Chapter 12: Birthday Wishes
At some point, Elsie must have dozed off. The next time she woke up, Minyoung was nowhere in sight, but his voice could be heard coming from the hallway as he had a heated discussion over the phone. In his seat was Jordan, lying sideways so that his neck and legs rested on either of the armrests, with his mouth hanging open to let his soft snores escape into the air.
Someone had left a pen within reach of Elsie's good left arm, so she picked it up and threw it at Jordan's chest.
He groaned and squeezed his eyes tighter, but he didn't wake up.
"Some company you are," Elsie muttered bitterly.
Thankfully, Minyoung returned at that moment and immediately crossed the room to kick the chair.
"Yah, sit up properly, or you'll hurt your back," he scolded Jordan.
Jordan sat up immediately, but his groggy expression showed that he was still half-asleep. "'m up," he mumbled with his eyes closed.
Minyoung frowned before reaching behind Jordan and pulling out a bag of candy that he must have been sleeping on.
"How're you feeling today?" he asked Elsie as he inspected the bag's contents. "Ready to get back to work yet?"
"My head feels clearer," Elsie replied. She hadn't noticed earlier how loopy the drugs made her, and it was somewhat of a relief that she could think properly again. "But my shoulder hurts a little."
Minyoung nodded as he took a colorful candy out from the bag and popped it in his mouth. "It sounds like they're trying to get you off the painkillers. With any luck, you'll be out of here in a few days. You'll have to do some rehab when we get back to the States though. The Org offered some of their healer guardians to help out with that, so it should only take about a month."
At that moment, Jordan mumbled something incoherently as he swayed precariously in his seat, his eyes still closed.
Minyoung kicked the chair again. "Speak clearly."
"There were so many stitches," Jordan said with an upset frown in his face. "So many. Like, this many." He held up his hands to form a circle with his fingers that varied in size as he swayed. "It must hurt."
"Then don't tell me that," Minyoung grumbled. "You can tell Elsie yourself about how much you empathize with her pain and suffering."
At the sound of Elsie's name, Jordan's eyes snapped wide open and turned to her.
"Elsie!" he exclaimed as he leaned onto her bed. Thankfully, Minyoung held him back a bit, otherwise Elsie was sure Jordan would've tried to hold her injured arm. "Holy shit, man! How could you go and scare me like that? What the hell?"
"Watch your shitty language," Minyoung chastised, but no one paid him any attention.
"I know, I know," Elsie rolled her eyes, but she very much appreciated Jordan's concern for her. "I'm sorry, okay? I'll try not to get attacked again."
"And if you do get attacked again, at least keep it domestic," Minyoung said, earning him a glare from Jordan. "Dealing with all these different countries just adds to the headache."
"Ignore him," Jordan insisted. "When he heard what happened, he dropped everything and flew over here in economy class. Economy. He's never done that in his life. I'm pretty sure he was more worried about you than he was about me."
"You weren't buried under a stadium."
"Yeah, but I was there, and I am your brother."
"You're the bane of my existence. If you're looking for sympathy, call your own manager."
Coincidentally, Minyoung's phone started ringing. He swore under his breath before stepping back into the hall to answer it.
"Well, now that he's out of the way," Jordan smiled softly, "how are you, really?"
Elsie chuckled. "I could ask the same about you. You look like shit."
And she wasn't exaggerating. She guessed that Jordan's current appearance was close to how she looked after the first week of the Games. The only difference was that Jordan cared more about his appearance than she did about her own, so even though he looked exhausted, he was still fashionable.
He was wearing a fitted white T-shirt that was tucked into the waist of his slim black pants, and while his shirt was slightly wrinkled, the ensemble made it look fashionably so. Over it was a loose denim jacket that hung open with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows. The only thing that looked drastically out of place was his fluffy dark hair that was ruffled slightly from sleep.
"I feel like it, too," Jordan said, looking crestfallen as he fiddled with the hem of her blanket. "I really was scared though. I thought you... I thought I'd never see you again. Even though I heard Camilla had gone after you, I couldn't imagine being trapped down there." He shuddered as he mentioned it.
"Getting down there was probably the worst part," Elsie said. "But I'm fine now. Really."
Jordan finally looked at her again and smiled, but the expression was strained. She hated making him try and put on a brave face so she switched the topic to the source of her get well gifts.
The amount of presents had grown slightly more in density from the last time she saw it, which happened to only be the day before. While the balloons had been removed because of some hospital rule, the color had been replaced by additional flowers and gift baskets.
According to Jordan, there should have been twice the amount of candy but Minyoung ate what was missing, arguing that Elsie didn't need all the sweets anyway. He had also packed some of the cards in a box after they kept falling on the ground and getting in the way.
Jordan helped Elsie take a picture of the assortment for her social media when she requested, using the new phone Minyoung had bought her, but she decided to hold off on posting anything without Minyoung's approval. Normally, she didn't care what he had to say, but she had apparently missed a lot and wasn't sure what the terrain was like outside.
"At first, it was pretty crazy," Jordan said when she asked. "That's never happened before, metas attacking metas, and in such a public and crowded space too. And with hundreds of countries involved, it seriously complicated things. Eventually, the UN got a team together to take the lead on things.
"And the media!" Jordan paused to gape at Elsie in disbelief for the dramatic effect. "They went wild over the story. I'm pretty sure you and Camilla are still trending topics in multiple countries."
Elsies curiosity got the better of her when she decided to brave the internet to see the damage for herself. A handful of articles about her were factual reports, while all other mentions of her were fictional or opinions. In the hours after the attack, multiple reports claimed she and Camilla were assassinated, and a quarter of those insisted there was some conspiracy theory behind it all, usually that the attack was going to be the start of the next international war.
Elsie's curiosity stopped when she checked her own social media account and saw that her last post, a selfie she had taken the morning of the attack, was filled with comments from mourning fans.
"This is too weird," she muttered as she tossed her phone onto the bed.
Jordan patted her leg sympathetically. "It'll blow over eventually. Once you go home and everyone sees that you're okay, they'll go back to criticizing your sloppy fashion sense and bad attitude."
They hung out for the rest of the day, with Minyoung coming and going to field the endless stream of phone calls. Jordan had to leave once when a group of investigators arrived to question Elsie about the attack, but he was allowed back in as soon as they were done, and he returned bearing gifts of real food from nearby restaurants. He even stuck with her when a nurse came in to change her bandages, and Elsie was glad he did. She needed his comforting presence since she was too curious to avert her gaze from her injury, and seeing the damage up close made her stomach turn.
A line of stitches went to about four inches below her shoulder on both her front and back. The nurse said, in surprisingly good English, that the damage had been much worse initially, since the metal had cut through her collarbone and into her shoulder blade, but the extensive number of Class 3 healer guardians at the scene were able to repair the worst of it. Elsie would probably still have a lot of physical therapy in her future, but at least she was alive.
Jordan had to part ways with her that night; he had a schedule to make in South Korea, and he had a hard enough time to get his manager to let him postpone it as much as he already did.
"But I didn't want to leave before I could give this to you in person," he explained, handing her a wrapped box with the ribbon slightly loosened already. "Happy early birthday, you grandma. I even undid the ribbon a little out of courtesy for your frail hands."
"Shut up," Elsie replied without much heat. While she wasn't keen on the reminder that she was mere moments away from being another year older, she didn't mind it so much if that reminder came from Jordan. She took the gift a little clumsily since it was a little too big to handle with only one hand, and she was quietly grateful that Jordan had thought to start the unwrapping process for her. "You're not that far behind."
His gift was a pair of fancy noise-canceling headphones, and the kind of thing that Elsie would want but never be willing to buy for herself. It was perfectly timed too, since Elsie's last headphones, a cheap pair she had bought for the occasional long plane ride she had to take, had been in her purse during the attack. While most of her belongings had been recovered, her low-quality headphones had been demolished.
"I figured it would be a good distraction during your flight," Jordan said with a shrug, as if his gift was no big deal. "I know you don't like expensive things, but I swear this will be useful. Especially with all the traveling you'll have to do for your next movie."
Elsie definitely didn't want to think about that now. "Thank you," she said hurriedly. "I love it."
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