Post by StoryGirl83 on Nov 10, 2011 23:25:04 GMT -5
Chapter Thirteen – Guilty
8AM
The hospital was fuller than it had been when Seth left for the Underworld. He walked down the hall. Few official hospital staff roamed the halls, but a lot of people appeared to be volunteers. They had stopped worrying about visitors, but as best he could tell, most of those visitors were either in the rooms or on chairs and couches outside the room. Few of them actually walked the halls. It took several minutes and dozens of apologies as he bumped into people, but he finally managed to reach the outside of his brother’s hospital room. He looked in and saw that another patient had been brought in and his dad had fallen asleep. There was a pair of girls a little younger than Peter asleep on the floor by the second bed. The man in the bed was the only one awake.
“Your family?” the man asked with a nod at Derek and Peter. There were rings around his eyes, letting Seth know that despite being awake he was very tired. There was something else in his eyes, sadness, maybe guilt. Seth wondered if maybe he’d lost someone recently, maybe the mother of the two girls on the floor.
Seth nodded. “My dad and my little brother. Your daughters?” he asked, indicating the two girls. One of them yawned and rolled over.
“Nieces,” he replied, the haunted look taking full control of his face. “When my brother and sister-in-law got sick they had me come get them. They’re both stage five, now.” That must be why he looked so sad. His brother was about to die. It probably wasn’t much consolation that he might only survive his brother by a few days, especially since the girls were here. They probably had no place else to go.
“Sorry to hear that,” Seth told him, deciding that he should leave. He didn’t have time to get involved in someone else’s sad story. Maybe if he found something these little girls wouldn’t lose everyone they had in the world.
“Aren’t you going to ask?" The man asked sounding genuinely confused.
“Ask what?” Something was going on here, something beyond the usual fear of death.
“If this is my fault that it reached San Francisco,” the man informed him. He seemed surprised that he’d had to say it.
Seth shook his head. “No.” Of course he wasn’t going to ask. There was no possible way this guy had brought this here.
“No?” he man seemed almost shocked. “Why not? Everyone else does.”
Seth shrugged. “I know it’s not your fault.” That was an understatement. He knew this was magical. He also knew it had passed through quarantines without looking back. This wasn’t passed from human to human.
“How?” the man asked. He sounded like a man drowning given a life preserver. “How do you know?”
Seth glanced at his father and brother. “Because, despite not leaving my brother’s side since he was diagnosed, my dad’s not sick. In fact people holding vigil over their loved ones bed seem to be far less likely to get sick. As best I can tell, this cannot be passed from person to person. You are not responsible.”
The man sighed. “Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me,” Seth argued. Even if he was glad he could reassure this man, that was all he could do, at least for now. “I can’t heal you any more than I can heal my brother. I wish I could.” Deciding now was not the time to visit his brother, Seth left the room. He wandered down the hall and took the stairs to get to the floor he wanted rather than an elevator.
He stopped short of his goal by a dozen feet or so. Sound asleep on a bench outside of Leo’s room was Wyatt and Chris’ “new” sister. In sleep she seemed peaceful, less confrontational. That surprised him somehow. His first, last, and only encounter with her had been anything but peaceful.
A blanket had worked its way down her body and pooled around her legs. When he saw her shiver he pulled it up so that it wrapped around her shoulders. She snuggled into it and mumbled something in her sleep, but she didn’t appear to be awake.
Once he was sure that she wasn’t going to dump the blanket again in the next five minutes, he continued on into Leo’s room. He pushed open the door and looked in.
Inside he found both Piper and Leo awake. There was no one else in the room and they were talking. They both looked up at the sound of the door and smiled at Seth.
“How’s Peter doing?” Piper asked as he entered the room.
“Sleeping,” Seth informed her. “Dad was sleeping, too, so I thought I’d stop by. How are you, Uncle Leo?”
“Tired and hot,” Leo informed him, “but not too bad over all.”
Seth sighed. He could see the lines around Leo’s eyes. There was no doubt in his mind that Leo was tired. It showed all over him. Still it could be worse. “I’m glad it’s not too bad yet, but I wish you didn’t have it at all. I’ve been trying to find someone who knows something, but I don’t think anyone does.”
“You can’t possibly think this is natural!” Piper exclaimed stunned.
“No, of course not,” he was quick to assure her. “Something like this that the magical community is immune to can’t be natural. I just can’t find anybody who knows anything and it’s frustrating.”
Piper nodded. She knew the feeling. “I was just talking to Prue. Have you met her or Andy?”
“I don’t think so,” Seth admitted thinking back over the last few months. “I’d heard you got them back.”
“They live in Boston,” Piper commented, “so they are very close to this. Andy’s sick, stage five.”
“I’m sorry,” was all Seth could think to say.
Piper tried to smile at him, but it came out more like a grimace.
“Mind if I stay here and talk for a while?” he asked after some silence. “I’m not ready to give up, but I need to rest a bit.”
“You are welcome to stay,” Leo assured him. “We appreciate what you are trying to do.”
Appreciation wasn’t enough though. Seth needed to find the cure. There had to be something. Wasn’t there always something? He feared that when it was found it would be far too late.