.

He had not anticipated there being others in the room, Alistar hadn’t mentioned that fact. It had sounded as though this teen was a loner, not really having anyone in the city. The woman and two children in the room hardly looked as though they were Hokee’s family. Given the condition that the teen was in Sledge thought that family members would look a little more broken up. Accidents tended to make people look more fondly upon the injured, or act in anger because they did not want to deal with the actual emotions. He’d have to have a little chat with his young employer about proper intel.

“’ave I interrupted something?” David asked, looking at them all confused. He’d raced down a hallway shortly before hand to give himself a flustered look. Hair was all out of sorts and there was a visible amount of stubble on his face. David manipulated the gurney as well he could around those in the room. He made his way over to Hokee’s chart, and examined it, acting as though he understood all the medical mumbo jumbo that had been scribbled in what he assumed was human handwriting. Taking out a pen and clicking it a few times he checked the heart rate monitor, studied the IV Drip and scribbled out his own note. Next he went over to Hokee’s arm, rubbed the elbow with an alcohol wipe and took out his trick syringe. A few flicks with his finger, then a bit of slight of hand to hide his “priming” it before “injection”. “Sorry to break things up, but I’ve got to bring ’im in for some surgery.”

Being as careful as he could, Sledge started transferring Hokee from his hospital bed onto the gurney. He needed to talk to the kid, killing him would not allow that. Unfortunately in the transfer did not move entirely smoothly and the hospital gown shifted.

Michael didn’t know the person who came into the room. It was some kind of doctor, but he wasn’t at all interested. In fact, doctors scared him. When the doctor got near him, he was always poked and prodded, and they might want to give him shots if he went again. He’d only been once, and the doctor was actually a nurse, so really he hadn’t gone to the real doctor in his entire life. No way did he want to start now.

He knew that if that secret got out he would most definitely be in trouble, so there was a small bit of a noise as Michael actually dove to hide beneath the hospital bed, and actually almost fit himself there. He was tiny, after all. The doctor started to talk about bringing Hokee into the next room for surgery or something, and he felt as though a weight had been lifted. The lady was concerned about him a lot, so she might try and make him see the doctor.

He picked at one of his scratches mindlessly, and the little boy felt rather secure in his position, hiding from everyone. ESPECIALLY the doctor. If the doctor got him, he’d just get metal things in his arm like he had no doubt Hokee was getting. Nope. Not going to happen.

Sleeping inside the hospital was an impossible task, something that took a great deal of concentration or an induced coma. Seeing that his medication regiment had changed slightly since his initial admittance to the facility, he didn't have the lucky chance to sleep through everything in a medically induced fashion. One thing for certain, he had to be completely out of it if he was holding Gemma's hand. This simple act of neutral actions would be utterly denied upon gaining some semblance of his cognitive skills.

His hand soon slid free from the hand that was holding it as his body was shifted about without his own consent. The hands slipping under his body were strange and not the ones he had unknowingly grown accustomed to. It wasn't smooth motions, no this was like the first time making out with someone. Unknowing, possibly, but the awkward movements of the foreign hands on his body was enough to wake him slightly.

Reaction time slightly skewered, his body wasn't much help in working with the hands trying to move him. The gown covering his body shifted about until his back side was soon exposed. His body flopped a bit with the shuffling, the protective undergarments slid down a bit in the back showing where mother nature split him. Unfortunately his body was positioned in such a way that out of his own control, and the work of a fumbling nurse, he was soon bringing a full moon to the one person who had a brief positive moment with him.

There were so many things happening. One moment, she was holding Hokee's hand (and worrying that he had to have sustained some brain damage to e acting like that... or at least heavily drugged). Her worries let up when a hospital person walked into the room, but he turned out to be a nurse, not a doctor. Michael dove under the bed, and Chase looked uncomfortable too.

"Surgery?" she asked, letting go of Hokee's hand. The nurse did not look all that competent moving him off the bed. Wasn't that a two-man job? The covers slid off Hokee, and so did the hospital gown. Gemma rolled her eyes and moved over to help. Someone had to. "I didn't know he was scheduled for surgery. Is everything all right?"

It clearly wasn't - things rarely are after a car accident.

"It's okay Hokee we are going to be here when you come back." she said, pulling the covers over him. This was going to be a long day...