User blog:SodaCat/Diamonds - Chapter 12: Concussed

i ate an entire medium pizza by myself today whatup

Her chest was heaving when Piper finally arrived at Glass Jaw. She looked around, the panic in her blue eyes apparent. It was deserted—at first glance—but upon further inspection Piper realized that it was not. Near the soda machine sat Bryce and Gord, wrapping up their knuckles and looking as if their dignity had been torn to shreds.

Piper scampered to them, her eyes wide and demanding. “What on Earth happened here?!” she shrieked, her voice high and nearly hysterical. Regardless, she didn’t care. Bif was hurt, and she needed to get to him as fast as possible, and it was the only thing she could focus on or care about.

“Oh, I’m fine, thank you for asking,” Gord retaliated, clearly offended. He had since moved on from his knuckles and was holding his left knee, clearly distressed over a minuscule scrape on it.

Bryce rolled his eyes, glancing at Piper. He hadn’t paid a moment of attention to the nasty black eye that was forming on his right eye. “Hopkins is what happened. If you’re looking for Bif, I think he’s still in the ring. Brace yourself, though, he got beat pretty bad.”

She felt her heart drop three flights at that and she looked up, horrified to see a blur of green and yellow—Bif’s boxing outfit’s colors—in a mound on the boxing ring. Piper tore away from Bryce and Gord, everything they said simply flying past her, and instead climbed up onto the ring. She ran towards Bif as best as she could while in heels, ignoring the nightmare she was likely inflicting on the ring, and placed her hand on his bare shoulder as gently as she could manage.

Bif came to and turned slightly, looking up at her, green eyes squinted due to the heavy swelling on both of them. “Piper…?” he groaned out.

Her arms wrapped around him instantly the moment he spoke, her heart thumping heavily in her stomach at this point. For a moment there, just a moment, she had thought he was dead. The relief that swam through her once she realized that this was not the case and that he was still alive was just overwhelming.

Releasing him for a moment in order to properly inspect him, Piper held her breath as she assessed the true extent of the damage Hopkins had inflicted on him. Both of his eyes had achieved a putrid shade of purple, and his lip was split on the right side with blood running down from it to the end of his chin and down his neck. He had an ugly, yellowing bruise on the left side of his forehead. There was a gash in his cheek, right on his cheekbone. He looked like he’d gotten mauled by a particularly vicious bear.

“I’m here, Bif…” Piper breathed out, placing a hand on the cheek that was not hurt gently. She felt herself tearing up upon hearing how heavy and wheezy his breathing had become. “You need to go to the hospital.”

Bif shook his head, straining a little as he did. “No… I just want to stay right… here. I don’t wanna move.”

Slowly, he reached up and took Piper’s hand in his. He squeezed her hand very gently. “My face hurts,” Bif murmured bluntly, the corners of his mouth pulling back into a pained grimace.

Piper shook her head, determined. “Nonsense, Bif. You may have a concussion. Come on, darling, let’s stand up, now…”

She tried her hardest to pull him up into a stand slowly, but he still groaned in pain and she was furious with herself for putting him in further discomfort. He was able to stand, though he relied heavily on her thin frame. Piper found herself staggering under his weight.

“I thought you hated me forever…” Bif muttered, his words slurring a little and further convincing Piper that he was concussed. More focused on getting him out and into a taxi than on his words, Piper offered an absent ‘mhm’. “You were so mad at me… like how dad used to get when I used to lose my boxing matches… Man, what do you think he’ll say after today?”

Piper froze, glancing at Bif. No, it’d be better to not let Mr. Taylor know about the particular events that had transpired today. She didn’t answer Bif and continued on towards the door until they stood in the night air, snow crunching underneath her delicate black heels and Bif’s heavy boxing shoes.

“It’s cold, Pipes,” Bif whined from beside her and gave a strange, clumsy attempt at trying to huddle into her winter jacket with her. She did her best to ignore him and instead find a cab.

A few yards away from them was a lone cab, its headlights shining as a boy in a purple striped sweatshirt opened the back door, a skateboard in his hand.

“Wait!” Piper called out into the night air, awkwardly trying to run to the cab with Bif in tow, doing her best not to hurt him too badly or lose her balance on the slippery sidewalk. Bif stumbled along, muttering things about the weather under his breath.

The boy at the cab paused, straightening up to get a better look at the two preps. Piper stared back, struggling to catch her breath.

“I need this cab,” she managed to choke out, leaning Bif against it so that he didn’t fall backward into the snow.

But the boy only stared back, a single dark eyebrow raised. “And I care about this because…” he took a moment of glaring at Piper condescendingly. “Oh, that’s right. I don’t.”

Piper hunched over, still trying to catch her breath. Lugging Bif, even that small distance, had taken an awful lot out of her. “Please,” she replied, conscious of how desperate she sounded, “he may have a concussion and… and… I’ll pay you if that’s what you want. I just need to get him to a doctor.” She was almost in tears.

The boy stared back, placing his skateboard on the sidewalk and dragging a hand up to push his long black hair back from his face. “Fine,” he said after a long, long pause, “you can take it. But if I get shit from some prefect, I’m blaming you.”

“Deal!” Piper agreed instantly, already ushering Bif into the cab. “You can tell Dr. Crabblesnitch that Piper Harrington personally took your cab. He can call me to the office if he wishes, and I’ll vouch for you, Mr….?”

“Braxton Cooper,” Braxton replied, rolling his eyes. “Good luck with… that,” he said, nodding to Bif, before placing his foot on his skateboard and heading off in the direction of the school.

Piper climbed into the backseat of the taxi with Bif and barked the address of the nearest hospital to the driver, more intent on caring for Bif than on providing guidance. He had begun to doze off, his head rested against the window.

“No, darling, you mustn’t sleep,” Piper whispered to him, coaxing him out of his slumber. Bif sat up and looked at her with sad, childlike eyes, before resting his head on her shoulder.

“But I’m so sleepy,” he complained.

Piper shook her head and placed a hand on his cheek. She started talking, going on and on about anything. Anything that would keep him awake and focused. Before she knew it, she’d gone off into detail about the party, and Parker, and how much of a nice time she’d actually been having as the streetlights cast odd shadows on hers and Bif’s faces.

“Stop,” he urged suddenly, sitting up again and leaning his head on his window. Piper silenced immediately, turning to look at him. His green eyes sparkled in the moonlight, the bits of snow left on the window leaving little black circles on his face where the shadows lay. She waited until he spoke again.

“I hate it when you talk about him. I hate him,” Bif hissed, his voice both childish and dripping with hatred.

It took quite a bit of willpower for Piper not to scoff at that comment. The last thing that she wanted was to have to drop Bif off at the hospital and then leave him there, alone, all because he was being difficult. “You only dislike him because you feel like you’ve lost some sort of prize to him,” she spat, turning to look out her own window. She caught the driver’s eye in the rearview mirror and he looked away, eyes training on the road to show her that he definitely wasn’t eavesdropping.

Bif let out a dry, sarcastic laugh. “Prize? I opened my heart to you, Piper, and you just picked that fucking… that… that loser.”

“Loser?!” Piper parroted, whipping around to face Bif. “This is exactly the type of behavior that makes you so difficult to understand, Bif Taylor! Isn’t he supposed to be your friend? Hell, you barely gave me the time of day until you saw me happy with him! What exactly is it that you’re looking to get out of me, Bif?” She knew she should stop, but the emotions were too heavy at this point. “Do you want me as, what, your faithful little wife to waste away and rot as you chase your dreams just because you can’t stand the idea that you’ve lost for once?”

He glared back at her as the cab pulled to a painfully slow stop in front of the hospital’s entrance. “Yeah, alright, Piper. I can just head on by myself at this point. You just head home.”

Opening the cab door, Bif stepped out, slamming it shut behind him and heading off to the hospital. His steps were rather shaky and he was stumbling often, nearly tripping on the curb. A short mental battle later, Piper tossed some cash to the cab driver and followed after Bif, steadying him.

“Why can’t you just tell me what it is you want?” she muttered, placing an arm around his back and sliding under his arm so that he was using her as a crutch as they entered. Fortunately, some nurses noted them instantly and headed off to find him a wheelchair before he fell and really hurt himself.

Bif stopped, looking to her, and only after realizing he stopped did Piper look up. His eyes had softened considerably. “I want you,” he whispered. “I mean, shit, Piper. I’m sorry I didn’t realize it until I saw you with him. It took that for me to realize, okay? God, sorry.”

He allowed the nurses, who had since returned with a wheelchair, to place him into it and be led off to see a doctor over his head injury. Piper stared after him before deciding she had better come along.