Everything's Always an Accident

"Funny how secrets work—the longer you keep them, the more damage they do when they finally claw their way into the light."

"Put him on the mattress."

The command left my mouth with an urgency that brooked no argument. The campfire came into view, that pathetic collection of tents that passed for civilisation in this place, and the weight of Joel in our arms seemed to double with each remaining step.

"I don't think that's a good idea. We only have one. He could be infected." Glenda's objection was laced with the kind of medical pragmatism that made perfect sense in a world with hospitals and quarantine wards and protocols for handling contaminated patients.

We weren't in that world anymore.

I halted in my tracks, the frustration that had been building throughout our grim procession finally boiling over. "Bit late to say that now." The words came out sharper than intended, edged with the kind of anger that had nowhere productive to go. "If Joel's infected then it's likely we are too."

The statement hung between us—a grim acknowledgment of shared vulnerability that rendered Glenda's caution somewhat moot. We'd carried him. Touched him. His blood, if there was any left, had already had every opportunity to mingle with our own through scrapes and open wounds.

My chest wound. Fuck. If there's something in Joel's blood...

But the thought couldn't complete itself. Couldn't be allowed to matter. Not now. Not when my son was dying in my arms.

Glenda's expression tightened, the muscles in her face betraying the internal war between her medical training and the brutal reality of our circumstances. Out here, in this red dust wasteland, infection protocols were a luxury we couldn't afford.

"Jamie's right," Luke chimed in, his voice carrying none of the defiance I might have expected. "We may as well."

With a tense nod that spoke of professional objection being overruled by practical necessity, Glenda stepped forward to hold the tent flap open.

Inside the tent, Kain sprang into action with the instinctive urgency of youth confronting crisis. He stripped the blankets from the mattress, clearing a space with movements that were quick and purposeful.

Luke and I lowered Joel together, our coordination wordless, born of the shared burden we'd carried across the Clivilius landscape. The mattress accepted his weight with the same indifference it had shown mine during my own recovery—just fabric and foam, incapable of caring whether its occupant lived or died.

Luke stepped back immediately, retreating to the tent's edge like a man seeking distance from a crime scene. I moved aside too, but for different reasons—making space for Glenda, for whatever medical intervention might still be possible.

She knelt beside the mattress with the focused attention of someone entering a professional headspace. Her posture shifted, her movements becoming more deliberate as she leaned over Joel's still form. I watched in silence as her eyes and fingers conducted their assessment, cataloguing damage, searching for signs of life.

Her gaze lingered on Joel's eyes.

Those eyes—wide open, staring at nothing and everything, impossibly bright against the pallor of his skin. Blue. Vivid, electric blue that seemed to defy the grey cast of near-death that coloured the rest of his features.

Something shifted in my chest. A recognition that bypassed conscious thought entirely.

Joel definitely has my eyes.

The realisation was a beacon cutting through the darkness of everything else—a connection between father and son that no circumstance could sever. Not the years of ignorance about his existence. Not the throat wound that should have killed him. Not even death itself, apparently.

A smile found my face, weary but genuine. A silent tribute to whatever miracle or madness had brought my son to this place, still breathing, still present, still stubbornly refusing to die.

Glenda inhaled deeply, and when she spoke, her words seemed to hang in the air like objects too heavy for sound to carry.

"Both carotid arteries seem to have healed, assuming they were ever severed." Her voice was clinical, but beneath the professional veneer lurked something that sounded almost like fear. "Aside from the obvious slice across his throat and what I'd assume are bumps and bruises from his time in the river, he doesn't appear to have any other major physical wounds."

She paused, her brows furrowing with the concentration of someone trying to solve a puzzle missing most of its pieces.

"I'm not sure how he could have lost all this blood if not through major artery damage."

The silence that followed was the kind that precedes explosions.

"His throat was definitely slit." Luke's voice cut through the quiet, his confirmation blunt and absolute. "There was a lot of blood."

The words hit me like a physical blow.

My body tensed, every muscle coiling with a mixture of anger and disbelief that surged through me with the force of something elemental. My hands clenched into fists without my permission. My jaw locked so tight I could feel the pressure in my teeth.

His throat was definitely slit.

There was a lot of blood.

How did Luke know these things? How could he possibly know unless—

Glenda's response was a casual shrug, her outward composure at odds with the impossibility she was confronting. "It's not making much sense."

My patience, already stretched beyond any reasonable limit, finally snapped.

"What do you mean you know his throat was slit?" The question exploded from me, a demand for clarity in the swirling chaos of half-truths and horrifying implications. "And how the fuck would you know how much blood there was?"

The accusation was aimed squarely at Luke, a verbal blade meant to cut through whatever bullshit he might try to deploy.

Luke's response was to ask Glenda about defensive wounds—a sidestep, a diversion, an attempt to redirect the conversation away from the questions I'd hurled at him.

"No, none," Glenda confirmed. Then, her own curiosity piqued: "Were you expecting any?"

"Well, the lack of defensive wounds tells me that whoever did this, took Joel by surprise." Luke's explanation was delivered with the detached analysis of someone discussing a case study rather than the near-murder of my son. "It was quick. He probably didn't even see it coming."

My glare remained fixed on him, unblinking, relentless. My hands stayed clenched, the physical manifestation of the storm raging inside me.

"Well? You haven't answered my question."

The words came out tight, controlled—but only barely. The anger beneath them was a living thing, seeking release.

Luke took a deep breath. The kind of breath a man takes before confession.

"Joel was the driver that delivered the tents back home. I was surprised to see him; I didn't recognise him at first. Not until I saw his name sewn into his shirt."

A collective gasp rippled through the tent—a shared reaction to the revelation, a unison of shock that seemed to suck all the air from the enclosed space.

Glenda's hands moved to Joel's shirt, carefully revealing the small rip in the fabric. And there it was: the name "Joel" stitched into the material, evidence of identity that transformed this from anonymous tragedy to personal catastrophe.

"Henri and Duke coming here was all an accident," Luke continued, his voice taking on the defensive tone of someone trying to explain the inexplicable. "Joel accidentally let Henri outside and he ran through the Portal when we tried to catch him. I forgot I was still carrying Duke when I followed after Henri."

An accident. Everything's always a fucking accident with Luke.

"And Joel saw all of this?" Glenda's question was cautious, probing, seeking to understand the extent of Joel's involvement in the chain of events that had led us here.

"Yes." Luke's confirmation was flat, resigned. "And when I returned, I found him lying in a pool of blood in the back of the truck."

"Holy shit." Kain's soft exclamation echoed my own internal response, a sentiment that seemed to bounce off the tent's fabric walls and return amplified.

But something wasn't adding up. The timeline gnawed at me, a glaring gap in the narrative Luke was constructing.

"But that was yesterday." The words came slowly, each one weighted with the growing horror of comprehension. "Why didn't you tell me?"

The question hung between us—heavy with accusation, pregnant with betrayal. The chasm that had been widening between Luke and me for months seemed to yawn into something uncrossable.

Luke swallowed. A dry, audible gulp that spoke of guilt before his words could.

"I thought you'd blame me for it."

The admission was the spark that ignited everything I'd been holding back.

"I do fucking blame you for it!"

The cry tore from the depths of my being—raw, primal, carrying every ounce of frustration and pain and fear that had accumulated since I'd first seen Joel's body by the lagoon. Since I'd first learned of his existence. Since everything in my life had begun its slow collapse.

Glenda's voice cut through the chaos, firm and authoritative. "Boys—"

But I wasn't finished. The accusations continued to pour from me, a torrent of blame and incredulity that I couldn't have stopped even if I'd wanted to.

"And then you brought him here and dumped his body in the fucking river! That's some seriously fucked up shit!"

The image seared itself into my brain—Joel, my son, discarded in the water like refuse. Like something to be disposed of rather than someone to be mourned. The thought was so monstrous, so incomprehensible, that my mind rejected it even as my mouth formed the words.

"It wasn't me!" Luke's denial was a shout laden with desperation and horror. "I would never do something so terrible!"

"Boys! Stop it!" Glenda's second intervention was louder, more forceful—a command that brooked no dissent.

The tent fell silent in her wake.

The quiet that descended was oppressive, weighted with everything that had been said and everything that remained unexplained. The revelations, the accusations, the denials—all of it hung in the air like smoke after an explosion, slowly settling but leaving the atmosphere forever changed.

When I finally broke the silence, my voice was quieter. More controlled. But no less dangerous.

"Well, what did you do with the body?"

"We buried him."

Luke's admission was simple. Final. The kind of statement that closes doors rather than opening them.

But one word refused to let me accept it at face value.

"We?" Glenda's single syllable cut to the heart of the matter, sharp as a scalpel.

Luke hesitated, and in that hesitation I saw the shape of secrets I hadn't known existed.

"Beatrix, Gladys and I."

Beatrix. Gladys.

My best friend and her sister. Involved in burying my son. Keeping it secret. Participating in whatever nightmare Luke had constructed around Joel's apparent death.

"This is insane," Kain muttered, giving voice to the disbelief that gripped us all.

Glenda's professional manner reasserted itself, pulling us back from the edge of further conflict to the immediate crisis at hand.

"I really don't understand any of this at all," she admitted, her voice carrying the rare vulnerability of someone confronting the limits of their expertise. "But I can do some basic surgery and stitch his throat back up. I can't guarantee anything."

She paused, her gaze moving from Joel's wound to his face and back again.

"He might be breathing and have his eyes open, but that doesn't mean that he is actually alive. He hasn't spoken and isn't responding to any of my stimuli."

The words landed like blows. Each one a reminder that the miracle of Joel's survival might be no miracle at all—just a different kind of death, slower and stranger than the quick end his attacker had intended.

"So, what does that mean? What's happening to him?"

My question sought clarity in the face of overwhelming ambiguity. Some explanation, however incomplete, for the impossible situation before us.

"I really don't know." Glenda's admission was a testament to the complexity of Joel's condition, a puzzle that defied every piece of medical knowledge she possessed.

Luke retreated toward the tent entrance, his departure marking a turning point. The confrontation was over, at least for now. What remained was the work of trying to save a life that might already be lost.

"Alright." I found myself speaking, a resolve settling over me despite the uncertainty. "What do you need?"

My offer to Glenda was a commitment—a small act of defiance against the despair that threatened to consume me. If there was anything I could do, anything at all, I would do it.

"Well... I need..." Glenda's voice trailed off, a moment of vulnerability that revealed the enormity of what she was about to attempt.

I crouched beside her, placing my hand on her shoulder. An attempt to offer comfort. To bridge the gap between helplessness and action.

She met my eyes, and something in her expression shifted—gratitude, perhaps, or simply acknowledgment of shared purpose.

"I'm going to do a horizontal mattress suture. I need a medium saline solution with... gloves... needle..."

Her words melded into a blur of medical terminology that left me feeling utterly inadequate. My gaze stayed locked with hers, but my mind was adrift, grappling with the reality that "basic surgery" apparently involved procedures I couldn't begin to understand.

What the hell did Glenda just say?

The thought echoed uselessly in my head. Whatever she needed, I'd have to trust that she knew how to find it.

"You stay here and watch him." Glenda's hand pressed firmly on my shoulder, grounding me to the present moment. "I won't be long. I'll just get what I need from the medical tent and be straight back."

She rose and left, the tent flap falling closed behind her.

And then it was just me and Joel.

The realisation dawned slowly, filtering through the chaos of recent events like light through murky water. Luke and Kain had vanished at some point during the confrontation—Luke's rapid departure likely spurred by guilt, Kain's by the simple human need to escape unbearable tension.

I was alone with my son.

My son, who lay motionless on a mattress in another dimension, his throat carved open by unknown hands, his survival unexplained by any medical understanding, his eyes staring at nothing with a blue that matched my own.

"I only found out you existed a few months ago."

The words emerged as a whisper, a confession meant for Joel's ears even though I had no idea if he could hear me. No idea if there was anyone left inside that damaged body to receive the words I was offering.

I halted mid-sentence, the absurdity of our situation pressing in from all sides. What was there to say? What explanation could encompass the chain of events that had led from my ignorance of his existence to this moment of desperate vigil?

Your mother never told me about you. I didn't know. I would have been there if I'd known. I would have tried, at least. I would have...

The thoughts spiralled into territory I couldn't navigate. Regret for years that couldn't be reclaimed. Grief for a relationship that had never had the chance to exist. And beneath it all, the stubborn, irrational refusal to believe that I might lose him now, after everything.

Joel's eyes remained open, fixed on some point beyond the tent's canvas ceiling. Those bright blue eyes that I saw every time I looked in a mirror. The genetic proof of connection that required no DNA test, no court order, no legal acknowledgment.

He was mine. My son. My blood.

And he was still breathing.

The determination hardened within me, crystallising into something that felt almost like certainty. Despite the circumstances—the impossible survival, the unexplained wound, the questions that multiplied faster than answers—hope took root in the barren soil of my despair.

I would not give up on him.

Whatever bizarre or inexplicable forces had brought Joel to this point, whatever mysteries remained unsolved, I would not surrender my son to death without a fight. The paternal instinct I'd never had the chance to develop surged through me now, fierce and primal and utterly uncompromising.

You're going to survive this, I thought, the words a silent promise to the young man before me. I don't know how. I don't know why you're still alive. But you're going to keep living. And when you wake up—when, not if—I'm going to be here. I'm going to be the father I never got to be.