Eliott Price Should be Dead

nine - welcome home

"Wake up!"

I faintly hear a deep voice while my entire body throbs and stings.

"Wake up, It's so cold out here."

I hear the voice again while I try to move a limb to show I'm alive. The ground and air is cold so I'm not sure if whatever I tried to move actually did as it was intended. I can't quite open my eyes yet. Every time I try, I get the worst urge to close them and the world spins inside my mind.

"I'm alive," I muster out quietly while I finally try to force my eyes open. I see an older man crouching next to me. He's wearing a dark gray suit and has a briefcase down on the ground by my arm. My eyes are focusing in and out and squinting isn't helping. It's too bright to focus on anything but the man's briefcase on the ground.

"Yeah, I know you're alive. I checked for a pulse. I want to know if you're okay," the man tells me next as I try to sit up. My body sways like I'm drunk. He grabs my shoulders and helps position me so my back is resting against the brick wall behind me.

"I'm okay. I think I might have hit my head against this brick wall, through," I say while pointing behind me, as if he doesn't know there's a brick wall there.

"You have to be cold. It's a miracle you didn't freeze to death," the man ignores the wall comment and continues talking while wrapping his jacket around my shoulders, "can I help you home?"

"Yeah, I'm cold," I say with a small smile while pulling his jacket tighter around my shoulders. I look down while pulling the fabric closer and realize that my hands and arms are a light purple-blue hue. My veins look like lightning during a thunderstorm and I move my arms out in front of me, mesmerized with how they appear.

"Maybe I should take you to the hospital," the man murmurs as his eyes trail from the top of my head to the bruises on my discolored arms.

I immediately shake my head and advert my attention to the man instead of my arms.

"Okay, then let's get you home. I'll walk with you," the man tells me as he stands up and grabs his briefcase.

"Don't you have to go to work or something?" I ask him while I take my wobbly time standing up. My bones are stiff and I'm aching all over but I'm positive I can make it home in one piece.

"They'll understand," the man says with a smile while raising his briefcase in the air like he's making a toast to the corporate company it appears he works for.

As I brave my first few steps, my head throbs in loud pulses and my vision turns fuzzy for a few moments. It slowly dissipates as I continue taking baby steps towards the man a few feet in front of me.

"I'm Eliott," I tell the man as I extend my discolored hand for him when I'm close enough.

"Nice to meet you, I'm Michael," the man tells me as he grabs my cold hand and firmly shakes it. He acts like theres nothing wrong even though my skin feels like I've been dead for three hours. Personally, if someone offered my hand to shake right now, I wouldn't touch it.

Eventually, after a long way of wobbling and slow steps, we make it back to my apartment. I give Michael his jacket back and tell him that he doesn't have to come up to the room with me, but he insists for some reason. Michael seems like a nice man but I know better than to show a stranger where I live. I may not have all the book smarts, but I definitely learned street smarts growing up in the foster care system.

"Listen, I can do it myself, man. Thank you so much for not letting me die out there," I say with as much gratitude as possible while trying to not sound rude.