The Library: Part 2
Friday afternoon was filled with excitement for Tyler for he had agree to a date with Jessica. A bell rang in his ears thanks to his quickened pulse, the sound a mother might tell a child means an angel is getting his wings and certainly it was an angel on the feline's mind. Friday's class schedule ended at noon for the graduate students and he began to walk home down a few campus alleys. He still feared to call it a date as it was a dinner in celebration of a grade but still it was hard to mistake the invitation for anything else but a proposition rather than mere celebration.
Turning the corner between two small buildings, his mind was anywhere but in the moment when suddenly a crash on the back of his head was the only event to proceed complete blackness.
Tyler's senses returned one at a time but not all at once. His sense of feeling returned first and his mind reeled with profound pain. The second sense was smell and he was greeted with the strong scent of iodine and alcohol and was quickly followed by the hustle and bustle of soft shoes on tile and many voices barking orders from one fur to another. The bitter metallic taste in his mouth told him he had blood in his muzzle, a remnant memory from a childhood fall that produced the same taste. Finally, he opened heavy swollen eyelids only to be blinded by the fluorescent lights and white sterility of his surroundings.
"Tyler? Tyler, are you awake?," The voice was familiar but disorienting. It was a fairly young and nice English professor he had befriended but never pupiled under. The he felt a small warm paw reach his and the touch almost hurt as he felt cuts and scrapes and bruises protest the touch. The female collie had found him unconscious in an alley and in terror and shock had accompanied the cougar in the ambulance. She told him how she found him walking home herself and how the doctor on staff at the student medical center reported to her that nothing was broken and no permanent damage was done to the brown cat's body. Both knew why it had happened but neither dared to speak it aloud.
"Th-Thank you for staying w-with me," the few words drained what little energy was left in his body and the collie knew so just as the nurse stopped beside the bed and he could make out the blurred outline of an otter.
"Tyler Cougar, correct? I can't imagine what must have happened but certainly you weren't attacked by one person, poor dear. I'm going to give you some pain medicine and its going to make you sleep for awhile, honey. When you wake up I'm sure they police are going to want to talk to you about what happened. They stopped by earlier but I just said you weren't in any kind of shape to remember. They were harder to stop than flood but this is my domain not theirs." She directed the last sentence to the collie as the I.V. morphine knocked the cougar out quickly and he once again dulled his body to the feelings and his thoughts as sleep overtook him.
For the second time, he felt the awkward sensation of his senses starting one at a time. As if it would overload his mind to begin all at once like a normal morning. Still the scent so distinct to hospitals was strong and his head was throbbing despite the medication, a feeling like the skull was cracked as enough to make his blood pressure increase in slight panic.
Suddenly a brushing of his arm fur caught his attention, soft, slow, deliberate. A touch that conveyed much more than concern, conveying fear, desperation, hope and maybe something more. Confused why Clarissa, the collie Professor, would produce such a touch he blinked slowly letting the blur focus on a face that made his blood pressure spike again as his tongue dried and he didn't know what to say.
Looking down and sitting as close to the bed as possible, Jessica, the snow white blond-haired rabbit, was standing vigilant guard over the feline. The cougar looking more like a kitten than ever in such a state of helplessness and submission to the pain.
"Ho--"
"Don't speak, you need your strength," said Jessica, "I was worried when you didn't show for our date," Tyler faded out for a second not too far gone in his current state to miss the declaration that their dinner was a date and quickly going back to the words falling sweet on his blood crusted ear, "I called your phone and a lady answered and told me you were in the hospital. At first she wasn't very keen on sharing your location but I wore her down. She stayed for a while with me while you were sleeping. She cares about you, you know that? She was quizzing me to make sure I wasn't part of the crowd that had it in for you. After a while she had to go home and reluctantly left when I promised that I wouldn't leave your side."
"You--"
"Now stop trying to talk, you need your rest. Its late and you are in no state to reciprocate conversation," and with that the cougar closed his lips and let his tired eyes and head receded back from the activity of his surroundings fully focusing on the soft paw he felt move over his arm in the most reassuring petting he has received since he was a sick pup in his mothers arms."
"Tyler. Tyler can you wake up, please?", the new shift nurse was a pleasant fox which he could tell by scent before sight. "Mr. Cougar, the police would like to ask a few questions related to the assault. Can you handle that?"
Groggily and feeling stiff as wood he reached for the controls of the bed that lifted him to a near sitting position and his surprise, out of the silence to his side, Jessica moved forward and whispered, "I'm hear with you."
"Ye," pausing to clear his throat of a nights un-use, "Yea, send them in, I might as well get it over with,"
The blue uniforms came into the room with a distinct purpose with ever click of a hill on tile. The voice that fell on his ears was gruff but not unkind, detached but not unsympathetic. A voice he knew must come from years of facing the worst of fur behaviour and still trying to manage to think that overall species are good. "Mr. Cougar, you were attacked last night on the way home from the university campus. Is that correct??
"Yes"
"Can you describe everything you remember? Please leave not a single detail out."
"Your report," his words interrupted by an involuntarily groan from a sharp pain is his side, "I was walking home I passed the Frazier Building and turned down the alley way between Frazier and Benecky. I didn't smell anything unusual and I didn't see anything unusually I felt a hard object hit me hard on the back of the head and then I blacked out before I could even feel any pain."
"What object struck you?"
"I couldn't tell you. It came from behind; I saw nothing."
"Did you see the assailants?"
"No, not even a fur color or a paw that would betray a species. It all happened from behind. I was unconscious before I could even make out a clear scent in the air."
"Thank you for cooperating, Mr. Cougar. If anything comes back to you, contact us immediately. We'll do our best to track down any information on the perpetrators but understand that we have very little leads to go on."
Tyler only nodded as he was still weak and didn't want to think about the cause of the attack or who might have done such a thing.
"Do you know why you were attacked?" The office finally questioned.
The cougar tilted his head and flattened his ears, not sure if it was a joke question or not. He then realized there was no reason to assume anyone would have enlightened the police on the matter.
"Yea," he took a long pause always fearing retribution for the words to follow, "because I'm gay."
Jessica winced and wasn't prepared to hear those words or to think people would do that to the gentle feline just because of something like that. People always talk about the gay agenda but these events were certainly not part of any agenda the rabbit or the cougar were aware of and the beatings hurt self-worth as much as skin.
The office gave a heavy sigh and tipped his the nurse, "Thank you for your time Mr. Cougar. The best of luck to you. Know we are going to do everything we can to try and stop this form happening again by those people." Tyler caught the meaning in the addition of "those people". He and the officer knew that these events would continue in the future maybe not to the cougar but to other young men. There was no way to make sure it doesn't happen but only stop individuals. Knowing full well that like shark's teeth you remove the first row and there are infinite second stringers to take their place.
Once the officers vacated the room and the nurses went about their routine, the room seemed peaceful, as peaceful as a room could feel when its primary occupant was occupied with pain. His eye caught the rabbit, the calming presence of another standing silently beside him made him smile through bruised cheeks and Jessica stepped forward.
"Thank you for staying with me"
"How could I not? You are one of the nicest fursons I have ever meet. Plus," Jessica paused to give a sly smile, "Did you think I would let a little hospital visit get out of a date?"
Tyler flushed at the rabbits ease with calling it a date and noticed on the then the fast-flicking white puff-ball tail whirling as much as its short stature would allow and made Tyler's heart beat in the same rhythm.
Bond had developed between the two already despite the lack of long term dating. Both still felt nerves on edge around each other but in a good way. The tingling that makes you feel there is something more just under the surface and if you act too fast you might scare it away.
"I look terrible, how can you look at me?"
"Now stop that right now. It might be a little bold of me to say but you are a cute, pretty darn sexy, and no number of roughing-up will ever hide that from the world."
"So a date over a hospital hospitality wasn't what you hoped for was it?" Tyler trailed off at the end, folding his round ears down to his skull feeling bad to have put the rabbit through this and ruined his weekend.
"Hey, dinner in bed, we skipped all the way to date number...," Jessica said with a laugh to punctuate the statement, " I don't think there is a certain date number associated with dinner in bed."
"This is actually pretty tasty," Tyler said over a mouthful of roast beef with lots of gravy.
"If only they served Virgil's cream soda; it really isn't my favorite drink."
Tyler chuckled and then coughed when the heaving of his side started to send signals of soreness and tenderness throughout his other limbs. "Oww, mmhph, you really are addicted to that stuff, I mostly have water."
The pain, the appearance of the cat, the sounds of the sick, faded and the two furs really could have been misplaced in the hospital room. As if they were heading for a normal date, were given wrong directions and decided to just have the date there despite the plastic tray and bland-ish food.
The conversation continued into the night until Tyler could scarcely stay awake and a Nurse Ratchet stereotype demanded their voices soften or the rabbit must go home. The last moment the cougar could recall before sleeping was a soft paw holding his while he slipped into his medicated sleep.
"Oh, I guess that helps make sense of why it happened, but there is nothing that can justify that it happened," were the words that graced the groggy felines hearing. It was distinct, soft, and sweet. It was Jessica but not directed at him and as his lids started to life the room was more occupied than the previous night.
Stand around were four or five furs of various species. Two foxes, a lynx, a wolf, and a domestic cat. These were other students Tyler was very familiar with but it wasn't but a few seconds of having woken before being noticed.
"It's ALIVE!", the wolf chuckled.
"It'll take more than that to get rid of me"
"How are you feeling?", the white domestic kitty asked.
"I've been better, that I know."
The two foxes were brothers, twins of the same litter, one saying, "We were just telling your friend here why you were really jumped, being the leader of the student gay group and all." His brother was quick to lean in, "He's totally cute. Is he taken, you lucky cat?" All said with as much discretion as the fox brothers could manage which was roughly the same amount as a clown unwilling to relent on its insistence to force an unwilling audience member to become part of the show without even the benefit of compensation for the uninvited humiliation.
As the fog of sleep lifted slowly like a veil, the landscape of his dream world was revealed in memory to be an uninviting and fearful place. He maintained conversation and listened to the stories of his friends and the events of the weekend. Thankfully, Neromyr, the wolf among them, had a date himself the night before and was now taking the brunt of the conversation of the frenzied furs all taking turns to live vicariously through their friend.
"Who was it with?", one fox brother asked.
"Was it Aeth?" the brother was quick on his heels.
"Shut up you two!", the wolf's tails were wagging in a dance.
"Look at those tails wag, guess it's because you don't kiss and tell. Or was it more than just kissing that you won't tell? Huh?", one of the twins was shamelessly asking but Tyler couldn't make out which.
His dream was slowly taking him away remember it was a place where he brought pain and hurt to those he cared for most. It was a place where he watched the bloody broken bodies of his brothers being buried. No one was safe and he was helpless watching the mayhem. He would see a happy face smiling in the daylight but always whenever the individual approached closer than a few feet the sun faded and without warning the fur was dead at his feet with blood matted fur.
Suddenly, feelings of fear and doubt began to crowd out all other thoughts in the cougar's head and a realization that he endangers those close to him began to sink in. At the same time, a nurse burst into the room bringing a breeze with her pace and a look on her face not of pride or panic but of purpose and nothing more.
"Well, honey, it looks like you are good to be released. No permanent damage done but you need to take it easy for the next week. It says here you will be riding home with a," she stops to read the chart, "Jessica. She here?"
Jessica blushed and responded, "That's me." The unflappable nurse remained stoic to her stereotype as the fact that Jessica was a boy was of little consequence so long as he could drive the patient in question home and free up a bed.
Tyler's heart sank because he could not risk getting close to Jessica. He realized the best way to keep his friends safe was to keep them distant from him so long as his actions caused the cougar to be a target. In order to accommodate the trip home the nurse administered some heavy pain killers that caused the cat to forget the flight home with Jessica with the exception of a few memories of getting in and out of car propped by a white soft shoulder and being laid into bed.
He awoke with the sensation of being at home after an unwanted absence from it but not quite comfortable in his own bed thanks to the work of college bigots the few days prior. He, even in sleep, had made a decision that to make sure that those around him remained safe, they must be kept away from him. With courage and sorrow, but supported with the knowledge he was doing the right thing he called out knowing Jessica must be in his apartment. "Jessica?"
The white bunny, wearing an apron had obviously been cooking, nearly ran at the call, "Tyler, you're awake! You've been out so long I almost called the hospital again." She came to a stop on the edge of the bed and sat looking lovingly to the brown cat.
Unable to find the right, best, or easiest way to say what he wanted to say he said the only things he could think of to ensure the safety of the younger male, "Jessica, I want to be alone. I think its best if you go and not to come back unless I call." He had already made up his mind that he would not call Jessica knowing the time and other loves would quickly ease the mind of the lapin.
***
Tyler rubbed his eyes at the desk when two white paws snuck from behind and rested on his chest. Looking up, he saw, floating above his face, Jessica and said, "I know I know. I'm coming to bed."
"You've been at that story for hours. When will you let me read it? Please please please?"
"When its done, love."
"I'll never be able to wait that long," Jessica said pouting.
"Then I guess I'll have to take your mind off of it!" Tyler stood letting Jessica's paws slip off his chest as he turned and grabbed the thin white waist and leaned into a kiss very deep and long lasting as two floppy ears rubbed his cheeks warmly adding to the heat of his blush.
Upon breaking the kiss, Jessica said, "That's not fair you can't kiss me into forgetting about the story. I want to read iiiiit!"
"I'm going to do more than kiss you tonight," Tyler said with a soft growl while pushing forwards causing Jessica to walk backwards before the edge of the bed clipped the bunny's knees and Jessica fell backwards onto the bed, prone and helpless looking below the playfully fierce looking feline. "My my, seems I've caught myself a little stray woodland creature. I think I'll make an exception to my upbringing and play with my food."
(Fade to black...for now J you'll have to read the faded part maybe if I add a description of the scene to follow on the yiffstar version. )