Party Poison—Gerard:
She called me dad. I couldn’t believe it—and now I was never going to see her again. As the roof falls in on top of me, the last thing I hear is Specter’s pleas to come back for me as Mikey drags her away to safety. They leave me to sacrifice myself for them—not the cause, but them, the ones I love and care for. I just wish I could have told them all goodbye.
Zone Specter:
I nearly fish-tale the car when I come to a halt at the now destroyed paint shack. I can’t help it, I scream out in my fear that he may no have made it. Practically ripping the door off its hinges, I jump out of the car and run towards the wreck to find him.
“Daddy!” as childish and scared as I sound, I can’t help but notice how good it feels to call a living body that again—at least, I hope he was living still. “Daddy, where are you?!”
I enter the destruction and carefully step over the wood, metal, and through the puddles of paint. Listening for any sounds, calling out for him, and moving pieces of broken everything out of my way—I don’t make much progress other than cutting up my good hand pretty badly and ruining the picture on my casted one. After only five minutes, I go into super panic mood trying to find dad, throwing everything out of my way and screaming for him to answer. At this point I don’t care if I get the attention of every Drac and BLI in the Zones—I just want to find him.
“Daddy answer me!” I scream one last time, only to lose it finally two seconds after.
I drop to my bloody, scrapped up knees in the midst of the chaos and cry for everything—for every lose I’ve endured, for every disappointment I’ve made, for every loved one that I’ve hurt, and at the failure I’ve become. I let my face melt into my hands, letting the tears catch in my hands, stinging the cuts and smearing the eye even more, the blood and soot mixing themselves with my tears all over my face. I sit there for what seems like hours but was probably only just a minute or two—then I hear the slight sounds of something moving under the ruble.
“Dad?” I whip my head up and look towards the sound must’ve come from. “Daddy are you there?”
I hear the sounds again, a little louder this time, and I’m up and run to it, but slipping over everything in my desperate attempts to reach it. Then I see some of the planks move right in front of me, and a smile spreads across my once broken face. Tearing away the planks and metal sheets I finally see what I’ve been looking for—a glimpse of bright red hair.
“Dad!” I hope he can hear the love and happiness like I can in my voice. “Dad, answer me,” I start to get worried again when he doesn’t answer me…then I see why when I remove the last piece of wreck off him. “No, dad wake up!”
There’s a giant concrete block on his chest, I’d seen a few other blocks around the site, guess they were part of a hidden structure—but this one’s making it hard for him to breath. I quickly pick it up off him then nearly drop it back on him when he suddenly opens his eyes and takes in a gasping breath. He bolts up in a coughing fit, almost turning as red as his hair from the lack of air. When he stops he sees me and smiles, I instantly toss the block aside and practically jump in his arms for hug.
“I was so scared you’d…” I can’t even finish the damn sentence! I too busy choking on my sobs—but they’re happy sobs that my dad’s actually alive.
“I’m alive, and so are you, that’s all that matters—ow, my ribs!” dad suddenly lets me go and is gritting his teeth in pain. “I think I broke something,” he mutters closing his eyes trying to ride it out.
“It must’ve been that block that was on top of you,” I sigh as I help him to his feet.
“Was that why I couldn’t breathe?” he tries to laugh and make it seem sarcastic, but when he gasps from more pain, it only makes me more worried than I was before for him.
“Yes, and it’s not funny dad, you could be seriously hurt,” now I sound more like his mother than his daughter.
“You called me dad,” he says quietly, sounding a little surprised and a little touched—mainly the later.
I smile a bit then I say in the same joking tone he’d tried to use, “Well what else would you call the man that gave you life?”
It was meant to be a rhetorical question but he still answers anyway, “I don’t know, maybe a pain in the ass that didn’t know how to tell his daughter he loves her.”
We’ve reached the car and he’s leaning against the hood while I go to look in the car for something to help him, but when I hear his words I freeze and look at him in total disbelief.
Then like some sap, I manage to say all tear-like, “You really mean that?”
Dad just laughs as best he can and pulls me over for another hug, “You’re my daughter Specter, no matter how much we fight I’ll still love you.”
The sound of the words and the amount of love in them just makes me want to hold onto MY dad and never let go for fear of losing him—again.
“I love you too dad,” I mumble into his shirt, then I add in a sorta half laugh, “And I’m probably hurting you with my hug.”
“If it hurt that bad I would’ve done the worst and pushed you away,” he says jokingly.
“Still, we need to patch you up before we go to find the others,” I say pulling myself away.
“I was about to ask what happened to them, and where’s the Trans?” he says taking in the black camaro with the BLI logo on the doors.
I bite my lip before I decide to tell—best to start being honest if I wanna get along with my dad now, “Please don’t get mad, okay, they did all they could to get me away,” I say getting worried that he might flip.
He lets out a breath before he says, “Specter, I promise I will not interrupt or get mad while you tell me what happened after Mikey pulled you out, alright?” he raises his eyebrows at me in that questioning way I’ve gotten used to by now.
I nod and start telling him what happened as I search the glove compartments for a first aid kit or something to help dad while he listens, not interrupting and staying calm as promised. I finally find a small white box with a red cross on it behind the front seat and get out of the car just as finish up the story—which didn’t take too long.
“So they took you right and the others went left?” dad asks as I open up the box.
“Yeah, and the Drac told me they were having avalanche problems, so I’m guessing they had others drive them in deeper while they blocked them off,” I say as I pull out a little first aid tip booklet from the box.
“Then they should be on their way to Joe’s to meet up with your grandpa and Cherri, that passage leads right to it, the other was a dead end,” he says rummaging through the box and pulling out some bandages. He takes a look at my hands and shakes his head, “You can’t go a day without getting hurt can you?”
It’s a joke, I know it, but I also know that what he’s saying is pretty darn close to the truth. So I roll my eyes and pull out the disinfectant and spray some on my hand, it stings a little, but not that much. Then dad takes my hand and begins to wrap it up in the bandages.
“There, now that you’re all patched up what can we do about my ribs?” he says placing the bandages back in the box.
I pick up the little booklet again and search through it for anything on injuries relating to ribs, and I come to a page that says “How to treat Bruised or Cracked Ribs”. Well that helps a lot.
I read the symptoms section, then I turn back to dad, “How bad does it hurt? And don’t say ‘like hell’ because I need a real answer here.”
He laughs but then stops and grabs his side doubling over with the pain. Scanning the article again I see that he’s doing a whole lot of things that you shouldn’t be with injured ribs.
“If you want it to stop you’re gonna have to stay still and try not to laugh to hard or breath too deep,” I say getting dad to straighten up again.
“Fine, and as for the pain it hurts kinda bad, and right now it hurts really bad,” he says struggling not to laugh at his own joke.
I look back over to the book, I let a sigh of relief, “It’s probably just bruised—cracked at the most according to the book.”
“So how do we fix it?” he says with a grimace.
“Well it says you can’t really fix it, it just says we can tape it and put some ice on it, it’ll heal on its own in a few weeks so long as you don’t move too much,” I say glancing over to the book as I help dad stay in an upright position.
“A few weeks?!” he’s says looking at me with a “you-can’t-be-serious” look on his face.
“Without physical activity too,” I add, but of course that doesn’t help, “Probably the worse thing to happen considering your lifestyle.”
“Whad’ya mean my lifestyle? It’s yours too,” I grins, avoiding laughing after what I told him, “But back to the original issue, do I really need the taping done?”
“Well it said it was optional, but if you do tape it we’d have to take it off once an hour so you could take deep breaths,” I answer.
“Forget that crap I’ll go without them,” he says quickly before I can change his mind.
“Alright, let me see if I can find you some pain killers in here though,” I say as I help dad get into the car, then I turn back to dig through the box I left on the hoodof the car.
I find several packets of pain killers that should help dad get through for next couple a days, and to my surprise I find one of those cooling and heating patches too. I hand dad a pack of the medicine and the patch, then I head over to the driver’s seat.
“So where do we go from here then?” I say buckling up.
Dad swallows one of the pills before answering me, “Well it sounds like the Dracs lead them down the canyon and blocked off this end, so I’m guessing they’ll head for Joe’s then come back here to see if they can find us—what is this thing?”
I turn to see dad holding up the patch with a confused look, “It’s a cooling and heating patch, you put it on a bruise and it cools and heats it to help you cope with the pain.”
I take the patch from him and peel the back off then I hold it out for him to take. He takes it, then reaches under his shirt and puts it on his rib cage where I see a nasty looking bruise starting to form. He pulls down his shirt then zips up his jacket, then turns to look at me again.
“We need to start heading for Joe’s now, it’s about an hour drive taking the shortcut, but it’ll take us about five if we just drive straight on,” he leans back in his seat and closes his eyes—drifting off after probably one of the roughest fights of his life.
“I’ll wake you up when we get there,” I whisper as I start up the car.
I catch a glimpse of a smile on dad’s face as we drive off for Joe’s and to find the others.
Part 71: http://www.mychemicalromance.com/blog/zone-specter/danger-days-part-71
