Throughout my trip to the hospital, I was mostly asleep, but I still got glimpses of my surrounding while I faded in and out of consciousness. Backup snapshots of what was going on around me so that I could later piece them together once I recovered. I'd seen the school nurse trying to keep both Evan and I alive. I'd seen the ambulance take me away. A few glimpses of the doctors and nurses at the hospital, and that was about it. Not a lot, but enough to put together that I'd at least made it to the hospital alive.

I woke in a hospital bed, the beeping of a heart monitor ringing loud in my ears, getting faster as I regained consciousness. I yawned, feeling the pains in my chest and side. I felt shaky, my breaths shallow, and I inhaled the oxygen from the cannula placed in my nostrils, feeling the cold air fill my lungs with each shaky breath. A hand softly gripped my arm, their skin warm against mine.

"Andrew, you're awake," my mom said, her voice strained and sniffly, as if she was trying not to cry.

"How long have I been here?" I asked her, quickly sitting up and looking at her worriedly.

"Only a day and a half, I'm just emotional," she confessed, wiping the tears from her green eyes that were streaked with red from crying. "I thought you might be really hurt, but the doctors said you healed fast and you were recovering faster than they've ever seen. Must be fate."

She took my hand and held it in hers, gently rubbing it against her cheek, her skin warm to the touch. Mom took deep inhales trying to keep herself from crying, and even with the soft smile on her face I couldn't tell if it was sadness or joy that was making her tearful.

"Did Evan make it?"

"Can I ask a few questions?" my mom said, trying to calm my nerves, but only making me more nervous. She was clearly angry that I had gotten hurt, but if she was angry at me or whoever they'd said my supposed attacker was, I wasn't sure. However, I nodded in reluctant agreement.

"You were attacked?" Mom asked, and I nodded again in response. What was I going to tell her? 'Hey, Mom, I see monsters now and I wanted to show Jay, so I brought one to the bathroom and it completely backfired and tried to eat my classmate'? No, I needed to come up with something. Anything.

"Who was it, Andy?"

I froze up. I wasn't good at making up stories on the spot.

"I don't want to talk about it," I blurted, looking down at the bed to avoid eye contact. Only smart answers from this guy. My mom sighed and set my hand down on the bed and softly ran her fingers through my messy hair.

"Okay. You don't have to talk about it now if you don't want to, you just woke up. I'll go get a doctor for you," she explained, drawing her hand back and kissing my forehead. She picked herself up from the bedside chair and walked out of the room.

A little while later, she returned with a doctor, who was very tall and lean. He looked to be middle age, a few gray streaks gleaming through his black hair. He'd been working hard before, he was sweating and out of breath, like he had gone to many other rooms beside mine. It must have been a busy day at the office.

"Andrew Hutchison, the anomaly," the doctor said, a smile spreading across his face. He walked up closer to get a better look at me before taking a quick note on whatever seemed to be on the clipboard. "I'm Dr. Michaels. When you were brought in, I helped patch you up. A lot of details I'll skip over for the sake of not trying to bore you. You ruptured your lung and a few of your ribs are broken as well, but you seem to be healing incredibly fast."

I just stared awkwardly. Maybe I'd inherited faster healing from the bathroom monster I'd killed, which must have been great timing. The doctor continued.

"However, you are still healing, and not everything is entirely healed. We'll need you to stay here for about three to four days and then we'll send you home. Just seemed like things were going a little too fast, and we don't want to jump to conclusions and send you out. Might completely backfire."

He did a few other things in silence as I nodded. Took more notes. Looked at the monitors. More notes. Mom fidgeted nervously in her chair, picking at the fabric with her fingernails and adjusting her legs as if she was getting comfortable again. Once the doctor was done writing down and checking things on monitors and hitting a few buttons, he turned to me.

"How are you feeling?" he asked, ready to jot down whatever my response was.

"Fine, I guess? There's pain in my chest, but I think it's just healing. The oxygen is really helping me breathe," I explained, and he wrote on the papers again, flipping a page over to be able to write more down, too.

"Are you relying on the oxygen?"

"Not really, but it makes it easier. I'm more focused on breathing that way."

He nodded and wrote again. Dr.Michaels asked me more questions about the pain, but I told him that it was just normal sore pain and nothing serious. He told me what an absolute miracle it was.

"Now, I know this is a touchy subject, but what were you stabbed with?" Dr. Michaels inquired, and my mom stood up from her chair, which startled both of us. She crossed her arms over her chest and looked down at the doctor crouching next to me.

"He told me he didn't want to talk about it yet," she spoke, and I nodded. Dr. Michaels nodded in understanding and turned another page on the clipboard.

"That was more of an optional question, it's just that you healed so miraculously that we wanted to look at every factor. But that's alright. Nothing you really need to answer"

"I do have one question," I blurted, and the doctor blinked a few times. I'd interrupted his train of thought, but he looked attentive, waiting for my inquiry.

"A boy, Evan Liu, he came to the hospital with me. Same attack. He's missing an arm. Is he okay?"

The doctor sat in silence for a bit, thinking about different patients I'm sure, before his eyes lit up with recognition and although it seemed he knew who I was talking about, he didn't quite know how to answer the question.

"I wasn't one of the doctors assigned to operate on him when he came in. I was here, with you, so I'm not sure about how his surgeries went," he explained, choosing his words carefully to avoid raising alarm. It didn't work though, I could hear the heart monitor picking up speed with my nervousness. I just prayed that he wasn't dead. I gulped down my nervousness, trying to calm myself down. I simply nodded, and he looked almost guilty.

"I can certainly check up on him if you'd like?" Dr. Michaels offered, standing up and holding his hand out for me to shake. I shook his hand and replied, "Yes please."

Then Dr. Michaels left the room. Mom sighed and sat back down, but as soon as she did, her phone rang. She groaned and rolled her eyes, and I couldn't help but crack a smile. Mom picked up the phone. The conversation was minimal, but I knew what it was about. She tried explaining to the person on the other end that she was with her son at the hospital post surgery. She shook her head in disbelief. Mom argued a bit and gave a few sarcastic comments (which is probably where I got it from) and hung up, giving into whatever the person was talking about. Mom rested her head on the edge of the bed in anger, grumbling a bit.

"My boss says I have to come into work. Because, God forbid I actually make sure my son is alright," she complained, and I threw a sympathetic smile her way.

"I'll be fine. If I can survive getting my lung stabbed through then I think I can survive staying in the hospital and resting" I assured her. She sighed and smiled back at me.

"You're sure?"

"Positive."

"How about I send someone over to watch you for a bit?" she asked, and I knew who she was referring to without her saying it. My smile faltered a bit, but honestly, being on the verge of death really put a few things into perspective. I could stop wussing out and maybe talk to my sister. No matter how much I didn't want to, I knew it was best for us, and also reassuring for Mom.

"Sure, sounds good" I replied, and she kissed my forehead and squeezed my hand before picking up her stuff and leaving.

Not much went on in my hospital room as I waited for my sister to show up. It was pretty boring for the most part, I really sat around and watched TV, which was mostly bad sitcoms and reality TV shows of people renovating houses. So, I decided to sleep again.

However, when I fully drifted to sleep, I didn't dream. I was in a vast darkness, a void with nothing but me and the opaque. But even with nothing around me but black, I could somehow feel that this was my own mind. Which didn't seem possible or real until that moment, and even though it was my mind, I still felt like I was in danger. Like something was watching me and was going to lunge out of the darkness at any minute.

"Hello?" I called, hearing my voice echo back to me. Nothing. Nothing moved or replied or revealed itself. It was just me, but I couldn't shake the feeling there was something else hidden in plain sight. I walked forward a few steps, which seemed like floating. It felt like I was walking in a room with very little gravity, but still enough to keep me on the ground. The more I walked, the more scared I felt. I felt closer to something, and I started to hear something buzzing, a low hum in front of me. But as soon as I started to run towards it, something grabbed my legs and dragged me under the ground. I closed my eyes and held my breath, feeling a sense of deja vu from when this had first happened with the sinkhole.

When I opened my eyes this time, I was in a different hospital room. It was dark outside and all throughout the building, as if the power had gone out for the entire block. A person lay in the bed, and I didn't recognize who it was until I got closer. 

It was Evan Liu. He was wide awake and staring at me, one arm clutching the blankets to his chest.

"Andy?" he whispered, squinting in the darkness to see me.

"Yeah" I confirmed, and his grip on the blanket loosened as he stood up from the bed.

"Where am I?" he asked, and I opened my mouth to answer, but shut it just as fast. This didn't really seem like the hospital we were in. Usually there are other people walking around, and noises and lights, but here everything was silent, and frozen in time. I saw Evan's parents sitting in the corner of the room, as still as a statue. It couldn't be a hospital.

"I'm not sure," I said, and he sat down on the bed.

"Am I dead?"

I shook my head. "I hope not. I asked my doctor, but he hasn't come back with a reply yet."

That sure didn't help his state. He teared up, and put his head in his hands.

"It looks like a hospital, but every time I leave this room, it goes dark, and I am back in my bed," he explained, and started fidgeting with his hands. "It's like time is frozen and I'm stuck in this room on a loop."

A disturbing theory came to mind. "This could be limbo."

"So I am dead," Evan whispered.

"No," I shook my head. "It's a space between life and death. You could be in a coma or something after losing your arm."

"Then how are you here? And how did you kill that thing that ripped my arm off? What was that thing?" he threw questions at me rapidly, and I wasn't exactly sure how to answer. "And I saw you change into...whatever you are. What are you, exactly? And why was that thing in the bathroom? Is it your creepy monster-child?"

"Evan, slow down," I replied, and he took a few deep breaths. I didn't know if I wanted to share what had happened to me, but after he got his arm ripped off and was thrown into the creepiest limbo ever because of me, I figured he had a right to know. I told him everything. The sinkhole, the life draining, the nailimps. Everything up until this point where I had woken up to see him.

"Fuck, man" was all he replied with, letting everything sink in.

"These things are just everywhere? All the time?"

"I guess so."

"They don't attack us, why don't you just leave them alone?" he asked, and he had a good point, except:

"They've been attacking me. This is the only one I've went out of my way to attack first. It's like they can feel a piece of their own resonating in me. I'm like a nailimp beacon" I explained. He nodded.

"So, now what?"

"First off, you can't tell anybody. As far as everyone else knows, a madman with an ax was in the bathroom, chopped off your arm, and sliced through my ribs. Secondly, we need to find a way out of limbo. Especially you."

He nodded again, deep in thought.

"What if you attacked me? Like you did with the monster? Maybe that would jog both of us awake" he suggested.

"You could die," I argued, crossing my arms defensively.

"I would rather die than be stuck in limbo forever," he said, raising his voice slightly. He was flustered, like he was holding back many things he wanted to say. Apparently, I didn't get the hint.

"You might not be stuck here forever," I replied, and he went off.

"I am here because of your genius idea to bring a monster into the school bathroom. I got my arm ripped off! And now I'm stuck in a room in the hospital with only your cowardly ass to talk to! What if I'm stuck in limbo forever because you're too afraid of death to do something? Don't you just want to get it over with and get us both out of here?" Evan yelled. I mean, everything he said was true, but having it shouted in my face really didn't make me feel any better about it. I was angry, but he was right and I knew it.

"Listen," I said, calmly, rubbing my hands together nervously. He took a deep breath and turned away from me. "Maybe, once I wake up, I can get you out of your coma. It just feels safer."

"Because there's so many ways to get people out of comas, people do it all the time."

Silence hung in the air above us. I knew I could wake up at any time, but leaving him here felt wrong. What if I couldn't come back? I had no control over what I could do. This could be a one time deal. I sighed, and Evan turned back to look at me, fear in his eyes. He knew that I was giving in, and as much as he proclaimed that he would rather die then stay here, Evan was scared to risk death. I wasn't going to lie, this could kill the both of us, so I was scared too, but this was my mess, and I needed to fix things.

I held my hand out, and he looked at it hesitantly.

"Sorry," he said, smiling slightly. "A lot has happened. You're kind of the only person I can take it out on in this hellhole." I laughed lightly, and he took my hand. "Let's do this."

I remember the pain I felt taking a human life. It was different. Taking the essence of a nailimp was different, as if they were already dying and I was just finishing the job. Evan's life felt more painful, and harder to take, and I could tell it was hurting him too. He winced, and we both let out an agonized wail, before I woke up in my hospital bed in a cold sweat.

I looked around the room. It was later in the day, it had been a few hours, though my meeting with Evan only felt like a half hour at most. I looked to see who sat in the chair next to me. I expected to see Scarlet there, but instead, I was pulled into a big hug by someone I should've expected would be there sooner or later.

"I thought you were a goner! I shouldn't have asked you to show me that thing! It was really cool how you took it down, but I never want to see that ever again!!" Jay cried in my ear, practically yelling. I hugged him back lightly. It was nice, but I was being strangled to death my his tiny arms.

"Ruptured lung," I wheezed, and he let go, rambling with more apologies.

"I can't believe you're okay!"

"The doctor said it was a miracle. I'm sure it's not a coincidence with my powers and such. And keep it down about that, the story is an ax man broke in all 'Psycho' on us," I explained. "Have you seen Evan?"

"I was just about to go visit him. I'm not exactly in his permissions list, but I was gonna sneak around and find it, or something" he said, making it blatantly obvious that he didn't have it all planned out. I smiled at that thought; Jay walking around, pressed against the walls Mission Impossible style, peeking into each room. He was a dork, but that wasn't news to me.

"Did you sneak in here?" I asked, and he shook his head.

"Unfortunately, your mom asked me to come over to watch you. She said she was going to bring your sister, but she didn't want to stress you out. It's the weekend, and my mom said yes," he elaborated, making wild hand gestures as he spoke. It was always the little things about Jay that made me happy. So happy I'd nearly forgotten my encounter with Evan. The creeping feeling of fear washed over me like a wave, and my smile faded. Jay's smile did the same once he noticed my discomfort.

"Did you want your sister instead?" he asked, a little disappointed. I shook my head wildly.

"No, no, that's not it."

I made sure no one was in ear shot, and told him all about my adventures through limbo with Evan. He let it sink in, trying to process all the new information thrown at him, and I had to say, he was processing a lot faster than I was. I was still trying to wrap my head around it. "I should go visit him. We both should."

"My doctor said he would come back with news. I'm sure he'll come soon to give us the news: good or bad."

As if on cue, I saw Dr. Michaels glance into my room. He must have done it several times and had gotten used to me sleeping because he looked surprised to actually see me there, and walked back into the room. I braced myself, and I knew Jay was tense too. He gripped at the sheets of the bed, and I figured he was not only nervous for Evan, but nervous for me as well.

"Nice to see you awake, Hutchison. I see your friend has come to visit you here. Are you two close?" he said, trying to maintain casual conversation. He seemed to have forgotten about my question regarding Evan entirely, and every fiber in my being didn't want to ask. Jay nodded, and awkward silence filled the room. The doctor sighed and checked the monitors.

"Andy, do you mind if I check your wound?" he asked, setting his hand over where I'd been stabbed. His skin was cold to the touch, even when it was only resting on my clothing. I reluctantly agreed, and lifted the shirt they'd given me. He looked at where it had been, a huge scar of a slash down my side. I hadn't even bothered to look before, and it was kind of unnerving. I didn't like being reminded of the fight, as simple as it was. The memory alone was terrifying. The sounds of screaming, the smell of blood that stung my nostrils. The adrenaline pumping through my veins as I drained the nailimp. As scary and traumatizing as it was, I couldn't help but feel a touch of confidence. I'd done that. I'd killed this big bad beast and stopped it from hurting others beside Evan and I. Jay was alive and he wouldn't be without me. Yet again, no one would've been in danger in the first place if I had just kept my head buried in the sand. Maybe Evan had been right about the monsters just wanting to be left alone. Only one had attacked me solo so far. Poor Evan. Considering he was still alive, how could he ever forgive me for that? He'd lost an entire arm, and I'd come out with only a scar.

The doctor poked and prodded at the mark, and a few other areas that had been damaged before as well, that seemed to be miraculously healed. He jotted down a few notes on a separate sticky note, since it was unlikely he had my papers on his current clipboard.

"How is Evan? Evan Liu?" I asked. "The boy who lost h-"

"He's fine. Poor Evan was in a coma for a short while, but he woke from it a few minutes ago. I just came from there actually. It seems that your case was not the only anomaly. However, since we are still testing him, he'll be here a few months at least. An amputation isn't easy to get over. There's therapeutic sessions and general healing stuff. But he will make it, I'm sure. He talked about you, y'know?"

I started to sweat, and I could feel the sheets underneath me shift as Jay's grip tightened on them. "What did he say?" I asked, trying not to sound worried.

"That you helped him get away from a man with an axe in the bathroom. Said you saved his life and the guy ran off with his arm. Pretty gruesome stuff. You're very brave, Mr. Hutchison. I'm impressed," the doctor spoke, a soft smile on his lips. I nodded and blushed a bit. It felt foreign to receive such high compliments from people who weren't Jay.

"Thank you. I just spotted the guy and I reacted. It was nothing," I lied, shrugging it off. Dr. Michaels stood from his chair and collected the sticky note filled with scribbled writing that I absolutely could not read. Then he left, without a word. It was so out of place. He looked like the type of guy that would at least say goodbye before leaving. Now, he just didn't feel right. I didn't like it.

"You got Evan out of his coma! YOU'RE SO AWESOME!!" Jay cheered, his fear melting away as he threw his hands up in celebration. I let out a soft laugh, telling him he was going to wake up the entire wing with his gaiety. He caught his breath, but I was still laughing with him. I was overjoyed that Evan was alright. I guess his plan did work out. I'd be sure to have him as my partner in English class when he returned to school. I made a mental note to give him my contact information before I went home.

Jay really knew how to get my mind off of everything that had happened. He brought board games to play with me, and let me use his phone for a while as he rambled on about things that happened while I was out of it. The school was in a panic, but, unfortunately, we would still be returning Monday. As soon as he had mentioned the event, he had changed the subject, talking about whatever video game he wanted to play and what movies to watch. We turned on the TV and made fun of reality TV shows, but I could tell Jay liked them, though he would never admit it. He sat in the chair beside me, and eventually fell asleep.

Falling asleep was a bit harder for me, considering recent events. I didn't want to fall asleep because I feared what lie ahead of me. However, between the TV, Jay's snoring and the sheer boredom of sitting in a room with nothing to do, I drifted off to sleep.

Except this time when I slept, nothing happened.