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It hurts. It hurts so very badly. Every breath filling his lung aches and the world is swimming between the long pauses where his eyelids grow too heavy to keep open. Breathing out is more of a wheezed and horrible smelling moan. No one has even attempted to brush his teeth in god knows how long. Time is only kept by the pile of newspapers stacked at his bedside. ‘Angel Taken From Flight!’ ‘Heir to Worthington Industries Faces Possible Jail Time’. The headlines practically shout at him. His own black and white images sneering with their perfect teeth.
The nurse, he does not know her name and knows he won’t be able to remember it anyways, picks up the line to his iv and injects something into the port. It muddles up the edges of his world even more, but he can actually breathe. There is no longer a pulsing, world shattering ache going all the way from the tips of his wings to what feels like his very soul, but is probably just his brain. Her hand runs through his curls and she smiles softly, saying something in her softest voice. She is more of an angel than he is, he thinks to himself. At least now, compared to his sorry state.
Another woman has appeared at his bedside in the time it took him to think that, startling him with her sudden apparition. She’s larger. Sterner even in the blurry messes that make up faces to Warren at the moment. Her hands reach out behind him, mechanically sure movements of someone who’s done this a million times before. There’s a cold sensation as she continues on. The sound of bandages against feathers begins to accompany her, and the coldness switches to stinging. He searches for the face of the other nurse, the kind and young one, and he finds her beginning her own work on his other wing. She’s grimacing, occasionally wiggling her nose and blinking, and it hits him. That sickly sweet sharpness he knows only from the darkest of missions.
He gags, mouth filling with saliva against his will. The purple white red blob at the edges of his vision makes more sense now, and hits his stomach like a ton of bricks. A clump of downy feathers and crusted together fluids falls to the floor with his involuntary jerking, leaving yet another ugly bald spot in its wake.
“Please.” He rasps, throat sore and dried out from not being used in however long. “Please, what is happening to them? They told me it was just a break. What-” Tears well up in his eyes and he grits his teeth as one of the nurses brushes against one of the worst spots, right where he was pinned to the wall like some sort of sick and twisted etymological model. Avenging butterfly of the sewers. “They’re rotting aren’t they.”
The nurses just look at each other, the soft one biting her lip in a nervous habit. He's filling with a slow and seeping rage, arms tense enough to raise the steady beeping of his heart rate on the monitor just a smidge.
"They lied to me. They LIED." He spits. His head pounds in time with his heart and his wings instinctively flair out. The sudden searing pain makes him yelp as if he's been hit, knocking the wind out of him and making his head swim. He feels weak and nauseated, the smell of his own decaying flesh filling his nostrils again.
"Calm down, Sir." She sounds more assertive then her formerly soft and comforting tone, and it's accentuated by the stern one's hands forcefully pushing him back. He flops like a ragdoll against the raised mattress, and he feels sweat start to drip from his curls and down his forehead. Feverish in a way that takes him back to childhood illness. Longing to have anyone there sticks in his throat and comes out a pathetic whimper. He is suddenly young again, calling out for his nanny, or Jean, or any of his formerly close knit friend group, to come hold his hand and comfort him. Stern nurse is still holding him down as his iv port is once again picked up and flooded with sedative. His chest's movements shallow and his eyelids fall, and he is once again in the darkness.