Page 102 of Uprising

“We got her.” Ben murmurs patting my back, like that’s where my head is at.

I look up, seeing my sister in Koen’s arms.

She’s no longer fighting. No longer screaming either.

She’s just lying there, limp, in a dress that’s barely worthy of the name. As I take her in all I can see are the bruises, the burns, the way her ribs poke through her skin with how the cut outs of the fabric expose her body.

She used to be curvy, she used to have muscle too. Now she barely looks more than a bag of bones.

“Is she conscious?” I ask.

Koen looks up at me. “No.” He replies.

She must have passed out as soon as we got into the truck. I don’t know whether to be relieved by that fact or not.

But his eyes are blazing. He looks like he’s about to lose his shit too.

I glance at Ben who meets my gaze but doesn’t say anything. Only I can see it written on his face. What he’s thinking, what he’s feeling in this moment. The woman he loves, the woman he’s always loved is lying here, close to death, and yet another man sacrificed himself to save her.

And right now, another man entirely is holding her like she’s the most precious thing in the world.

Roman

The beeping of the monitor seems to be the only noise in the room.

I’m sat here, staring, feeling fucking useless as the doctor checks Sofia over. Ben is sat the other side, face in his hands, and Koen, he’s pacing back and forth like a typhoon about to go off.

I watch him from the corner of my eyes but I don’t let him see.

I’m certain he’s never met my sister before, certain they’ve never even uttered one word to one another so why the fuck is he acting like this affects him too?

“She’s severely malnourished.” The doctor states like we don’t know that, like we can’t see that with our own eyes. “I’m putting her on a drip to get her vitals up. We have to do this slowly though because she’s at high risk of refeeding syndrome.”

“What is that?” I ask.

“Essentially if we give her too much too soon it will overwhelm her system.” She explains. “Her brain will go catatonic and she’ll go into multi-organ failure.”

“So how do we make sure that doesn’t happen?” I reply.

“We do this slowly. She’s at the critical stage but over the next week she stood stabilise.”

I look back at Sofia, she’s still unconscious, though this time I know it’s partly to do with the meds. She looks so fragile. So broken.

“Are all the drugs out of her system?” I ask.

The doctor glances at Sofia then back at me. “We’re doing a full toxicology report now so once that’s back we’ll be able to determine that and if we have to do anything further…”

“What does that mean?” Koen growls.

She flinches a tiny bit at his tone. “She might have withdrawal symptoms. We don’t know though. We’ll only know that once we see what we’re dealing with.”

He looks at her then at my sister. “I want updates. I want to know every time her situation changes. I want to know hourly.”

The doctor nods, while internally I want to tell him to fuck off. That that’s not his place, that he has no relation to Sofia.

“Me too.” Ben says. Only his tone is completely different. He sounds hollow. Like he’s as broken as she is.

“Focus on my sister.” I say to the doctor. “Get her better, do whatever you need to do.”