all i said is, do i have a choice?

Augustus had not really planned on actually going anywhere today.

Her dad is out of town, though, and even though Augustus is typically quite annoyed by the amount of noise he makes, she had found the house uncomfortably quiet without him there. Her plans to spend the day resting, since she does not have work, had been a little bit ruined by her being too restless and understimulated to actually feel comfortable resting, which was deeply frustrating.

Finally, she had given up and decided to walk all the way up to the comic shop to look around. It is far enough that it would use up a lot of her energy, but still close enough to technically be within walking distance. She could have driven instead, but Augustus does not really like driving, and the walking had seemed easier to put up with than gearing herself up to drive without planning ahead would have been.

It's alright, she had figured. The way up out of the neighborhood can be quite winding and confusing, especially since Augustus always takes the route that has sidewalks the whole way, but she has made it often enough that it no longer gives her trouble. She could already see the comic shop across the way, with only one final crosswalk before she reaches the little cluster of storefronts it belongs to. The only thing she has left to do is wait for the light to change.

She could probably make it across if she jaywalked, but she waits instead. Augustus is always very careful about crossing the street. Her parents had made sure of it, because Augustus used to wander away a lot as a kid, and no one wanted her to get hurt. So Augustus never jaywalks, even when other pedestrians nearby do, and she always waits for the crosswalk light, even when the street looks empty, and she always looks both ways before she goes anywhere.

So Augustus doesn't really understand what happened.

The light finally changes to WALK, and so Augustus steps neatly off the curb and starts to cross. She's wondering if maybe she should try to get a new pack of Yu-Gi-Oh cards, so that she and the Changeling can split them, when she sees a car beginning to turn onto the street that she is crossing. Then she sees that the angle it's at is turning quite close to her, closer than she thinks it should be getting.

Then she realizes that it is going to hit her, the split second before it does.

It feels like it lasts a very long time, but also no time at all. She doesn't think she passes out, but everything feels slow, like it is taking a very long time to filter through her brain. By the time she realizes that all the rolling has stopped, she can't quite figure out how long it has been of just laying there instead.

For a moment, she almost can't tell that anything strange had happened at all.

But when Augustus opens her eyes again, she sees that she's laying in the middle of the road where she isn't supposed to be, sort of propped up on her elbows (she can't remember if she had pushed herself up; maybe she had just landed that way?), and the straps of her backpack are pulling uncomfortably around her shoulders. One of her shoes fell off — she can see it off to the side, next to a bunch of broken yellow glass. Her foot feels cold and strange in just a thin sock — she's supposed to always wear shoes outside.

"Fuck," Augustus says. Her front teeth ache, and then she realizes that her leg hurts, and maybe the whole rest of her body does too. "Fuck," she says again, although she does not normally swear a lot, and then she finds that she can't stop saying it, the exclamation stuck on a loop in her mouth that she can't seem to break out of. "Fuck, fuck, fuck."

Augustus has never been in an accident before. She doesn't know what she is supposed to do. She was going to the comic store, but she doesn't think she wants to anymore, she thinks she would prefer to just go home. Should she get up? She blinks hard, nose scrunching, and tries to think. She can hear the chatter of other people on the street around her and blinks again — once, twice, three times. She does not like to be stared at. Can she get up?

Her body kind of aches, maybe, but she's a little afraid that if she tries to move, it will instead begin to really hurt. Augustus doesn't always notice pain right, and she's scared — she realizes — that she might be hurt worse than she has realized. She does not particularly want to move until she can figure it out.

Still, she's also right in the middle of the road, where she is not supposed to be. Is it rude to stay in the road? She is blocking traffic, almost certainly. Is the right thing to do to get up and out of the way?

Augustus shifts her arms just a little, considering, and suddenly there is someone at her side. "Don't try to get up," the stranger says, and Augustus freezes obediently. She can feel their hands hovering around her shoulders, like they are thinking about touching her but are afraid to. Augustus still doesn't know if she feels particularly hurt, but when she glances down at her hands finally, she sees that they are covered in bright red scrapes, ugly and raw looking.

"Fuck," she says again, and then finally manages to figure out how to say something else. "I just got run over," she informs the stranger blankly.

The stranger makes a noise like they aren't sure what to say. Yes, you did, is probably the most appropriate response, but Augustus doesn't bother telling them this. They told her not to move, but Augustus breaks that rule a little and reaches back to get her phone, and feels her stomach drop when she only feels an empty pocket instead.

"Where's my phone?" she asks, voice loud. She needs to tell her dad what happened — 'Call me if anything comes up,' he had said, so she needs to tell him. Her voice breaks a little over the words, consonants smearing messily over her tongue.

"Uhm," the stranger hums out. "Here!" they say next, and lean back in to press it into her hands, flinching away from the scrapes dug through her skin.

The screen isn't cracked, but there is a weird purple smudge over the lockscreen when she turns it on. It still works, though, so Augustus unlocks it clumsily while the stranger works to untangle her headphones from where they had gotten caught on her shoulders when she fell.

"Thank you," Augustus manages, but her voice shakes very bad now. She can't quite bring herself to stop talking, though, for some reason. "I have to text my dad," she tells them. He had said 'call', but he might be in the middle of the ceremony or something, so she does not want the ringing to disrupt anything.

'I just got hit by a car,' she types carefully. This is harder than it should be, because her hands are beginning to shake. Augustus hesitates, and then presses send.

"He is out of town," she hears herself tell the stranger, who is wrapping her headphone wires up so that they will not get tangled up again. The sight makes Augustus feel rather overwhelmed, for some reason, so she glances away, and finds herself looking at her shoe instead.

Is she allowed to ask for it back? She doesn't know if she can move to put it back on herself, but it might be rude to ask the stranger to put it on for her. She is worried it will get lost, though, if she doesn't have it on.

"He does not go out of town often," Augustus' mouth continues on. "He's at a wedding. He's, he will definitely be upset." She realizes that the shoe is looking kind of blurry, and realizes that her glasses are not on her face. "Where are my glasses?" she asks, and then gets distracted before she can pay attention to if anyone answers her.

Because her shoe is kind of too far to reach, and is also surrounded by a bunch of broken glass. More glass than would fit in Augustus' glasses, and it is also yellow, which is weird, because Augustus did not have any yellow glass on her. That must mean that the glass is from the truck.

The truck that hit Augustus, so hard that its glass broke.

"He-," her mouth tries, but the words stall out in her mouth. "I got hit by a car," she repeats instead, and then cannot stop herself from bursting into tears.

"Oh," the stranger yelps. Their hand finally lands on Augustus' shoulder, patting at her awkwardly. Like a dog, Augustus thinks distantly, and sobs out a little laugh. "It'll be alright," they tell her. "The ambulance is almost here. I- here, I'm going to put your headphones in your bag, so they won't get lost, okay?"

"Okay," Augustus sniffs, trying very hard to get herself to calm down. "Thank you," she adds. It is very important that she does not lose control, she thinks. She cannot have a meltdown here, especially not if there is an ambulance coming. If she is not already hurt, then she might hurt herself if she panics, which she does not want.

She feels the ghost of hands, grabbing all of her limbs and holding her down to the floor. Augustus breathes until the memory fades — she does not want that to happen either.

So, she breathes, and focuses on the feeling of her backpack's front pocket getting unzipped, and then zipped back up. The stranger goes back to their awkward petting, and Augustus manages to get the tears to stop; she breathes out carefully, and opens her mouth to ask the stranger for their name, which is right when the police shows up.

Augustus startles a little. Everything feels louder all of a sudden, she thinks as one of the sirens chirps. She wants to look around, but still isn't sure if she's allowed to move her head. The stranger steps back and away before Augustus gets the chance to ask them anything else.

"Can you tell me your name?" one of the cops asks, looming over in front of her, notepad in hand. Augustus holds her phone a little tighter, to try to push the anxiety back.

"Augustus McWilliams," she tells him, trying to get her lisp under control. It is important to be clear, with police. Her teeth are beginning to hurt worse, though, which makes it difficult. She wants to check and make sure they aren't loose or something, but that would be moving, which she is not supposed to do.

The cop keeps asking more questions, though, so Augustus can't ask him if she is allowed to check very quickly. Stuff like the day and the year, and then what happened.

"I was crossing the street, with the light," Augustus says, because jaywalking is illegal and it is important for the cop to know Augustus was following the rules. "And I saw the car, and they were turning. I thought, I thought they were going to go around me, because some people do not wait until you are on the sidewalk to go. I thought it was trying to go around, but then the angle was wrong, and then they didn't stop."

Did they leave? she wonders belatedly. She is still facing the intersection the car had turned from, and she can't see if the truck had stopped somewhere. It had gone over her, hadn't it? So if it did stop, it must be behind her somewhere.

"You feeling hurt anywhere?"

Augustus sniffs. "My leg, kind of," she admits. "Is, is someone going to get my shoe?"

"We'll make sure we grab it," says someone very close behind her all of a sudden. Augustus yelps, head twitching enough to see that it is someone from the ambulance. "You said your leg? Can you rank the pain on a scale for me?"

"Uhm," Augustus hums out anxiously. "Uhm, I don't know. I don't — I have autism," she admits. She would very much prefer not to, she thinks again on the sense-memory of being pinned down, but it is important to be clear. "I don't always notice pain the right way, so I don't know."

"Alright," says the EMT, a little gentler. "Can you go ahead and try for me, best as you can? On a scale of one to ten?"

She is used to using one to five. "Uhm, three," she guesses, because that is usually a good metric for 'It isn't awful, but it is bad enough to slow down.' "Or, wait," she interrupts, because the EMT had said up to ten. "Five," she corrects.

"Okay, got it. We're going to start moving you, alright? Just let us do all the work; don't try to help."

"To help," Augustus echoes shakily. She's not sure she knows exactly what that means, but she can try her best. "Okay."

Her best kind of immediately screws up, because then someone starts to cut at the straps of her backpack to get it out of the way. No one said they were going to do that. "Don't," she yelps, and wiggles out of the second strap herself before they can cut that one too. Someone sighs kind of exasperated somewhere behind her, but she does not want them to ruin her backpack, so she does not apologize for it.

"Okay," one of the EMTs repeats. "Now we're going to start moving you. You said your leg was hurting, right? Both of them or just one?"

"Uh, the top one only, I think," Augustus tells her, too overwhelmed to spend time figuring out her left and right side. It aches up near her hip, sort of.

Except for when the EMT starts to straighten out her knee, and that hurts a lot worse than her hip was. The EMTs freeze when Augustus hisses in a breath at the pain. "That hurts?"

"Yeah," Augustus says, and they don't try to stretch it out any further. Instead, they keep it bent the way it already is, and put something under her knee so that it stays at that angle once they move it over to the board. It is weird, to try to let them move her without trying to help. She does not like them touching her, but she is wearing jeans, which keeps their touch distant enough that she can technically tolerate it, so she is too afraid to say anything about it. If she makes a fuss, then they'll probably just resolve to make her endure it anyway, and so it is for the best to just keep quiet for as long as she can.

Augustus tightens her grip on her phone and tells herself to just breathe through it. She cannot panic, she cannot have a tic attack, and she cannot meltdown — she has to make sure that she is staying calm. As they move to start pulling the rest of her body to the board, Augustus swallows back another shaky whimper and tries to think up another script instead. She is not working this weekend, but she is supposed to have a shift on Monday.

'Hi, Rosemary,' Augustus drafts in her head as they lay her flat on the stretcher thing. 'Just wanted to let you know I most likely will not make it to my shifts next week. I went on a walk and got hit by a car. Thank you for understanding.'

She forgets most of the script immediately when the EMTs reach over to put a huge collar on her neck. She yelps again. "Sorry," the EMT apologizes again, but there are tears in Augustus' eyes and she is having a difficult time focusing. "This is just to make sure you keep your head still; it doesn't look like there's anything to worry about, but we have to play it safe until we're sure your neck and back are all okay."

"Okay," Augustus replies, but she can't stop the tears in time to keep them from dripping down her face. She squirms unhappily at the sensation, but can't move well since they have strapped her in place on the board. This also means that she is unable to wipe the tears away before they can dry uncomfortably on her skin.

This is different from being held down, she reminds herself, and then tells them, "Yes," when they ask if she is ready for them to pick up the stretcher, because she doesn't know if she's actually allowed to say 'No'. She is still in the middle of the road where she is not supposed to be, and so she does not think they would be willing to let her stay there longer than she already has. Her stomach twists sharply when they lift the board, and she yelps again in a way that is kind of a sob. It feels like she is about to fall, but Augustus can't even try to be ready to catch herself, because they have strapped her arms down.

Augustus holds onto her phone as tightly as she can, because it is all she can hold onto.

'Changeling,' she thinks about texting, wishing against all reason that it was here for her now. 'I went on a walk and got hit by a car. I came all this way, and did not even get to look through the stupid card packs. How is that fair?'

She doesn't like the way the stretcher moves when they start to roll it to the ambulance either. Maybe the reason they had to put this huge brace on her is just because they don't know how to roll it over the concrete without it being a crazy bumpy ride.

"Did someone get my shoe?" she yelps belatedly as they roll her into the ambulance. Her glasses are very likely broken, and since she has an extra pair at home, she does not particularly need this pair, but that is her only shoe of that kind. "It fell off," she informs the new EMT that's perched off to the side inside the ambulance.

"That happens a lot with car accidents," the EMT tells her. "We'll make sure we keep all your things together."

"Got your backpack, shoe, and glasses," calls the EMT from before. "Was there anything else you had with you?"

She thinks it over. It's getting a little easier to breathe now that she has stopped moving. "No," she calls back. "Well, except my phone, but I have that." she can't lift her hand very far to show them, but she tries anyway.

"How are you holding up?" asks the new EMT. She is doing that thing with her voice where it gets extra high-pitched, like for dogs and small children. The Changeling cannot stand hearing this particular tone from other people, but Augustus almost kind of likes it, in a strange way.

"Is my tooth broken?" she asks, because it has been weighing on her mind.

"Hm," the EMT hums, leaning in to lift up Augustus' lip. "Nope," but she tries to wiggle the teeth to make sure they aren't loose, which Augustus appreciates. "Just looks like you knocked them against your mouth real good — your lip is getting pretty swollen, but nothing looks too bad. You feeling hurt anywhere else?"

"My leg," Augustus tells her. "My hip, but it hurt when they tried to move my knee, too. They put a thing under it."

The first EMT leans in to put Augustus' backpack on the stretcher with her, right against her leg so that she can feel where it is. "Your glasses are pretty busted up; are you still able to see okay without them?"

"Yeah, sort of," Augustus says, wincing a little. "It's mostly for far-away stuff, I can see close up alright, though."

"Okay, got it. I put them with your shoe in your bag, so that they wouldn't get lost anywhere."

"Thank you," Augustus replies, and she is starting to feel like she has a handle on this. She still does not know what the rest of everything is going to look like, or what to anticipate, but they have not seemed very bad so far. It is a safe bet that she is going to the hospital, because that is where ambulances go, and Augustus has been to doctors before. Maybe it will be less scary than she thought, and she won't wind up crying or panicking again.

Which is, of course, when they throw her another curve-ball.

"Sorry, man," says the first EMT. "We're going to have to cut your sleeves a bit, so that we can get at your elbow here for the IV port."

"Oh," Augustus says sadly. This is one of her favorite flannel shirts.

"We're going to have to cut most of your clothes off," the woman corrects, and that makes Augustus freeze. She does not like that at all. Bad that they are damaging her clothes — this is her favorite flannel, and the Changeling had bleached this shirt especially for her as a gift. Worse is that this means that Augustus will be left naked. Augustus always wears long sleeves and pants for a reason — she does not like the feeling of the open air against her skin, or the feeling of other people touching her skin with their skin. She also just generally does not prefer to be naked, especially not in public.

"Uhm," she chokes out. She wants to tell them No. She wants to ask why they need her clothes off in the first place, or at least if she is allowed to just sit up and take the shirts off herself, so that they don't have to cut them. She wants to tell them No. She does not think she is allowed to do that. "My friend made me this shirt," is what falls out of her mouth instead. She can feel the tears begin to make a reappearance, and hums out a noise of frustration, eyes squeezing shut. How much longer will all of this last? Is the whole rest of the day going to be her stuck on this recurring roller-coaster of nightmares?

Augustus wants to go home.

"Sorry," says the EMT softly, gentling his voice. "I do have to cut it, but I can try to cut along the seams for you — it should be easier to fix up like that, at least."

It will not be the same at all. It does not solve the problem of Augustus not wanting to be naked. It also does not solve the problem of her not wanting the shirt cut; even if it is easier to fix, it will still be cut. He said he had to, though, and that means Augustus isn't allowed to tell him no. She strangles another upset noise in her throat. If she does not tell them it's okay, then they will just do it anyway. "Okay," she makes herself say, because that is what they want from her.

"I can't do the same thing with your shirt," says the other EMT, already cutting it up the middle before Augustus can say anything to her. "But I'm sure your friend will be willing to make you a new one."

This is probably true, but Augustus resents the empty reassurance anyway. This woman does not know the Changeling; she doesn't know that it probably will be excited to have an excuse to dye another shirt. She doesn't know anything at all, and Augustus does not feel reassured. She grits her teeth and holds her body tense and still like the Changeling always does, since she cannot rock or sway like she usually does, and tries to use that to block out the sensation of all of their hands on her skin, pressing and grabbing and poking.

Her phone has not buzzed to let her know her dad has texted back. She wishes he was here.

He is going to be sad, she thinks, distressed. He will be upset that he was not here. Even if he left the wedding right now, he would not be home until tomorrow, most likely. He will be quite stressed. That will make driving home at all even more difficult.

Augustus flinches when one of the EMTs touches her chest, and the breath she has been holding comes out like a sob. 

"Calm down," instructs the EMT, and Augustus nods and tries to listen. She cannot panic here, and the EMT knows it; maybe it is a rule. Either way, Augustus has no choice but to follow along with it. She does not want them to hold her down, or even just be annoyed with her; when people get annoyed with you, they listen to you less, and Augustus does not want to risk them ignoring her the next time she tells them something hurts. "You have any headphones?"

Augustus nods as best as she can with the collar on, and then realizes that its whole job is to stop her from doing that. "Uhm, yes," she chokes out instead. "In my bad. I'm, I was wearing them. But someone helped, someone wrapped them up for me. He said he put it in my bag."

"That was nice of him," the EMT says indulgently. "It might get a little loud once we get to the hospital. It won't be too bad, since it doesn't seem like you'll have to go through triage — it doesn't look to me like you hit your head too bad. Did you black out at all?"

"I don't, I don't think so?" Augustus offers weakly.

"Did you, or didn't you?"

"No," Augustus tries to answer certainly. She still doesn't know if that's right, but she thinks maybe the woman had sounded annoyed, and she gets too flustered to ask how she would be able to tell. She had her eyes shut when the car had hit her, so she does not know if she is missing any pieces between the impact and opening her eyes on the road, but she remembers a lot of rolling around in between, so she tries to guess based off of that.

"Okay, that's good, then. It doesn't look like you have any internal injuries either. Once we get in, they'll have one of the doctors take a look at your back to make sure that your neck and spine aren't damaged, and then they'll be able to get that collar off of you. I'll talk to one of the nurses when we get there, and I'll let her know I told you that you could use your headphones after that, alright? Once they look you over, it's mostly just a lot of waiting while they get you ready for scans. Does that sound alright to you?"

Augustus does not like the sound of waiting, but it will be easier if she has her headphones. She has some episodes of Bakugan downloaded, so that can pass the time better. "Yes," she says, sniffing back the last of her tears. "Thank you."

"No problem. I'll put your bag right here by your side, alright? Can't get it any higher, or it'll get in the way, but you should be able to reach it alright. The nurse will help you if you can't."

Augustus hums out another agreement, smoothing her thumb against a scrape in the side of her phone case. That must have happened when it fell out of her pocket. Augustus fixes her eyes on the corner of the ambulance and tries not to think about it too hard.

The ambulance turns off its sirens, and stutters to a stop. Augustus tenses up again, and tries to run through the list the EMT gave her in her head in order to try to calm back down. They will move her into the hospital, then they'll talk, and someone will look at Augustus' back, and they'll take the collar off of her neck if they decide it is okay, and then Augustus can put in her headphones and wait, and it will be okay.

Inside the hospital is loud, but not very bad. People are talking a lot — she hears the EMTs talking to a nurse about her, but no one says anything to her directly.

'Hi Changeling,' Augustus drafts in her head while they talk over her. 'I got hit by a car and the ambulance workers cut open the shirt you made me. Will you still make me a new one?'

Her phone is held tight in her hand still, tight enough that she will notice immediately when it buzzes, but has remained quiet. Augustus resists the urge to shift nervously, and makes her empty hand into a fist so that she can focus on the way her nails cut against her palm instead.

"Hey there," says a new voice, and Augustus refocuses her gaze to look over their ear. "We're going to roll you over real quick so that the doctor can examine your spine. Just let us do all the work, okay? It's really important that you don't try to move on your own, got it?"

That's like what they told her on the street, so Augustus knows how to do that now, sort of. "Got it," she replies, but still has to grit her teeth against the manhandling, the way people talk over her without ever warning her about what is happening, the way someone she can't see reaches in to press their fingers against her spine and makes her skin crawl.

Augustus bites the inside of her cheek, and tries to stay quiet and let them work, but when they suddenly roll her back over, it jars her hip against the stretcher and the surprise makes her hiss in another sharp breath.

"You hurting?" asks a woman Augustus thinks introduced herself as the doctor. Someone else takes the collar off of her, and Augustus tries to focus on being grateful that it is no longer digging strangely into her jaw instead of being uncomfortable with how they've knocked her hair everywhere. "You want some pain relief?"

Augustus doesn't know if she knows the right answer to that question. Is she allowed to say no? Does she want to say no? She doesn't really take a lot of medications, usually, and she doesn't know what kind of medicine the woman means. Is she allowed to ask? Even if she did, Augustus thinks, she doesn't really know if she understands what the differences would be. She really wishes her dad was here to tell her what the right answer is, but he still has not answered her text.

"I'd feel better if you had some," says the doctor, which sounds like a polite way to say that Augustus cannot say No. She still isn't sure how she feels, but she nods back anyway because that seems to be what the doctor is expecting.

She really does not know if she is doing any of this right.

The doctor tells her that she will send someone to give her the medicine soon, and then walks off down the hall. A different nurse takes Augustus to a side room to get all the rest of her clothes cut off of her. Augustus cannot figure out why they have to do that — not why she can't just take them off herself now that they have decided that her spine is okay, nor why her clothes have to come off at all — but she can't figure out how to ask. So Augustus just lets them do whatever, and is quietly grateful that they do not touch her underwear, and nods along when they tell her that her clothes are going to go in a plastic bag that will join her backpack on the bed next to her.

They give her a sheet to cover herself up with, so that Augustus does not have to be just naked in public, which is a meager relief, and then they push her back out into the hallway. That's where she has to wait, they tell her, for someone else to come and take her to get scans to make sure that none of her bones are broken. Then they leave her alone there.

Augustus hesitates. She thinks that this is when the EMT had told her that she was allowed to use her headphones, but she isn't sure, she's only guessing. No one else that had spoken to her since has mentioned it, and she had been too busy trying to understand the words everyone was telling her to think about finding her own to ask if it really is okay. Maybe it isn't allowed after all? If there are still things they need her to do, maybe she can't use them after all because they need her to listen to people still.

She could try to ask, maybe, but she does not know who she could ask. There are other people in the hallway, but they are all walking past very quickly, like they are busy. Even if Augustus thought she was allowed to interrupt them without being rude, she cannot figure out how to get the words to come out of her mouth quickly enough to stop them before they are already gone.

The doctor did say that someone would bring her something for the pain soon, though, so Augustus resolves to wait to ask them whenever they come to her.

'By the way,' she scripts in her head, trying to keep her mind off of everything. 'One of the EMTs told me I could use my headphones, to help with the noise. Is that okay?"

Eventually, Augustus decides that since they took the brace off of her neck, she is allowed to move around at least a little now. She is still careful about the thing the EMT had left in her arm, it is something for IV's, she kind of remembers him saying, but she isn't sure if that means there is a needle there or not. She resolves to leave that arm straight, in case she is at risk for breaking part of it, and to still try to hold mostly still, to keep her hip from being jarred any more than it already has. She's shivering for some reason, though, and that is already making it hurt worse than she would like.

"Hi, Changeling," she types clumsily. Her dad still has not answered the text she sent him, so Augustus thinks that she was right, and the wedding ceremony is happening now. "I went on a walk today and got hit by a car."

The Changeling texts very slowly. It does not like to use the keyboard, and so it uses a different app with word squares on it to make sentences instead, which it will then copy-paste back into the messenger app. While Augustus waits, she takes a quick picture of herself to send later, so that it can see that she is alright.

Her mouth is all swollen like the EMT said, which looks kind of gross. There is also a big scrape on her head, right over her eyebrow; she wonders if it will scar. Neither injury looks like it is bleeding though, at least. Other than that, her face looks alright, which is good; Augustus would have guessed it would be much worse, given that she had been run over. Her hair is kind of a mess, and she is missing her glasses, but at least it had not been worse.

"Joke?" the Changeling texts back.

"No," Augustus replies, and sends it the picture.

Should someone have come to help her yet? The hallway is cold, and since they took all of her clothes the thin sheet is the only thing she has to cover her, and it is not very good at being warm. The shivering is starting to make her hip hurt even worse. Had she done something wrong when she had agreed with the doctor, and that's why it's taking so long?

"How," Changeling demands.

"I was walking to the comic shop, and someone hit me when I crossed the street," she explains, trying to focus her attention on typing instead of anything else. "I got all the way to the store, but that's when I got hit. I did not even get to look at the card packs :(".

It takes a while to respond to that. "You are hurt."

"A little," Augustus agrees. "I have a lot of scrapes, but they checked my head and spine and those are okay. My leg hurts, but I'm waiting for them to do x-rays still."

"They cut off my clothes," she adds after a moment. "It was the shirt you made for me :((".

She might be more sad about the shirt than anything else. Her leg is hurting pretty bad, but it's not hurt like it will kill her, so it will heal eventually. The shirt will not. Even if Augustus got it sewn back together, it will not look the same.

Her dad still has not texted back, but Augustus goes to check the thread anyway. She sent her text at 12:42, and it is now 2:30. She realizes that the one message she had sent might seem scary all by itself, since she has not sent anything else since.

"I'm okay," she types out to him. "I didn't hit my head, and they took me to the hospital. I am waiting for scans, but the EMT said it didn't look too bad."

She sends that, so at least he'll know. She does not mention how much her leg hurts, though. There is nothing he could do about it, given that he is so far away, so it would not be helpful to hear about, probably.

Augustus scrubs a few stray tears off of her face, and they sting uncomfortably against all the scrapes on her hands. She wonders if someone is going to come by and help her with those? There is still dirt and maybe gravel caught in them, and she feels too nervous to pick it out herself. They are quite red, but they haven't bled much yet, so Augustus doesn't want to make them do that onto someone else's white sheets — it's rude. The right one is worse, so Augustus takes a picture of it and sends that to the Changeling too.

"Gross!" she captions it.

"Hi there, sir," says someone to her side. "I'm here to take you to get a CT scan."

"Oh, okay," Augustus says, locking her phone again and putting her hands back at her sides where they were. She thinks maybe this would be the appropriate time to ask about her headphones, but the question gets tangled up in her head with her other question about the pain reliever, and Augustus doesn't wind up able to ask either of them.

'Scan' mostly seems to mean just being moved to a different hallway and told to wait there; Augustus doesn't understand what was wrong with the previous hallway given that they are basically the same, except this one is more crowded. She doesn't know if she is allowed to pull out her phone again, so instead she tries to pass the time by eavesdropping on a conversation another patient is having with the person who had come to the hospital to wait with him, and tries very hard to ignore how much her hip hurts.

Maybe it's worse than they think? she worries despite herself. It does feel like it is getting worse and worse with every passing minute, now. She had told the EMT about her autism, but cannot remember if she had heard him telling anyone else after he had left. Augustus does not always react to pain 'the right way'; is it her fault, that no one has noticed? It already feels pretty bad, but Augustus does not always feel pain the right way either, so what if it is worse than even she has realized? The whole idea makes her nervous enough that she has to breathe through the tears again, and so she tries to calm herself down by scripting a question to finally ask for help.

Then before she can figure out the best way to ask, they tell her it's her turn to get scanned. So then she figures that, since it is the scan's job to figure out where she is hurt and how badly, maybe there is no need to ask at all.

The scans aren't very bad, at least. She gets scared right before the first one, because everyone who is there to help her get set up forgets to warn her that they're going to pick her up with all the sheets as the way she gets into the machine. It jostles her leg so bad that she starts to cry again; Augustus is almost kind of relieved when she gets put all the way into the machine where none of them can see her face as she tries to get it back under control and get annoyed like the EMT had in the ambulance. Although, she has to concentrate so hard on not ticcing during the scan that the pain almost circles back into something useful, so Augustus does not let herself complain.

It's not until after they finish all their scans that her phone begins to buzz a bunch. Someone is in the middle of saying a bunch of stuff to her, so Augustus can't stop listening to look at the screen, but then wanting to look at the screen means Augustus misses most of what the person says to her anyway. It must all basically amount to them telling her she'll be waiting in the hallway some more, because they take her back and just leave her there again.

Her phone was buzzing because her dad had tried to call her. "Oh my god," says the texts he sent before and after. "For real? Are you okay? What happened?"

Augustus thinks about calling him back to talk to him, but she has only just gotten herself to stop crying again, and she thinks if she heard his voice it would bring the tears back. This is the last thing she wants, especially given that she is back in a hallway with a lot of people walking around who would see and hear, so she texts back instead.

"Sorry I didn't pick up, they were doing a scan," she sends. "I'm okay. It has mostly been a lot of waiting. Sorry I don't want to call, because I do not want to cry again."

"Okay," dad replies. "What happened?"

That is quite the popular question today; Augustus is getting very tired of answering it. She re-explains about her walk, and then when her dad asks if the person who had hit her had stopped or drove off, admits, "I don't know. I didn't land facing that direction, so I did not see them."

"Jesus," her dad types back, which maybe means that must have sounded more alarming than Augustus had meant it to.

"It's okay, some people stopped to help at least. Someone called 911 for me, and one guy came and helped me find my phone, and sat with me while we waiting for the ambulance."

He sends back several praying hand emojis.

Their conversation continues while Augustus waits for whatever is supposed to happen next, occasionally interrupted by people who want to talk to her. The police come again to ask a few more questions, and Augustus manages to ask her dad's question, and passes along that the driver did stop after he had hit her. Another nurse comes by to ask about Augustus' insurance information.

The woman has to look through her bag to find her wallet, and Augustus considers asking if she can get her headphones out too while she is in there, but refrains. Now, she is worried that someone will come and find her to talk just as soon as she puts them in, and will be annoyed that she isn't listening. She's already made it through five hours without them, though, so she guesses that means she is mostly alright. With all of the waiting, things have progressed a little further into 'boring' than 'scary', which is a little easier to deal with all by herself.

She does ask if she can have some water. The nurse says she has to go check and make sure it's okay for Augustus to have a drink, since some of the medications they give people means that they shouldn't for a while. She leaves before Augustus can explain that no one has given her any kind of medicine yet.

A little while after that, a different nurse comes over with a bunch of stuff in her hands.

"Hello! I'm here to get your leg sorted out with one of these braces," the nurse says. "It looks like you got a small fracture on your fibula, right below your knee. We'll get you set up with an orthopedic appointment before you leave here today, but this brace will help keep your knee immobilized until then."

"Oh," Augustus says, while the nurse first gives her some kind of blue, papery clothes to put on finally (they are noisy and uncomfortable, but Augustus is sort of just grateful to have anything to put on at all, so she does not complain). Her leg does kind of hurt near her knee — that's why the EMTs had put a thing there to support it instead of trying to stretch it out, but her hip is what is really hurting her still. "That's all?"

"That's it!" the nurse chirps. "How are you doing with the pain?"

"Um," Augustus thinks about mentioning her hip, but cannot quite figure out if she should. It isn't what the nurse had asked about, specifically, and a lot of the times when Augustus complains about things, people just tell her that she is making it up. She always gets mad when it happens, and she doesn't know if she has it in her to be mad on top of everything else that she has felt today, so maybe it is for the best to just not say anything at all. "It's not too bad, I think? One of the doctors said something about pain medicine when I first got here, but no one came? I'm okay, though, I guess," she adds hurriedly, because she does not want to sound rude. "I asked for water a few minutes ago, and someone said they were going to ask? I don't know if she was going to bring that too or not."

"Oh," says the nurse. "Well, wait here just a moment, let's get that taken care of before we try to get that brace on."

'Just a moment', in this hospital, seems to always mean at least another twenty minutes. Augustus thinks maybe it is a problem that could be solved if the nurses wore watches, so they would know how long things actually take and could be accurate in their descriptions. In the meantime, Augustus goes ahead and updates her dad some more.

"How are you planning to get home?" he asks, and it's good that he did, probably, because Augustus hadn't thought about it at all. Although it doesn't seem particularly fair that the hospital would drive her here, and not take her back; if she had been driving her car when she had been hit, how would she have gotten back to her car? She squirms a bit, attempting to consider what her options are.

"I'll ask my friend," she decides to send back. The Changeling cannot drive, but if its mom isn't busy, then maybe she won't mind stopping by to help.

"Is your mom working today?" she asks Changeling, switching back to its message thread.

"Yes will work one hour more," it sends back. Augustus guesses that means her shift will end in one hour. This is convenient enough, since that is hopefully about as long as Augustus has left before the hospital will allow her to leave, provided that this particular measure of time can be counted as accurate.

"Do you think she can drive me home?" she checks with it. "My dad is out of town."

"Yes," Changeling replies, very quickly this time. It also sends its mother's number. Augustus drafts the message in her head while the nurse comes back to give her a shot, and then leaves again, saying that she will come back once the medicine has had some time to kick in.

"Hi, Mrs. Mendez," Augustus types while she is stuck waiting some more. "Sorry for bothering you at work. I got hit by a car on a walk today, and my dad is out of town. Do you maybe have some time to drive me home from the hospital once your shift ends?"

She does not send it right away, because she does not want to disrupt Changeling's mom's work. Augustus is allowed to keep her phone with her during her shifts, but it can be very frustrating for someone to text her to ask her to do something after work while she is trying to focus on just getting through the work part. Still, eventually she starts to feel kind of tired and dizzy, which is disorienting enough to make her more anxious than ever to know the plan for how the rest of the night is supposed to go, so she goes ahead and sends it.

Changeling's mom texts a lot faster than it does, it turns out. "Oh my gosh," she send back almost immediately. "Of course; I'll start heading over right now. Are you alright?"

Augustus gets distracted by the nurse coming back before she can type out an answer. "Sorry," she tells the nurse, putting the phone down. "I was asking if my friend's mom could pick me up."

Her hip is still hurting a lot, but she notices that her lisp is suddenly much harder to talk through than usual. She isn't sure if that means the medicine is doing something or not. It has been a very long day, so perhaps it is just that. She's tired.

"Good," the nurse says. "Glad you've got someone to come look after you."

"My dad is out of town for a wedding," Augustus explains, worried that the nurse maybe thinks it's weird she's all by herself when most of the other people waiting in the hallways seem to have someone else sitting with them. "He is my emergency contact, so you probably called him. He can't come because he's out of town, but we have been texting."

The brace is a lot bigger than she was expecting. Tiffany has a little brace she uses for her knees sometimes, but the one the nurse is putting on is big enough to stretch from Augustus' thigh to her calf. "My hip hurts a lot," Augustus finally admits, wincing as the nurse tightens the big strap that goes over Augustus' knee.

"It might be a bruise," the nurse replies without looking up from her work. "They'll prescribe you a muscle relaxant when you're getting out of here — you'll probably be pretty sore for a few days."

It doesn't feel much like a bruise, Augustus thinks suspiciously. She gets them a lot because she runs into things a lot — on her legs, especially, even. Still, she guesses that maybe a bruise from a table and a bruise from getting hit by a car might be different? She doesn't feel very reassured, but she gets worried that the nurse might get annoyed if she asks too many questions, especially when the nurse is supposed to be the expert, and Augustus is not. She cannot figure out the best draft in her head, so she just doesn't say anything. "Can I use the bathroom before I leave?" she asks instead.

"Good idea," says the nurse. "We'll have to get you up and into a wheelchair so that you can get out of here soon anyway, so that shouldn't be a problem. Give us just a second, and I'll find someone else who can help with that."

So that means that Augustus gets to go back to waiting. In the meantime, she also keeps waiting for her hip to start to hurt less, but that does not seem to be happening. In fact, it almost feels as if it hurts worse now, because Augustus doesn't feel like she can concentrate well enough to not think about it anymore. Hesitantly, she presses her fingers at the epicenter of the hurt; it really does not feel like a bruise at all, she thinks, dismayed.

"I have a leg fracture," she remembers to text Mrs. Mendez back. "They put a brace on it. I'm okay though."

"Alrighty!" a new nurse chirps, pushing a wheelchair up to the side of Augustus' bed. Quietly, Augustus breathes out an annoyed kind of sigh — she is meeting far too many new people today, and it is becoming exhausting. "You all ready to try getting up?"

"Uhm, sure," Augustus manages, clumsily trying to figure out what to do with the whole of her body. The scrubs that the earlier nurse had given her make a lot of crinkly, gross noises every time she shifts, which is quickly becoming difficult to sort through. Also, this new nurse looks kind of small for someone who is supposed to help her get up on a broken leg, Augustus thinks anxiously, but she is too distracted by the noise to figure out how to say the thought out loud without sounding rude.

"Great! Let's try to get this done without jostling that knee too much."

"It's okay," Augustus assures her, cautiously swinging her legs over the side of the bed when the nurse tells her to. "My hip is mostly what hurts. It's not too bad though." That is kind of a lie, but Augustus is getting tired of talking to strangers, and this seems like the most efficient way to avoid getting follow-up questions.

(A part of her still kind of hopes that the nurse will notice and ask about her hip, and double check to make sure it is okay, but she doesn't.)

"That morphine helping you out a bit?"

"Nnnot, really?" Augustus admits, a little surprised by how easily the smaller woman adjusts to bearing her weight when Augustus flinches off of her hurt leg unexpectedly. The pain is still mostly in her hip, but she did feel the ache under her knee a little bit more that time. They manage to get her sat in the wheelchair without anyone falling over. Augustus takes a picture of the brace and sends it to the Changeling.

"Leg," it notes.

"It fractured under my knee," Augustus specifies.

"Do you want me to re-tie your hair for you?" the nurse asks, already reaching to poke at some of the loose strands hanging around Augustus' face. "It's looking a little messy back here after all the moving around."

Augustus hums out a noise. "Can you?" she asks, swaying a little now that she finally can. It is a very nice gesture. "Thank you so much. Uhm, can you tie it low, still? I do not like it when it pulls."

"Of course," the nurse replies, gently tugging the hair tie free from the few snarls of hair it is still managing to hold together. "I totally feel you there; I keep my hair up in a bun most days, like today, obviously, but some days it gets to be such a headache."

"Yeah, it's the worst," Augustus agrees, trying not to flinch at the feeling of the woman's brisk fingers combing her hair back from her face. Her face scrunches up in a grimace at the way she can feel the tangles snag under her palms, but thankfully, the nurse manages to avoid any painful yanking as she loops the hair tie in place. "Do I get to leave soon?"

"Yes, sir! They're getting your prescriptions pulled together, and making sure that everything else you need is ready before you take off, which will take maybe another thirty minutes? And then you'll be all done. Is your ride almost here?"

"Yes," Augustus tells her, double checking her phone again. "She said about twenty minutes."

"Pretty good timing! Hey, you said you needed to use the bathroom, right? Want to go ahead and try to knock that out now?"

Augustus hums out an affirmative, picking her leg up off the floor and onto the wheelchair's little foot rest as best as she can so that the nurse can push the chair over to the bathrooms. It didn't feel that difficult to get out of the bed, all things considered, and so Augustus thinks that getting up on her feet again would be easy enough. Unfortunately, when she stands up this time, all of the dizziness rises up from her chest and into her head very sharply.

"Oh," she says thickly, and stops walking as best as she can when there is a very small, very strong nurse helping to drag her forward more steps.

The nurse also pauses. "You alright?" she asks, glancing up at Augustus' face.

"I'm very dizzy," Augustus admits, and is trying to figure out the best way to plant her feet in order to ride it out when she realizes instead that it is just getting worse and worse. "I need to sit," she says — she really does not want to fall.

The nurse seems to agree, encouraging Augustus to sit and trying to help her down. The wheelchair is all the way over by the door, and so that means they go right to sitting on the floor when Augustus' knees start to buckle.

"You're very strong," Augustus notes dazedly, and then realizes all at once that 'dizzy' is not the only sensation her body is experiencing at the moment. "I'm going to vomit," she says, probably too loudly.

Augustus does not know how the nurse manages to get her a bin in time to avoid a mess, but it feels like nothing short of a miracle. Augustus decides she really dislikes morphine.

"Sorry," she says thickly, once the heaving has stopped.

"No need to be sorry," the nurse reassures her. "Take a minute to catch your breath while I get you some water, and then we'll try to get you up again, okay?"

"Okay," Augustus says, sniffing. She tries not to think about the fact that she is sitting on the floor of a public bathroom. The brace she is wearing is also on the floor of a public bathroom. "I can take the brace off sometimes, right? Like to shower?"

"To shower, yes," the nurse replies, handing Augustus a little plastic cup full of water. "The rest of the time, you'll want to leave it on — especially when you sleep, to keep you from moving it around without realizing — but it can come off when you shower."

"Okay, good," Augustus says, and then agrees to try to stand up again.

This time, thankfully, the process goes much smoother. Augustus manages to get everything done without getting sick or almost falling over again; she still does not feel very good, but she decides to count this as a win, otherwise they might want her to stay even longer, and Augustus currently wants nothing more than to go home as soon as Changeling's mom shows up. So she very carefully does not complain, and lets the tiny nurse wheel her back out of the bathroom just in time for one of the earlier nurses to show up to give Augustus a bunch of papers.

She manages to listen enough to know that they are descriptions of her injuries, and the prescriptions that she needs to pick up and take, and the information for the other doctor they want her to go see in a week to get her leg looked at again. Most of the rest of it goes over her head, because she is tired and dizzy and hurt and still kind of sick-feeling, but she thinks she gets the gist. Maybe Mrs. Mendez can help her read through the papers on a later day and explain the parts that she missed.

"We're in a loading area by the exit," Mrs. Mendez texts. "Do you want me to come inside?"

"My friend's mom is here," Augustus says, relieved. "Should she come inside, if it is going to take longer?"

"Nope! You're all set; I can go ahead and take you out there to meet them. You've got all your stuff?"

"Yes, I think," Augustus replies, putting all of the papers in her backpack and making sure that everything is accounted for. "Oh, should I put my shoe on?" she asks, lifting it out of the bag.

"Oh, yeah, that's probably a good idea. Here, let me," the nurse says (Augustus realizes very belatedly that she doesn't know the other woman's name, but she feels like maybe it's been too long to ask, especially when Augustus is on her way out and it will no longer matter in five minutes). "Alright! Let's get you out of here, then."

Changeling's mom is easy to spot, because she has come out of her car to stand next to it. She waves when she spots Augustus, and Augustus raises a hand back. She's almost relieved enough to be going that she tears up a little, but she swallows it back.

At least until Changeling's mom opens the backseat door for her, and Changeling pokes its head out. Then maybe Augustus can't stop herself from exhaling a noise a little too much like a sob.

It's easy enough to get Augustus inside the car, since it's low to the ground. Mrs. Mendez and the nurse are talking to each other, but Augustus does not hear a single word of it, too focused on watching the Changeling as it helps to balance her so that she does not slip getting in and fall into the foot-well. 

"You smell like sweat," Changeling informs her.

Augustus laughs. "It has been a long day," she tells it.

"Aw, kid, I'm so sorry this happened. Are you alright?" Mrs. Mendez asks, getting into the car and promptly turning around in the driver's seat to look back at her.

"I'm okay," Augustus tells her, kind of annoyed by the question but trying not to be. The dizziness is beginning to return, and she shifts to lean against the seat backs a little heavier to try to balance it out. "They gave me morphine, and I do not like it," she hears herself admit, but then she refocuses. "It's okay, though, I'm not hurt that bad. I didn't hit my head — everyone said that was really lucky."

Maybe too many people had told her she was very lucky. Augustus hadn't really been thinking about what could have happened until everyone kept telling her she got lucky that she did not get a head injury, and then she couldn't stop thinking up pictures of roadkill. That was another thing Augustus hadn't been able to figure out how to ask them to stop doing. 

"And I also have a high pain tolerance," she continues, still trying to make Mrs. Mendez feel better so that she stops making that face in Augustus' direction. "So, out of everyone in my family, I am maybe the best one for this to happen to."

"Well, I'm glad you're not hurt too bad," Mrs. Mendez says. "Listen, you said your dad was out of town?"

"Oh, yes. He went to a wedding, and he was drinking before I sent my texts, so he could not leave tonight. He said he would leave first thing, so he should be back tomorrow night." She still hasn't called him yet; it's on her list for what to do when she gets home.

"Okay, how do you feel about staying at our house tonight?" Changeling's mom asks. "I don't know if I'm comfortable leaving you in your house all by yourself; and if you need help with anything before your dad gets back, at least this way you'll have us close enough to help."

"Oh, you don't have to," Augustus says quickly. It sounds very tempting, but it feels like it is a lot to ask. She does not want to stress them out, or be an imposition, and she does not really want Changeling's mom to hover over her all night either, if she is being honest.

"Stupid," Changeling growls against her shoulder. "Come over."

Augustus glances back at it. The Changeling is scowling fiercely at her, and Augustus can see the scattered red bite marks all over its hands where they are clenched into the seat cushion between them. She hadn't thought about it, really, but it must have been very worried all day. It cannot drive; it had to wait until its mom came home to be able to come check on her. Augustus would probably not be able to ask Mrs. Mendez to leave her alone, but Changeling would. It is good at things like that.

"Okay," Augustus agrees, turning back to face Mrs. Mendez. "Thank you. Maybe that is for the best," she realizes belatedly. "Since my room is in the basement, and they did not give me crutches."

"Yes, it's definitely for the best in that case," Mrs. Mendez replies. "Did they tell you where to get crutches?"

"I don't think they said. Maybe that means I'm allowed to just walk on it? It still hurts, though, still, so stairs would be difficult to navigate. Uhm, can we stop at my house, though, first? So Changeling can get some of my things."

"Yes," it replies, voice firm, and then presses its forehead into the meat of Augustus' shoulder — there and gone in a flash.

It is after eight now, and the pharmacy is closed. Changeling's mom says that she will take Augustus' prescriptions there first thing in the morning to pick everything up, so that Augustus will not have to worry about it. She also promises to get band-aids, since no one at the hospital had ever helped to clean or cover all the scrapes on Augustus' arms and legs and also face. They head straight to Augustus' house instead, and Changeling takes Augustus' keys and backpack and scampers out into the house as soon as the car is parked.

"Does she know where everything is?" Mrs. Mendez asks, worriedly, sitting strangely in the seat like she is frozen in the middle of thinking about going after it.

"Yes," Augustus replies easily, pressing her forehead against the headrest. She is tired. "It knows where all my things are."

She and Changeling have hung out at her house before, of course. Not as often as Augustus goes over to Changeling's house, because Augustus' dad can get weird about her having other people in her room, but they have done it enough for Augustus to feel confident in the Changeling's ability to navigate it. It probably will forget to bring some things, but it will get the important ones, and Augustus feels dazed enough that she probably would have done a worse job if she was able to do it herself.

She does take the time to call her dad, though. That way he can hear that Augustus is alright and not worry about her being alone in the house all night. She tells him what she can about the injuries, and that she will be staying at a friend's house, and he tells her that he is sorry he wasn't there. Augustus shrugs at this, and tells him not to worry about it. Him being at home probably wouldn't have done much to stop her from getting run over, after all; he isn't strong enough to stop a car or anything.

Changeling returns with Augustus' backpack full of things, and passes her the spare pair of glasses that usually stay in her desk, which Augustus puts on gratefully. Things go well for just long enough to make Augustus start to think that all of the difficult parts of the day are all over and done with. Then, as the car gets parked in front of Changeling's house, Augustus realizes that they will have to make the whole walk from the car through the house, and the hospital did not give them a wheelchair or anything else to help with that.

Changeling and its mom both are almost a full foot shorter than Augustus is.

Changeling, of course, is very strong, and that helps a lot. It is not, sadly, enough to stop the process from still being very painful. Augustus is having a very hard time putting weight on her leg, and it is strange, because it doesn't even hurt that badly underneath the brace. It is all just her hip, which isn't even supposed to be that bad, from what they had said.

It is bad, though. Bad enough that when they finally make it to the porch, Augustus has to stop to hold herself up against the railing. "I'm going to throw up," she says miserably.

Wordlessly, Changeling dumps Augustus' clothes out on the floor and hands her the plastic bag they had been in, so at least she doesn't make a mess everywhere.

"I'm really sorry," she gasps, feeling kind of pathetic. She is very ready for this day to be over.

She has to pause to throw up two more times as they make their way through the house. Augustus is not very happy about it. She never wants anyone to give her morphine ever again.

After that, there doesn't seem to be anything else left in her stomach to get sick over. Changeling and its mom help her into the bathroom, and Mrs. Mendez takes the bag to go throw it away while the Changeling perches on the sink counter to wait while Augustus takes a shower. The edge of its bathtub is close enough to the toilet that Augustus can use mostly her arms to transfer from one place to another without having to use her leg, but she is wary of almost passing out again like she almost had in the hospital bathroom. It feels good to have the help nearby, just in case.

She does have to borrow a toothbrush because Changeling forgot hers, but she is grateful enough just to be able to put on her own pajamas, after having to be naked and then having to wear really uncomfortable papery clothes instead of regular ones all day. Changeling watches her wrestle the brace back around her knee without touching, and then finally gets back up to help her walk to its bed. She thinks about asking if its mom would prefer her to stay on the couch or something this time, but does not ask, because she does not actually want to sleep anywhere else tonight. 

"Ugh," Augustus pouts, dragging herself over against the wall so that Changeling can have space for itself next to her. It does not follow her in yet, instead busying itself with the pillows to help Augustus elevate her leg. She almost cries when lifting it hurts her hip so bad, but it's at least a little bit easier with the Changeling's help, and does not hurt that bad for that long. "I do not usually sleep on my back."

Instead of answering, Changeling pauses to dig through her backpack, and then crawls into the bed, presses her Altair bakugan into her hands, and pulls its weighted blanket up over them both.

"Are you okay?" it asks finally, staying propped up on its elbows so it does not have to remove its dog ears. Its eyes look very big in the dark.

"Yeah," Augustus says, glancing away to look at Altair instead. She picks at its seams until it springs open, and fidgets with its joints restlessly, flicking its wing back and forth between her fingers. "Obviously."

Changeling does not seem very swayed. "Are you okay?" it asks again.

Augustus' eyes flood with tears. "I do not want to talk about it yet," she says tightly, and exhales a little relieved sob when Changeling nods solemnly. "It was really scary," she tells it.

The weird part is that the truck did not even feel like the scariest part of her whole day. If no one else had seen, Augustus almost feels like she could have just gotten up on her own and called someone for a ride then, and avoided everything else that had happened afterwards. She hadn't really even started crying until she had realized her dad would be worried about her; she hadn't felt that concerned about the whole thing for herself, really.

The hospital had been the scary part, and Augustus can't even figure out why. Everyone she had spoken to had been really nice when they spoke back, and they had helped her fix her hair and been very nice about when they had to cut up her clothes. No one was even mean, so Augustus doesn't know why she feels so upset by it all.

On top of that, though, she is also kind of annoyed. Her room is in the basement and she will not be able to go down there. Will that mean she has to sleep in the living room? She doesn't like the idea at all. She also does not know what to do about work; she still has her mental draft for Rosemary's message, but Augustus will still have to send it, because she will not know what the plan will be until she does, but she doesn't want to have to answer another "Are you okay? What happened?" question, because she is already sick of it. It is not fair. She does not know what to do.

She takes deep breaths until she can make herself stop crying again. None of the emotion is going anywhere — Augustus can still feel it, heavy and sick in her chest — but she is too tired to let herself indulge in any of it. Her leg hurts too much, and all the scrapes on her hands and elbows are starting to get stiff and achy, and if Augustus actually lets herself be upset, then she might hurt herself worse, so she still can't, not yet.

"Sorry I got you worried," Augustus says instead. Changeling just reaches to put its dog ears on its side table, and then places its last spare pillow between them, and then lays down to burrow itself into it. Augustus sleeps in a t-shirt, so her arms are still bare, and she is so, so tired of feeling other people's skin against her skin, but she had wanted to feel the Changeling close to her despite it. This way, they can be close without any of their bodies actually touching; it is such a perfect solution that she almost immediately starts to cry a little again.

"I am sorry you got run over," Changeling replies, and Augustus snorts out a laugh.

"Thanks," she says, and then sniffs and reaches up to dry her face. "Can we watch Bakugan?"

Changeling huffs. "It is not a very good show," it tells her, petulant.

"Yeah," she grins, popping Altair open again. "But it is my favorite."

"I know," Changeling says, like it is long-suffering, already reaching back to its side table to get its phone, since Augustus' is out of power from her having to use it all day. "I have one season downloaded," it tells her, and very pointedly does not look at her while it goes to pull it up. In the dark, Augustus can only guess that is is blushing.

It feels like a safe bet to guess, because Augustus is definitely blushing herself. Because that might be the sweetest thing Augustus has ever heard said to her in her whole life.

Changeling's weight feels warm and comfortable through the barrier of the pillow between them as it shifts so that Augustus can see the screen better. Still, Augustus misses the whole introduction because she cannot quite bring herself to look away, until the Changeling glances up to meet her gaze, and startles her back into focus.

Augustus leans into the Changeling's side as best as she can without moving her leg, feeling it warm and heavy and comfortable and safe next to her, and breathes out for what feels like the first time all day.