OhGodOhGodOhGod, Miss Gwen thought. At this stage of the game, she wasn’t even thinking about what ROM had done. In fact, she still couldn’t get her head around it, or that it had even happened. What was she even doing here? How had it gotten to this?
Kit was shocked again. Still the monitor wailed.
Aikins glared at monitor. Then sighed. “Damn. Call it. What’s the time?”
Scepter went white. He was lightheaded, and the waves of thought from the others in the room washed through him like music. ROM suddenly leaned into him. Hard. Silently fumbling with her, he realized, from the impenetrable murk of her mind, she had fainted. Miss Gwen was completely oblivious, her mind unable to comprehend the last few minutes.
Kit was dead. Oh, Lord. He was dead.
*KIT, WAKE UP!*
One of the nurses gazed at the clock. “6:13 PM.”
Forgive me, Kit. Oh, God, I didn’t want this.
Dr. Aikins straightened, putting a hand to her head. “I hate this. Death occurred at 6:13 PM on August 14th.” Then she remembered something. “Oh. Oh, Dr. Veracruz said is family was flying in.” Some of the other nurses and staff looked at her quietly. “Jesus. Welcome to America, your son is dead.”
NoNoNoNoNoNO
“What did it? Damn it, what did you have that did it?” Dr. Aikins muttered to Kit’s body as he was disconnected from various tubes. “Anybody see Dr. Veracruz or those two women he was with?”
Don’t do this!
“I thought they were still here,” said a nurse. “Guess they left.”
“Not that it matters,” Aikins said. As a doctor, it is the common idea that one would get used to the fact that sometimes the patient dies. You never do. It was simple, of course. At first you were alive. And then you weren’t. Simple really. But for all the simplicity, you still never got used to all the enormous complexity it meant for those that remained behind. Aikins touched Kit’s still-warm hand. “I’m sorry.”
So when he sat up and said, “No, doc, I think you did pretty good,” it can be understood that Dr. Elyse “Iron-hard” Aikins screamed like a little girl and nearly fell over.
Scepter clapped a hand over Miss Gwen’s wide-open mouth, even as ROM began to come to. Unlike the hospital staff, he could see the three figures huddled in the corner perfect well. “Ma—“
*Don’tgiveusaway!* Scepter’s thought-speech screamed into Pitch Black’s mind so loudly, he practically went back into a coma. It shut him up, to be sure.
Scepter and Miss Gwen looked like they were looking at a ghost. ROM looked like she was drunk. There they were, Manny holding ROM up with one hand, his other over Gwen’s mouth, and her own darting over ROM’s, who suddenly snapped into consciousness, took one look at Kit and opened her eyes so wide they could have fallen out.
“Mr. Kitabora?” Dr. Aikins waved her hand in front of his eyes. That he revived was enormously gratifying, but he seemed to be staring into empty corner as if it were the most riveting sight on the planet. “Do you know were you are?”
Turning, and remarkably cognizant for a man who had been dead to the world, and then dead, only moments before, he looked at her and replied. “Reckon I’m in the hospital.”
“Is that your real accent?”
He glared at her. “I’m from Tennessee, babe.”
“Oh. Right. What do you remember before now?”
He turned back to Scepter, ROM, and Miss Gwen, who looked positively ridiculous. “Dunno. Um. But I bet it must be one helluva story.”
No comments:
Post a Comment