fire monster

Jeremy awoke in a hospital bed.  It was a sensation so familiar he didn’t even have to open his eyes before he knew it - the clean, tight sheets, the numbed, cold pain in his arm where the IV attached, a muffled beeping coming from somewhere.  He kept his eyes closed and waited for what came next.
    “My, my.  What have we done this time?”
    The voice was old, rasping, and inexplicably British.
    Jeremy pressed his eyes shut tighter and tried to focus on why he couldn’t feel one of his legs below the knee.
    “They may put you away for this one.  Two times is bad luck.  Three is arson.”
    “Was anyone hurt?”
    “Just you, my boy.”
    Jeremy let his guard down and looked across at the dragon where he knew it would be, small and quiet, curled gracefully at the foot of the bed.
    “You could tell them, you know.  About me.”
    “No.”  They’d had this conversation a hundred times over the years, ever since it became clear that the fiery monster wasn’t just a childhood imaginary friend.
    “Tell them your dragon was chilly and needed a proper nest -”
    “No,” Jeremy said more strongly.  “They’ll think I’m insane.”
    “Maybe you are,” the dragon grinned wickedly.
    This was the game it played, and after all this time the young man still didn’t know its purpose.  Any inquiry was met with evasion, and yet -
    “Why are you doing this?” Jeremy asked.  “What do you get out of it?”
    The noise of footsteps came echoing down the hall.  Some change in his monitors must have alerted the staff that he’d woken up.  Jeremy reached to put a hand to his face and was startled to find he’d been handcuffed to the bed’s metal rail.
    “Oooh,” the dragon said, carefully picking ash from under a claw, “that’s new.”
    Jeremy stared at it, confusion and desperation beginning to show on his features.
    The door inched open.  The dragon’s impassive face became suddenly angry.
    “TELL THEM!” the dragon hissed, and vanished.