“How are you doing, Rowan?” Helen asked.
“I’ve been better…” I whispered.
“That is certainly understandable,” she replied, genuine sympathy in her voice.
I tried to reach for Felicity, but the side rail of the hospital bed proved to be an insurmountable barrier in my present condition. Without any prompting other than my obvious distress, Helen immediately stepped forward and lowered the rail. When I reached again, she lifted my wife’s hand and slipped it carefully into mine.
“Thank you,” I said softly.
Felicity’s fingers were cold and felt lifeless, but I held tight and squeezed as much as my own lethargic muscles would allow. I watched as she stared, looking through me at nothing.
“How is she?” I finally asked, still not taking my eyes from her expressionless face.
“Physically, she seems to be in good shape, especially considering the circumstances,” Helen told me. “She is presenting in a state of catatonic stupor, the most prominent symptoms being mutism and immobility, quite obviously. However, she does appear to maintain a strong degree of reflexive and occasionally volitional motor control. For instance, she responds to being fed orally. If her condition persists for any length of time, as long as she can be fed, there will not be a need for a feeding tube. That is a very good thing.
“She has also been observed suddenly changing position of her own accord, but the movements are neither frantic nor labored, which is a good sign. Still, she displays little or no response to other external stimuli.”
“Hey,” I murmured in my wife’s direction while slowly stroking my thumb against the back of her hand.
I already knew that right now the body in front of me was for all intents and purposes nothing more than an empty shell. In my mind, that much was a given. The consciousness, the memories, and everything else that made Felicity who she was, had been forced into a dark void, and they were being held captive there by Miranda. Still, that didn’t stop me from seeing the woman I loved right there in front of me.
Helen cleared her throat and said, “There is something else I need to tell you, Rowan. Due to the violent outburst that culminated in Felicity’s attack on you, her tentative diagnosis made by the doctor on staff was catatonic schizophrenia.”
“But that was before you arrived, right?” I asked.
“Yes.”
I turned my face toward her and tried to shake my head. “Well, you of all people know that isn’t what this is,” I objected.
Helen was more than just Ben’s older sister, and more than a psychiatrist as well. She had known my wife and me for years and was intimately aware of the preternatural events that were my bane. She had even seen Felicity through her original possession by Miranda, so I trusted her with the truth, as bizarre as it was.
She nodded. “I know what Benjamin told me. And, I know what I have seen. I also know that I have never known you to be wrong, Rowan. However, what I know and believe is not at issue here.”
“What is then?”
“The beliefs of others. I am here because you requested me to be,” she replied. “However, there is opposition. Because of your own current status as a patient in intensive care, Felicity’s parents are taking legal steps to assume guardianship over her and wish to begin the hospital’s recommended course of treatment with anti-psychotics.”
“Jeezus,” Ben spat. “That was quick. When the hell did this happen?”
“They arrived upstairs at the mental health center with the paperwork and their attorney just as we were preparing to come down here.”
I closed my eyes and sighed. I should have expected something like this. Felicity’s father was definitely not in any danger of starting a Rowan Gant fan club, and this wasn’t the first time he’d tried to intervene in our marriage.
I concentrated for a moment and then opened my eyes. “Would those drugs have any negative effects on her?”
“In all likelihood, no,” Helen explained. “However, given the unique situation, I cannot say how they might affect your ability to reunite her consciousness with her corporeal form.”
The words weren’t exactly something you expected to hear from someone who made her living via the scientific method. But then, Helen was different, and she definitely understood what was at stake.
I glanced toward Ben, grimacing as the news brought a new stress to bear-one that only served to negatively enhance my already growing pain. “Do me a favor and call Jackie,” I said, instructing him to contact our attorney. “She should be listed in my cell. Tell her what’s hap…”
He was already digging through my personal effects for my phone as he cut me off, “I’ll take care of it, Kemosabe. Don’t worry. We’ll get this straightened out.” He extracted the device then gave me a nod. “Can’t turn it on in here ‘cause of the monitors. I’ll take it out ta’ the lounge in a minute. It’s all good.”
Helen added, “Rowan, I am not sure if it matters to you, but I should note that your mother-in-law was largely responsible for keeping their attorney from attempting to stop today’s visit with you from happening at all.”
“I’m not surprised. Maggie has her faults, but she’s not a hothead like Shamus,” I said, steeling myself against a wave of abdominal pain as the last word tumbled from my mouth.
“She also asked about you and seemed genuinely concerned for your well-being,” she added.
The door to the room opened and the nurse followed it in. As she skirted quickly around Ben, she asked, “How are you feeling, Mister Gant?”
“I’m fine,” I told her, tensing in order to hide a grimace that was threatening to erupt across my face. “My ten minutes aren’t up yet.”
“We had an alarm on your monitors,” she replied, checking the stats on display next to the bed as she pressed two fingers against my wrist.
As if on cue, an electronic buzzer chirped, so she reached out and pressed a button with her free hand while continuing to check my pulse. Felicity’s hand suddenly twitched against mine, and I rolled my head quickly to the side. Her motion was barely noticeable, but I was certain of what I had felt.
However, my wife was still staring into space, and her position in the chair hadn’t changed.
“Felicity?” I whispered.
I waited several heartbeats, watching her intently, but there was no response. I squeezed her hand, still to no avail. Her small, almost unnoticeable spasm had probably been nothing more than a random signal firing along otherwise empty nerves.
I closed my eyes and swallowed hard as a burst of pain ripped through my abdomen on a mission to remind me just how vulnerable I was at the moment. The only thing keeping me from reaching for the button on the morphine pump was Felicity. However, given that she wasn’t really here, I was beginning to wonder how much more I could take. The universe, or whoever happened to be piloting it at the moment, apparently wondered the same thing as well.
In that moment, it decided that not quite enough turmoil had rained down upon my particular piece of real estate. A quick knock came against the still open door of my room, and a uniformed police officer leaned in through the opening. “Detective Storm?”
“Yeah?” my friend grunted, glancing toward him.
“Sorry to bother you, but Lieutenant Sheets from the Major Case Squad is out in the lounge,” he said. “He wants to talk to you right away.”
“Sheets? L. T. is here?” Ben made a demonstrative gesture at the floor with his index finger as he spoke. “Did ‘e say why?”
“He said it’s urgent. Something about another victim in the bloodsucker case.”
“Aww Jeezus, fuck me…” Ben spat and immediately turned to leave. As he stepped past Helen, he handed her my cell phone and began to say something.
“I will take care of it,” she told him before he could even get the first word off the end of his tongue.
“Thanks,” he told her.
I called out, “Ben…”
He stopped, “What?”
“You’re coming back to fill me in, right?”
“Jeezus fuckin’ Christ… You’re layin’ there in… Fuck!” He replied then shook his head and started out the
