Post by StoryGirl83 on Nov 10, 2011 23:33:06 GMT -5
Chapter Sixteen – Getting Through the Door
9AM (Noon in Boston)
The hallways of a hospital had never felt so imposing, the sick within its walls so terrifying. Vicki felt as if she was falling apart from the inside out. When her dad had come in five days, almost six, before he had seemed relatively healthy. He’d fully expected to have them look him over and give him a clean bill of health. They all had.
No one had died then. Some had been pretty sick, but no one had died. So much had changed since then. Thousands were dead, millions were sick. Vicki didn’t know of any demon that had done as much damage. It didn’t mean there wasn’t one, but surely something like this would have stuck out.
Of course nothing had. There probably was nothing to stick out. Even this didn’t stick out in times past, but from what she had heard, this had happened before. How was it that no one anywhere had kept a record? How was it that it had never reached this scale before and this time it had? How was it that it had happened before and it hadn’t killed off the world’s population of nonmagicals, but no one had written down a cure?
What were they thinking?!?
Surely someone knew. Someone somewhere had to. You didn’t just have people getting sick and then have it stop and no one keep a record. She’d spent a day, a full wasted day, in the library in Boston researching Duxbury. What she had found was nothing, a big fat nothing. How could there be nothing?
A man passed Vicki sobbing. He carried a little girl of maybe two or three in his arms. Vicki imagined that poor little girl didn’t understand what had happened. Most likely she had just lost a mother or a sibling, maybe a grandparent or a dear friend of her father’s.
It was all so unfair! Why did everyone die?!
First it had been Grandpa before Vicki had even been born. She’d been named for him. Now, here in this reality, he was alive, but getting to know him was not easy. He was in San Francisco and she was in Boston. There was only so much a person could say over the phone and she needed the tangible proof. With all the people who had died, she needed that proof that he was alive, that after thirteen years of not having a grandfather, she had one. And though she technically had two, the other still eluded a meeting since her dad’s father had no clue that his oldest child was alive, again. He had no idea that his son was alive and he had no idea that he was about to lose him, again. Only Uncle Ben and his family knew. And Vicki knew that Uncle Ben was devastated by the loss he was already beginning to feel. Having been unable to enter her dad’s hospital room since he went into a coma, Vicki had called Uncle Ben in California and talk to him. It had been seven hours since her dad had gone into a coma and she had alternated talking to her Uncle Ben, her Aunt Alice, and her two Trudeau cousins, Mark and Beth. For seven hours she had talked and now she stood just down the hall from her dad’s hospital room.
She didn’t think anything had terrified her more.
Slowly she made her way down the hall. She forced herself to take each step. She forced herself not to look to her left or her right, to focus on her goal. She knew if she hesitated she wouldn’t get there. She didn’t want to see her dad like that.
A few more steps and Vicki reached the room. She felt cold all over as she stood frozen in the doorway to her dad’s hospital room. Ever since her mom had told her and Pat that their dad was stage five, Vicki had unable to enter the room. This was the closest she had gotten to it in seven hours. Her mind refused to compute the idea that her dad would not survive the day. She stared into the room, her eyes focused on her dad with all the tubes, wires, and all the best of medical science not doing a thing to prolong her dad’s life.
Her traitorous sister seemed perfectly calm as she sat next to their mom and let Prue use her hand as a stress ball. Vicki suspected that is her mom had been the weepy kind, Pat would have offered her a shoulder to cry on.
Pat looked toward the door way, sensing her there. “Come on in. Come see Dad.”
Vicki shook her head. “I can’t.”
“Dad’s still alive,” Pat assured her. There was pleading in her eyes, as if she needed Vicki, but couldn’t ask for her directly.
“But for how long?” Vicki asked, fighting the tears in her eyes. “I don’t want to lose him.”
“None of us do,” Pat reminded her. There was a catch in her voice as she added, “I don’t know how to make it better, but there’s still time.”
“Not enough,” Vicki shook her head. Maybe when this started she thought there was plenty of time, but now there didn’t seem to be any time left at all. A disease with no known source that killed with no known cure in a matter of five short days. “We’ve pretty much known magic was being this since before Dad got sick and where has that gotten us. Now, he has, what, five, six hours to live?”
Vicki let out a sob, but she finally forced herself into the room. She looked down at Andy lying so still in the hospital bed. Why couldn’t they heal him? She heaved in a breath and looked at her sister. “He’s not even awake. We can’t even say good-bye. And look at Mom,” she added, waving a hand in front of Prue’s eyes.
Prue’s free hand shot out and grabbed Vicki’s. “I lost him once,” she reminded her daughters. “I am not losing him, again.”