Ponyboy Monologue

The kids are in the church. One desperate thought ran through my mind. Ponyboy was already running. Dally was swearing, saying it was too late and we shouldn’t die as well in between curses. I still have to help, they’re in there! I ran toward the church, trying to see through the thick smoke like the cigarettes we were smoking! I remembered the cigarette I had absentmindedly dropped. My stomach swooped. This was my fault? It doesn’t matter now! There! I heard something besides the crackling of the old wooden church. I grabbed the kid and placed him as gently as I could outside the window. I grabbed another kid and And I was coughing, all the smoke in my mouth, the sweat dripping down like acid in my eyes, and….
I opened my eyes, and everything
“Yes,” I forced through my throat, dry as dust. “And can I have some wat-” I coughed again.
“I’ll see what I can do.” The nurse made no promises. And as soon as I got my water, I couldn’t help drifting back to sleep…
When I woke up, I was back in the fire. Everything was stinging, burning, aching.My head was throbbing. I couldn’t move. A different nurse came to help give me my medicine, but as I swallowed it, I noticed something strange. I couldn’t move my legs. I was trying, but for all the success I might as well be trying to move somebody else’s
Her eyes filled with pity. “A beam fell on you. You can’t move anything below the middle of your spine. I’m sorry, but there’s nothing we can do for a broken back.”
A broken back? I remembered there was a man that lived in our neighborhood in a wheelchair. I couldn’t live in a wheelchair! I’d have to stay at home, without Ponyboy, or Soda, or any of the gang. I tried again, and if my legs had worked, I would have probably kicked myself in the face. But instead, nothing happened. Nothing.
A day later, Ponyboy came to my room. I knew that I was on more and more painkillers, and that didn’t lead to anything good. I could hardly croak anything out, but I told him how I wasn’t ready. This wasn’t long enough! There was still so much left to do, so much of the world left for me to visit. My mother came to visit me, and I hissed out in my cracked voice that she couldn’t. She’d only caused me pain. The only way she helped me is that she was so terrible she made me find the gang.
Time passed, but I didn’t know how long it was until Ponyboy visited me again. The pain had tripled, and I couldn’t even describe it.
“We won,” Dally told me. “We chased those socs out of our