What the fuck. I answered with my mouth still full. "Hello?"
"Is this—are you Ashru? Akki's friend Ashru?" Her voice was high-pitched and shaking.
I swallowed the food too fast, felt it stick halfway down. "Yeah, what—"
"Akki's—there was—you need to come to Riverside Medical Center right now."
I didn't process it at first, "What happened?"
"Just come. Please just come." She was crying now, full-on sobbing, words breaking apart. "He's in surgery and they won't tell us anything and his phone is—we don't know who else to call—"
"What happened to him?"
"CAR. Truck. I don't know! Jordan said—just come—"
The call cut off. Either she hung up or her phone died or she just couldn't talk anymore. I sat there with my phone pressed to my ear. My grandmother had stopped talking. Both my parents were staring at me.
"I have to go."
"What's wrong?" My mother's voice had that edge to it, that mother-radar that knew something was bad before you even said it.
"Akki. Something happened to Akki. I don't know what. I need to go to Riverside Medical." I was already standing, grabbing my bag even though I didn't need it, just grabbing something because my hands needed to move.
My father stood up. "I'll drive you."
In the car I tried calling Murin. Straight to voicemail. Called again. Voicemail again.
"Stop calling," my father said quietly. "He'll call back."
I called again anyway. My father didn't say anything else, just drove. Ran two red lights, I barely noticed.
My brain kept trying to fill in the blanks. Akki. Surgery. Truck. Jordan. That was Akki's roommate from first year, the guy with the other motorcycle, the one who'd convinced Akki to buy that death trap in the first place because "girls notice bikes."
The hospital parking lot was full. My father pulled up at the emergency entrance. "Go. I'll park and find you."
I ran inside. The ER waiting area was packed, people everywhere. I looked around wildly, no idea where to even start. Then I saw her. Prisha. Sitting in those chairs near the trauma bay hallway with two other girls I recognized from the trek but couldn't remember their names. Her face was blotchy and wet, mascara smeared down her cheeks.
I walked over. Tried to make my voice work. "What happened."
She looked up at me and her face just crumpled. Started crying harder, couldn't get words out. One of the other girls, Kaya, spoke instead. "Motorcycle accident. Last night around eleven. Akki and Jordan were riding back from the night market. A delivery truck ran a red light at the main intersection near the bridge. Hit Akki head-on."
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
"Where's Jordan?"
"He's fine. He was behind Akki. He saw the whole thing." Kaya's voice was flat, reciting facts like reading from a script. "Akki went flying. The bike—Jordan said the bike just exploded into pieces. Akki landed twenty feet away."
I felt cold spread through my whole body.
"He's alive," Kaya added quickly. "He's alive but he's in surgery. Has been for like seven hours now."
"Seven hours?" That came out too loud. People nearby turned to look. I lowered my voice. "What kind of surgery takes seven hours?"
"We don't know. They won't tell us anything because we're not family." Prisha finally got words out between sobs. "I gave them his parents' number from his phone. Well, from what's left of his phone, but they're three provinces away and they won't get here until tomorrow morning at the earliest and nobody will tell us anything."
She broke down again. The third girl, whose name I still couldn't remember, put an arm around her. I looked at Kaya. "His parents. Vincent and Maria Santos, right?"
She blinked. "I don't know. Maybe? Prisha just hit 'Mom' in his contacts."
"It's Vincent and Maria. His dad works for the transit authority. His mom runs a bakery in the Old Quarter. They live on Maple Street." The information came automatically, from months of Akki complaining about his father's boring government job and his mother's insistence that he call home every Sunday without fail. I couldn't figure out what to say. Present or past. "Where's Murin?"
"We couldn't reach him. His phone's been off all morning."
I pulled out my phone and called again. This time it rang rang and rang. Finally: "What? I'm with my family, can this wait—"
"Akki's in the hospital."
Silence.
"Murin. Did you hear me?"
"What hospital." His voice had gone flat.
"Riverside Medical. Motorcycle accident. Don't ask me anything now, I don't know yet."
"I'm coming." He hung up.
I sat down in one of the chairs. My father appeared, looking around until he spotted me. I waved him over.
"What's the situation?" he asked quietly.
"Don't know. He's still in surgery. They won't tell us anything."
My father nodded. Sat down next to me. Didn't say anything useless like "I'm sure he'll be fine" or "these doctors know what they're doing." Just sat there and I was grateful for that.
Prisha had stopped crying, just sat staring at the wall with her phone clutched in both hands like she was waiting for it to ring with good news. Or any news. The other girls were whispering to each other.
I checked my phone. 2:47 PM. If Akki had been in surgery since early morning, that meant—
A man in surgical scrubs pushed through the trauma bay doors. Bloodstained and exhausted. He looked at our group. "Family of Akshay Santos?"
We all stood up so fast we probably looked deranged. He glanced at a tablet. "Which of you is immediate family?"
Nobody said anything.
"Look," the surgeon said, "I can only discuss patient information with his parents or close relatives."
"His parents are on a train," I interrupted. "They won't be here until tomorrow morning. We're his friends from medical school. That's all he's got right now."
The surgeon looked at me. At my father standing next to me in his work clothes. At Prisha's ruined makeup and Kaya's shaking hands. "Fine. But this is off the record until family arrives." He gestured for us to move away from the main waiting area, to a quieter corner. We followed like ducklings.
"Your friend is alive," he started. "But he's critical. We had to give him fourteen units of blood—that's nearly twice what's in the human body. The impact shattered his right femur, I've never seen a femur break into that many pieces. We had to put in an external fixator because there wasn't enough bone left to screw plates into. His pelvis is fractured in three places, we plated what we could. His liver had a grade-three laceration that we repaired. His spleen was damaged but we managed to save it." He paused. Looked at each of us. "But the real problem is his head."
My mouth went dry.
"He has a subdural hematoma. We evacuated it, but there's significant brain swelling. Right now he's in a medically induced coma to keep the intracranial pressure down while the swelling resolves."
"When will you wake him up?" Prisha asked. Her voice was barely above a whisper.
"Not for at least three days. Maybe longer. And when we do..." He stopped. "We won't know the extent of brain damage until we try."
"Brain damage," I repeated.
"It's possible. The impact, the bleeding, the swelling—all of that can cause permanent neurological deficits. He might wake up completely fine. He might wake up with memory problems, motor deficits, personality changes. Or he might not wake up at all."
Prisha made a sound like she'd been punched.
"Can we see him?" I asked.
The surgeon hesitated. "ICU allows two visitors at a time. Ten minutes. But I'm warning you; he's intubated, sedated, hooked up to more machines than you can count. It's not pleasant."
"We're medical students," I said. "We can handle it."
He looked at me and said, "Alright. Follow the nurse."
HOST STATUS: LORD CRESTFALL (ERROR)
[BREEDING SCHEME ABORTED] Su Ian Hoo woke up male, uninjured, and infinitely more spiteful.
[FOREKNOWLEDGE ACTIVE] She knows exactly who holds the hammer.
[OBJECTIVE] Dismantle the Chancellor's plot using pure, unadulterated chaos.
Cursed into a useless peacock, then murdered and reset—Lord Crestfall is done with destiny. This time, the "Immortal Scam" is taking no prisoners, only grubs, and certainly no breeding partners.