About The Scarlett Kite
Hi! I'm Scarlett Kiteway, I'm 20 years old, a journalism student in Perplex City and this is my blog all about the excitement over the search for the Cube. I'll be keeping track of what the media over there is saying about it, and maybe a little bit about my life as well!
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Friday, October 14, 2005
Stuck in hospital
Category: story, 04:33 PM
OK. I'm sorry about that message last week. I must have sounded so confused - I think the people at the hospital had given me something to help me sleep, and in any case I was pretty out of it. Thank you all so much for not contacting my family; I've told them all they need to know - that I'm OK and that nothing's seriously wrong. Thank you for realising that I'm an adult and can make these decisions myself. Strangely, I did get a call from Iona at the Sentinel saying they'd had some tip-off that I was hurt, but I was able to reassure her that it was nothing serious. I guess journalists really do get to hear everything!
Anyway, I'm doing better now. I'm not even really hurt, just a few scrapes and bruises. Margot and Sanj are the same: just minor bumps and scratches. It's Brede who's seriously injured. And Allain is, well... Allain's missing.
The truth is I really don't remember a lot of what happened at Viendenbourg. I don't even have a proper impression of the place. That might be the drugs, or the shock, or... I don't know. I think I remember a building: long, grey, low-slung. And a sound... a whining hum, like machinery. I could have dreamed it - I've spent quite a bit of time sleeping and they say the drugs make the dreams very vivid - but it seems more real than that. I've spoken to Margot and Sanj - they remember even less than I do. They just remember walking and then... nothing. Nothing until the rescue guys found us.
We were at the bottom of a steep slope, they say. The four of us. Allain wasn't there, not anywhere. But Brede, Margot, Sanj and I were huddled at the base of a ravine. There were marks all down the slope to show where we'd fallen. The rescue guys said it happens pretty often in this area - people come off the track, get lost, it gets dark, they miss their footing and fall. I don't remember any of that, none of us do. We don't remember walking in the dark or getting lost or falling. But the rescue guys said we were lucky. Brede's key has emergency distress beacon which goes off automatically if it senses he's been injured. If it hadn't been for that... well we probably wouldn't have died, but we might have been a lot worse off before they found us. The hospital staff couldn't understand how we'd been hiking so late in the day only wearing our T-shirts and shorts, with our warm clothes still in our backpacks. And they don't know how what happened to Brede happened.
Brede's leg has been smashed. His right leg. They say it looks like someone hit it, repeatedly, with something large and heavy but that couldn't have happened - none of us would have hit him, none of us even had anything of the right shape or size. So they say it's probably an odd effect from the fall. Maybe some rocks landed on top of his leg. Except they didn't find us under any rocks. Or maybe it was a wild animal attack - there are some puma around here. Except that they don't tend to attack people, and there aren't any bite marks on Brede's leg. They say he's going to be OK. He's been pretty beaten up, has spent a lot of time drifting in and out of consciousness. I've been spending my days holding his hand, reading to him or just talking about anything that comes into my mind. His family are coming up here; I've had a struggle to persuade the hospital not to call my family, but apparently that's the one thing I was really insistent about even under medication. I don't want to have to give them explanations. I don't want to have to tell them what I think... that I got us all into this mess.
There's something else as well. When I woke up in this hospital bed, I had something in my hand. They tell me they tried to pry my handto get it out but I just wouldn't let go. It's only a twisted bit of metal and black plastic but I recognise what it is. It's half of Allain's key, battered and broken like Brede's leg. It means that, wherever he is, whatever's happened to him, he can't call for help.