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Dally had no idea what was happening. Sure, he had been present for the entire conversation, but he wasn’t sure he had caught a single word. Between the sharp pain pounding in his head and the ache in his side and the undeniable heat he felt on his face and the softness of the Curtis family couch, he had found it impossible to pay attention.
Ponyboy had been talking about a school project from the kitchen table, yelling across the house to Soda or Johnny or… Someone else… Dally didn’t really know who was here. But the next time he caught part of the conversation, they had moved on to discussing the relative merits of ice cream flavors. The very thought of ice cream made him want to vomit.
The knife cut from two nights ago—barely a scrape, he’d said—was now swollen and angry-red, stitched up in a hurry with shaking hands and no alcohol. It throbbed beneath his shirt, matching the pounding in his skull.
Johnny was watching him again, fixated on his every action as though they would tell him exactly what was wrong. Dally was certain Johnny wouldn’t be able to figure it out through silent observation alone, but he had just about enough of being visually interrogated.
“I’m fine,” Dally snapped, not bothering to look up from where he sat slumped on the couch.
“You don’t look fine,” Johnny murmured, eyes desperately trying to meet Dally’s but unable to find them.
Dally’s eyes flashed and locked with Johnny’s. “What’re you now? A damn doctor?”
Johnny blinked in shock, but didn’t flinch. “You’re sweating through your shirt. You’re barely sitting upright.”
“I said I’m fine. Probably just a cold or something.” He tried to stand. Regret flooded his mind as the room started tipping sideways.
Johnny caught his elbow, but Dally lurched away quickly.
“Don’t touch me,” he hissed as he pulled his arms close to his sides, willing the pain the cease and the room to stop spinning and his mind to stop wandering to the last time he had felt so helpless.
______________________________
New York City, 1962
It was dark by the time he regained consciousness. He lay alone in the alley soaked by the rain, his blood, and the cold feeling that came with knowing that it could be his last night on Earth.
He wasn’t sure how long he’d been out, but he could have sworn he could almost make out the sun peeking out from the horizon and the first streaks of morning light creeping into view. That was the last thing he needed. He could not be bleeding out in the alley behind some bar where he shouldn’t have been in the first place in broad daylight.
He glanced down at his side. The bleeding had slowed and the pain had shifted from a sting to a consistent throbbing under his skin. His limbs lay stiff on the wet pavement, as though they couldn’t quite remember how to walk. He tried to move, but his side screamed in protest.
He knew he had no choice but to get up. To move. To be anywhere else. He was not going to die in some random alley.
The guy had only gotten him once. A quick jab and a few curses exchanged before Dally clocked him and ran. But that one stab was deep and should have been treated with something more than a damp t-shirt and a bottle of cheap vodka. Hours later and it had only gotten worse—untreated for far too long.
No hospitals. That was what his father had told him long ago. “Hospitals ask questions and you don’t have time for questions or answers that they want to hear.”
So that settled it. He was on his own.
He stumbled out of the alley and to a nearby laundromat. Completely empty because no one was doing laundry at—he searched the room for a clock— 5:23am.
Dally tried his best to clean the wound for real. Soap from the bathroom, an abandoned but clean shirt to clean up the fresh blood, and another to patch the giant hole in his side. It was better than it had been, but far from good. And judging by how he felt right now, it was probably too little, too late.
______________________________
“Johnny’s right.” Dally snapped out of his trance as Darry spoke from the doorway, arms crossed, eyebrows woven tightly with concern. “You don’t look well at all.”
Dally’s eyes flashed daggers at him. “It’s none of your business, Darrel. I ain’t one of your brothers.”
“No, but you’re sitting on my couch at death’s door,” Darry said as he stepped further into the room, “and I can’t have you dying on my watch.”
Dally tried again to get off the couch, hoping it wasn’t too late to make a run for it.
“You ought to be in bed,” Darry said nonchalantly.
“How would you know?” Dally rolled his eyes.
Johnny nudged Dally back onto the couch. “Because he’s basically an expert on taking care of sick kids, man,” he began, “the closest thing we have to a doctor. just let him—us— help.”
“Fine.” Dally admitted defeat, crossed his arms, and pouted as he sunk back into the couch.
Johnny picked up the blanket from the back of the couch, getting ready to throw it over Dally’s frame, but pausing when he got close enough to feel the heat radiating from his friend. He stepped back, pausing for a minute, wide eyes locking with Darry’s for a second.
“Darry’s right,” Johnny said cautiously, “You’re on fire.”
“I ain’t dying,” Dally mumbled in response. He wasn’t entirely sure that was true, but if it was, that was the hill he’d just chosen to die on.
“Could’ve fooled me,” Johnny shot back.
Darry intervened, placing a hand on the back of Dally’s neck and trying to hide his concern as Dally recoiled and he pulled it away. “Sorry, man. Trying to figure out exactly how sick you are. We need to get your temperature down.”
“You want a washcloth or something?” Johnny asked Darry.
Darry thought for a second. “No, We’re gonna need more than that. Can you go start the shower. Lukewarm—not cold, not hot,” he instructed.
“No way you’re doing that to me, Darrel,” Dally slurred, losing coherence by the second. But he couldn’t protest as Darry dragged him off the couch and all but carried him to the bathroom.
“Dallas, you’re going to get in that shower,” Darry said firmly, ushering him down the hall. “With a fever like that, I don’t even know how you’re conscious right now.”
“Geez, Darry,” Dally groaned, “It really ain’t that bad.”
He knew that was a lie. If he was ready to be honest, he would have told Darry that he felt awful. That the only thing keeping him upright was the way he was leaning on the wall and that he hadn’t felt so much like he was going to die in a long time. But he didn’t say any of that.
Instead, Dally pulled his shirt over his head slowly, each movement burning in his side, each twist and adjustment sending a fresh wave of pain coursing through his body.
“Holy shit, Dal,” Darry murmured as he caught a glimpse of Dally’s wound. “Forget the shower, we’re going to the hospital.”
“Nononononono, we can’t—“ Dally began to protest in panic. But he didn’t have a chance to finish that thought.
The last thing he remembered was Darry yelling to Soda to grab the keys and start the car, a calloused hands catching his shoulders as he careened toward the floor, and the way the world around him finally stopped swimming as it faded away entirely.
______________________________
He must’ve dozed off. When he opened his eyes again, the light streaming into the laundromat was brighter.
His fever hadn’t broken, but the shaking had eased. Barely. He could still feel the sweat on his back, his skin clammy and too tight, but he was conscious,, which was more than he expected right now.
He heard a plastic grocery bag fall to the floor near his feet and couldn’t help but flinch. He wasn’t alone anymore. Someone else was here. Someone else was going to turn him in; to send him to die in jail.
A woman in her forties dressed in a work uniform and carrying more clothes than he had ever seen in his life stood a few feet away. Her tired eyes met his glazed over, fevered, exhausted ones. She didn’t look at him like he was a threat or a problem like everyone else seemed to. Her eyes reflected something else. Some level of understanding, as if she had been where he was in a past life that she had worked hard to forget. Like he was just a kid who didn’t belong here.
“I don’t need to know what happened,” she said, voice flat. “won’t call the cops either.”
She nudged the bag closer with the toe of her boot. “Soap. Bandages. Clean water. There’s aspirin too.”
Dally stared at her, head tilting to the side, unsure if she was real or just a hallucination.
She nodded once. “Don’t die here. It gets better”
Then she walked past him and loaded her laundry like nothing had happened.
He didn’t thank her. Didn’t have the words. But he took the bag, pulled it into his lap with shaky hands, and tried for a third time to fix his side. By the time he was done, he wasn’t fixed. Not even close. But he wasn’t dead, and that had to be worth something.
______________________________
This time, the first things Dally noticed when he woke up were the throbbing in his side and the bright white lights of the hospital. The second thing he noticed was that he wasn’t dead.
Somewhere in the back of his mind, he could still hear his father’s voice echoing “Hospitals ask questions and you don’t have time for questions or answers that they want to hear.” Yet that didn’t seem to bother him right now. And no one seemed to be looking for answers. Instead, he was greeted by a room full of people who seemed even happier than he was that he had survived.
His eyes landed on Johnny Cade first, sitting motionlessly in the corer with his knees pulled up to his chest, his eyes red-rimmed and tired, and a smile beginning to creep across his face.
“You’re awake,” he said, quietly at first.
Dally nodded weakly.
“You’re awake!” Johnny repeated with more excitement than before.
All around him, the room sprung to life. Dally’s friends surrounded him, peeling themselves out of rock-hard hospital chairs and crawling off makeshift beds on the floor to rush to his side.
Ponyboy arrived by his side right after Johnny, and Soda and Steve were quick to follow, grinning like idiots. Two-Bit was sitting on the end of the bed faster than Dally could process what was happening and he watched Darry’s arms wrap around Soda before he could join him.
Dally couldn’t believe it. His entire gang was there. He didn’t even know if he was going to wake up and they were all right here anyways.
Dally was speechless. He blinked once—twice—three times—as if they were just a vision that would be gone in an instant, but every time he opened his eyes, there they were. His friends.
“You scared the hell outta us,” Soda said, sitting on the edge of the bed. Darry gave him a sharp look that Dally was pretty sure meant ‘you better take it easy or we’ll throw you into the hall.’
“Didn’t think you were gonna make it for a while there,” Soda continued, shimmying slightly further from Dally’s recently stitched and bandaged side.
“You looked like a ghost, man,” Two-Bit added, voice softer than usual, as if reality had finally caught up to him.
“You guys here all night?” Dally asked.
Pony stepped closer, nodding. “We didn’t leave. Steve threatened to fight a nurse when they said visiting hours were over.”
Dally let out a halfhearted laugh. “Bet she coulda taken him.”
They laughed a little. Then silence fell over the room again.
Johnny leaned forward. “We were real worried, Dal. Thought we might lose you.”
Darry nodded, arms still folded but not like a threat this time. “We’re glad you let us help, even if you had to pass out for that to happen.”
Dally glanced at them, each one of them looking at him like he mattered. Like they actually wanted him around. It wasn’t just the same tolerance he had felt in the places he’d been before. This was different. Warmer. More real.
The voice in his head begged him to say something. To say thank you. Or that you’ve never had anyone stick around. Hell, tell them that it means everything that they didn’t leave.
But all he managed to say was, “Y’all are being dramatic. I wasn’t gonna die.”
He knew that wasn’t true. He could hardly get the words out. It felt easier than telling the truth, but somehow hurt worse than the ache in his side.
Johnny raised an eyebrow. “You weren’t looking too alive when you collapsed in the bathroom.”
Dally forced a smirk, hoping they would attribute his odd behavior to his brush with death not the emotional baggage he wasn’t ready to open. “Just needed a nap.”
The room fell quiet again.
Johnny sat back down. Darry let out a breath. Pony looked like he wanted to say something else, but didn’t.
Dally shifted under the blanket, his side still throbbing. He stared up at the ceiling and clenched his jaw to keep anything real from slipping out.
He’d brushed them off. Again. Like he always did. But he couldn’t stop hearing their voices echo in his mind.
We didn’t leave.
We were worried.
You let us help.
And maybe he hadn’t said it out loud—hell, he probably never would—but somewhere deep in his chest, he meant all the words that he couldn’t quite manage to say.
Dally let the silence lull him back to sleep, eyes drooping and room fading as he realized how lucky he was.
He wasn’t dead.
He wasn’t in the laundromat.
And for once, he wasn’t alone.