The Crash: An Official Minecraft Novel Read online

  Suddenly, I started to feel again. It began like a wave at my extremities. My feet and hands felt like the skin had been peeled back. I could feel everything and it was all pain. I screamed out and the running picked up speed. The pain moved inward to my stomach and then radiated out to the top of my head. There was nothing that didn’t hurt. My legs, my arms, my torso, my neck, my head, my mouth, my eyes. I felt like I’d been through a grinder. I couldn’t stop screaming even though it hurt my throat even more. I couldn’t stop. I think they were trying to make it stop. I could feel them moving me, jostling me, and I could hear them trying to tell me something, but I couldn’t make anything out over the sound of my own screaming. I could only make out the way I felt, and the way everything hurt, and I thought, Is this dying? I tried to tell them, Make it stop!

  Then everything did.

  * * *

  —

  I woke up in a small beige room with vertical vinyl blinds, and equipment beeping around me. There were two upholstered chairs with wooden arms sitting on either side of a beige plastic table with attached wheels. A blue blanket covered my body. I couldn’t see what condition I was in other than my legs appeared to be much larger than usual, so I figured they were both in casts. Awesome. I couldn’t see my arms either. I tried to move them and couldn’t. Either I was armless, or whatever anesthesia they had me on hadn’t dissipated yet. I felt groggy with a side order of dull pain all over. At least I could move my eyes to look around. I was alone. It was just me and the beeping monitors, and a pink plastic jug that was sweating on the wheeled table. But no cups. I stuck my tongue out of my mouth. My lips were dry. I could have used some water, but my voice didn’t seem to be working, so I couldn’t ask even if I wasn’t alone. I tried to move my fingers to see if there was a call button or something nearby to let someone—anyone—know that I was awake and they could start tending to me, or telling me what happened, or anything, but I still couldn’t feel my fingers or tell whether or not I still had any.

  I wondered what I looked like.

  I wondered where everyone was.

  I wondered what happened to Lonnie.

  * * *

  —

  When I woke up again, I got an eyeful of hospital ceiling tile. The really generic kind that’s a hybrid of gray and beige—my foggy mind thought, Greige?—laid out in a grid that makes you want to count it, especially if it’s the only thing you can see. The lights were dim and I couldn’t tell if this was the same room I was in before, or if I’d been moved. It was smaller than I remembered, and there seemed to be less humming and beeping than the last time I was conscious. That was progress, I guessed. I tried to move, was unsuccessful again, and this time I couldn’t see my body at all because I was lying flat. Maybe my legs had disappeared. Or my entire body. I wondered if a person could technically survive as just a head.

  I also considered that the drugs were making me loopy. It seemed a wise assessment of my mental faculties.

  The door opened and closed, and I heard my mother whispering, “How much longer, do you think?”

  “It’s going to be a difficult recovery, Mrs. Marshall. Her injuries are extensive. We’re going to have to take it one day at a time.”

  I heard something like a muffled cry and then my father’s voice. “Carrie would like to see her. I’ll bring her by after school.”

  Carrie didn’t have school on Saturday. I wanted to ask what they were talking about. But then it occurred to me that it probably wasn’t Friday anymore, or even the weekend. I tried to say, Hey guys, but what came out was a rather elegant “Unghh.” I’d been reduced to the vocabulary of a Minecraft villager.

  My parents ran over to the side of the bed, excited that I seemed able to vocalize at all.

  Hey, I tried again. “Uhh” came out.

  “Bianca!” my mother said softly. Tears rolled down her face, tracing light-brown tracks in her makeup.

  “How are you feeling?” my father asked.

  I tried to nod. It hurt.

  Next, a woman in a white coat came up and my parents moved away. She had large dark brown eyes and a black braid that came down over one shoulder. When she leaned in closer, her hair moved away from her name tag. It read DR. NAY.

  “Hello, Bianca,” she said. “Glad to see you awake.”

  “How long have I been out?” I tried to ask. But there was more moaning. And some drooling, I’m sorry to say. My mother leaned in with a paper towel to catch the dribble, wearing her worried face.

  “It’s been almost a week since your accident,” Dr. Nay said, as if I were perfectly coherent. “You’re finally stabilized enough for us to wake you.”

  “What’s the damage, Doctor?”

  Dr. Nay tapped a few buttons on her tablet and a hologram projected from a camera attached to the tablet’s edge. A miniature version of me displayed before my eyes. It was eerie, like looking at a blueprint version of yourself.

  “You’re very lucky, Bianca. If you’d had this same accident a few years ago, I’m not sure we would have had the right technology to help you through it.”

  I certainly didn’t feel very lucky, being in a full-body cast and all, but I took her word for it. Dr. Nay tapped a few more buttons and the hologram of my body glowed red in nearly ten different spots. The news was abysmal: two broken arms, a broken thigh bone, three broken bones in my right foot, two broken ribs, a collapsed lung, and a concussion. I looked like a game of Operation gone horribly wrong.

  “Good thing you’re a fighter,” Dr. Nay said.

  I didn’t recall being aware enough to fight, or know who was around me, or even how I managed to get to this hideous little room that smelled of pine cleaner, medicine, and pee—which I hoped was not my own, but I knew probably was.

  Dr. Nay leaned over me and adjusted the flow rate on a bag that fed into an IV. I suddenly felt something on my right go colder, and I smiled again, able to feel my arm at last. The coldness spread and washed over me, then more dullness descended like a fog. Dr. Nay continued talking over me to my parents. There seemed to be a lot to tell. I tried to follow along, but I was struggling to hear. I was struggling to feel. I was just struggling. Like swimming upstream against a strong tide. And then it was lights out again.

  * * *

  —

  Third time’s the charm, I thought when I woke up again. This time, the light was brighter, my body was propped up, and I could see around the beige room, with the covered chairs, the plastic table with the wheels, and the sweating pink jug again. Déjà vu. Except for my father, who was sitting in one of the chairs, reading InfoTech magazine. For an old guy, he’s always on the cutting edge of all the newest tech stuff. Well, I guess it’s his job.

  “Hey,” I said. This time it actually came out as a recognizable word, which surprised me, so I made a little sound that was half hiccup and half moan. Yeah. It was as weird as you imagine. Trust me.

  My father practically jumped out of the chair. “Hey,” he said. “How are you feeling?”

  I shrugged, or at least I thought I did. I don’t think any part of me actually moved.

  “What happened?” I asked, knowing full well what happened, but unable to come up with a better question.

  “You got banged up pretty badly,” he said in a low voice, as if saying it any louder might make things worse. He reached over to one beeping machine and touched the screen. It made me nervous, but nothing happened. “You’re going to be here a while.” He sighed. “You had a couple of surgeries, and there are some casts.” He put his warm hand on my forehead. “We had to get you a plastic surgeon, too. So the scarring won’t be so bad.”

  I must have flinched or something, and his face blanched.

  “It’s not so bad. And you’ll be fine. You’re out of the woods, as they say.” He chuckled, rapped his magazine on the plastic bed rail, and took a step back. He clearly
didn’t want to say any more.

  “Lonnie?” I asked.

  “What?” he asked. His face looked totally pained. Then he blinked a couple of times, and looked ill. “Bianca—”

  The door opened and Dr. Nay strode in. “Good morning, Bianca! How are you feeling?”

  Like I’ve been hit by a car, I wanted to joke, but thought better of it.

  My father stepped aside so she could get closer. She took the stethoscope from around her neck and listened to my chest. “Breathing’s good, finally.”

  Wasn’t I breathing? When wasn’t my breathing good? I wondered.

  She looked over at my father and nodded. “She’s a champ, this one.” Then she turned to a tablet that she had placed on the table, tapped the screen a couple of times. Smurf me, blue and floating above the device, reappeared as Dr. Nay walked me through all the surgeries that had happened while I had been out.

  “All the tests are coming back better,” she said. “Now it’s just a matter of recovery, which means you may be here at the hospital a while.”

  My father looked at me with his sad eyes, and I felt my heart sink. How much was this going to cost us in bills? How much school was I going to miss?

  “We’ve administered the strongest painkillers we can under the circumstances,” the doctor continued, looking at my father, “but the nurses say she’s still waking up every few hours, trying to move. She’s at the most we can safely give her right now, which is probably why she’s awake and comfortable enough. But we have to make sure she stays still.”

  I didn’t remember waking up. I didn’t remember pain, but the look of horror my father gave me said that he’d probably seen this waking-up live and in person.

  “What I’m saying is that we’re not going to be able to give her any more for a while, and she’s awake, so it might be…a difficult evening.”

  My father nodded. The muscles around his jaw tightened, and his fists gripped the bed rail hard enough that I thought it might snap.

  “I’ll be with her all night,” he said. “Her mother will be here in the morning. We’ll get through it.”

  With that, Dr. Nay left, and my father adjusted the blankets that were covering me. Slowly, the sensations in my body started coming back, and I began to understand what Dr. Nay was talking about, and why my father had looked so worried. It was like being dipped slowly into molten lava. You maybe think, Oh sure, I can have a toe seared off, or even my foot, no prob! But it just kept on consuming more and more and more of my body. I felt weak with pain. Even looking at my father’s face hurt. Because he couldn’t do anything, and I was mad at him for not being able to do anything, and then mad at myself because I knew he was helpless and this was torture for him, too.

  But also? It was all my own fault.

  It was the middle of the night when I woke up again. My father was asleep on the chair with the magazine draped over his chest. His shoes were off and he was snoring lightly. The door to my room was open, and a shard of light hit my face from what I guessed was the nurses’ station. I still couldn’t find a call button, but I figured that the time had passed for more medicine, because everything felt dull again. The pain was down to a smolder. I would have liked some water, but I didn’t want to wake my dad. I had no idea how long he’d been up. His clothes were a mess. His usually neat hair was a tangled mat. He might have been here for hours, if not days, without a break. Someone had to be home with Carrie. I remember he said something about him and Mom switching out, so maybe he was due for a break soon.

  But there was a huge part of me that was glad that my father was asleep and there was no one I could call. Because I knew the moment they thought I was well enough, the moment they figured I could handle a real conversation, there were going to be questions. A lot of them. And then they’d all know what I’d done, that everything was my own fault.

  A shadow crossed my door, and someone with a small voice whispered, “Hey.”

  “Hey,” I managed.

  And then a boy about eleven years old walked in, wearing pajamas that said GAMER 4 LIFE, and a robe with glow-in-the-dark planets all over it.

  “Who…?” I asked. It was all I could manage. My throat hurt to talk.

  “I’m A.J. I’m in the next room,” he said. He came a little closer, but stopped when my dad snorted a really loud snore, and the kid seemed surprised anyone else was in here. A.J. came up to the machine with the IV and tapped the screen. This seemed to be an established way of communing with patients. I made a note of it for if I ever went into another patient’s room. Assuming I was ever able to walk again.

  “I’m—”

  “Bianca Marshall. I know. I saw your chart when Dr. Nay came in.”

  “Oh,” I said.

  He grinned.

  “Lonnie,” I said. “Elon Lawrence.” It took a lot out of me to manage that much.

  A.J. looked confused. He shook his head. His tight dark curls wobbled on his head. “No, you’re Bianca,” he said, stressing every syllable in my name.

  “My friend,” I said. “We were in a car. He might be worse.”

  A.J.’s eyebrows shot up. “Worse than you?” he asked. “You’re pretty bad. Anybody worse off than you would probably be dead.”

  I waited for him to laugh, or grin, or say that he was just joking. But this kid was straight-up telling the truth as he saw it, and there was a stabbing pain across the top of my head that told me that he was right, that worse off than me was not survivable. And that if anyone had something good to tell me about Lonnie, they would have already.

  “I could sneak into the nurses’ station and see if I can find his chart, though,” A.J. offered.

  This had the immediate effect of dulling the pounding anxiety that was rising through my chest. Or maybe it was the medication. There was a series of beeps, and then the machines around me whirred a bit. Seconds later, I started feeling a little better. “Thanks, A.J.,” I said. When he turned to leave, I saw something in his hand. “What’s that?”

  He turned back. “These?” He held up something that looked like a white plastic headband. “They’re VR goggles,” he said. He moved closer to show them off. “You can watch movies and stuff, but I’ve been playing Minecraft.”

  “I like Minecraft.”

  “Yeah?” A.J.’s eyes really lit up at that.

  “My friend and I have been building a world together,” I said, a little surprised at how much I could talk. I glanced at the nearest machine. Yep. It was definitely painkiller time.

  The kid blinked and nodded, I guess waiting for me to add some details.

  “It has lots of villages with different configurations and rules and stuff.”

  That brightened the kid right up. “Oh yeah? I just like to play survival mode. I use mods, though, and I even made some of them myself!”

  “That’s cool,” I said.

  “You should check these goggles out then,” he said. “They’ll blow your mind.”

  Before I could respond, A.J. had come up to the side of the bed and placed the goggles on my head. The two ends pinched the sides of my temple. Though compared to what the rest of my body was feeling at the moment, it was nothing. I felt a tickling sensation on either side of my face, and it spread across my forehead. Suddenly the pain across my head rose like a tidal wave, but I tried not to moan or wince because I didn’t want to upset a kid who probably figured he was doing me a solid.

  I opened my eyes and was surprised to see that the hospital room had completely disappeared. The game was already queued up, paused in the middle of whatever A.J. had been doing before.

  “It’s a little weird at first,” he warned me. “But you get used to it after a while.”

  He wasn’t kidding. Being thrust into a fully realized world that was mid-play was disorienting. It was brighter than my hospital room, that’s for s
ure. And the unrealistic cartoon shades of green and brown and blue felt a little like a smack in the face. I started looking around at the forest biome I’d been shoved into, and realized that if I looked somewhere for a while, I’d start moving in that direction. The movements were sudden, and made me want to hurl immediately. I closed my eyes and tried to breathe deeply, not wanting to say that I wanted out. I had a small child to impress, after all. Plus, there was a feeling of just being a head with no body. I tried to move again, and felt a lurch in my stomach.

  “Are you gonna throw up?” A.J. asked.

  “No…I…um…”

  “Maybe you should stop,” he said. Without warning, he pulled the goggles off and, to tell you the truth, I don’t think that was any better. Returning to the real, dull world made me feel extra sick, and I turned to the other side of the bed, away from the kid, and threw up.

  As I tried to wipe my mouth on the edge of my blanket, A.J. backed away to the door. My father stirred but didn’t wake up. A nurse came running in, looked at the kid, at me, back at him, and then walked slowly over to clean me up. There was hurl in my braids. I wasn’t really thinking about my aim when I spewed.

  “Groooss,” A.J. said.

  “Get back to your room,” said the nurse. “I’ll come check on you later. You know you’re not supposed to be out walking around. And you’re definitely not supposed to be in other people’s rooms.”

  My dad woke up then, straightened, and tried to make sense of what was going on.

  A.J. made a face, but backed all the way up to the door. “Getting in and out is tricky,” he said. “Not everybody can do it. There’s a different way out you can use that I can show you.” He shrugged. “It’s mostly for noobs.”

  “Get out of what?” my father asked.

  “Just the game,” A.J. said, showing him the goggles.