Disclaimer: Check chapter one for disclaimer.

Author's Note: This is it. We have finally reached our destination. I'm sorry you had to wait so long to have the entire product. I'm very happy with how this turned out and I can just hope you love it as much as I do. Many thanks to Lizard971, who tried fixing all my tenses screw ups (and they were many!) Also, I forgot to mention all the medical knowledge came from web searching cuz I only have an imaginary medical license that "allows me" to whump pretties for your reading pleasure. Last but not least, thank you for sharing the Stiles whumpy journey with me.

Chapter 6

As soon as he opened his mouth he ended up coughing. It started out as a soft dry cough that left him breathless but the coughing got worse with every attempt he made to draw air. Stiles gripped the metal riling of the bed and hunched forward, white-faced with misery. He was wracked with yet another bout of coughing, lungs tight and constricted with phlegm. All the hacking was taking its toll on him, wreaking havoc with his damaged chest, and injured shoulder. It always left him exhausted, short of breath and gasping for air.

It had been days since he woke up from his slumber. He remembered vividly the events of the station. The feeling of being startled by the shattered window and the yelling between Parrish and Haigh… he never liked that guy.

He remembered the sounds being overwhelmingly loud. He tried to escape it all by doing those stupid breathing exercises, but the problem was, he couldn't breathe. The air felt thick around him. His shoulder was suddenly on fire and the heat was spreading throughout his chest. He tried getting his legs moving. He managed to stand and poke out his head from his dad's office. His vision was blurry so he couldn't make out what was wrong with his chest. He tentatively searched it with his hand, there was a wetness that made his t-shirt stick to his body.

Pain + warm liquid = being hurt. If you add the shots fired to that, there's a high probability that he, in fact got hit. He tried walking to his dad but the floor was moving. So he called out instead, "Dad?" He's terrified now, he knew he failed at hiding that from his voice but the pain was growing and the air was almost inexistent.

"I'm okay, Stiles" – he heard his dad's voice but he's having a hard time focusing on it. At least he knew that one of them made in out of the situation in one piece. "I'm glad, 'cause I don't think I am." He replied.

"Stiles?" the worry was unmistakably present in the single word. If the excruciating pain Stiles felt was any indication, he couldn't blame his dad for being worried. He already did the math in his fuzzy brain, all he needed to do now was confirm it. "I think…" He inspected the hand. The blood on it was already clotting, turning dark and thick and staining it. "I think I got shot." He finally announced and looked down at his chest. The shirt he put on that morning had changed colors. It went from grey to crimson in a matter of minutes. That couldn't be a good sign.

He knew his dad was saying something but all he could do was stare at his shirt. Was that one of his favorite shirts? The question left forgotten some place inside his brain when the floor came up from behind to meet him.

Someone must have spilled something on the floor, which has to be the reason why he fell backwards and his back was soaking wet. His dad was there and so was Parrish, they're talking to each other but Stiles didn't care enough to follow the conversation. The pain was reaching new levels and the worse it got the less he could breathe. He was gasping like a fish out of water. He called out to his dad, someone needed to turn the air on.

"It hurts…" The blood rushed to his ears, while the air rushed out of his lungs. His vision was darkening around the edges. The darker it got, the less pain he felt so he simply stepped into the void.

After that not a lot was clear. Apparently, somewhere along the lines he stopped breathing, had extensive surgery, was unconscious for days, developed pneumonia and had a reaction to some medication. No one would tell him what kind of reaction thought, but the look on their faces when he brought it up said it was bad.

Since he didn't remember any of those things all he could attest to was that this pneumonia thing was kicking his ass. Every time he broke into a strenuous coughing fit, it lasted a while. Then came the groaning because coughing with a chest that was still healing from a gunshot wound is uncomfortably painful to say the least. So he tried to wrap his hand around his ribcage, holding on tightly to his damaged chest with his good arm and waited to ride it out. Every time he coughed, his chest would catch fire, but if he didn't, then he ended up wheezing. The painkillers helped, but as glad as that made him, the side effects, he could do without.

In some ways, he imagined that dealing with some pain and coughing couldn't be as bad as what his dad had gone through. Whenever his dad fell asleep, Stiles would watch the lines on his face. To the eyes of anyone else, his dad looked normal, a very happy man. To him, his dad looked like he aged a few years in just a few days. Sure, the happiness of having him awake and on the mend was real, but the stress and worry were still somewhat present around his dad's eyes and he could see it as plain as day. He wished he could've spared his dad that kind of pain and worry. He wished that Haigh hadn't been so greedy he almost made three people perish in the name of dollar bills.

In the end, all he could do was get better and thank whoever was watching out for them that they still had each other.

"Stiles" said the Sherriff in a gruff voice, without even cracking an eye open.

"Yeah?"

"You're thinking too hard. Go to sleep, kiddo."

"Yes, sir."

Finis