Disclaimer: AS much as I would wish it, the genius of The Host is not mine to claim.
Doctor Eustace Fords hated scenes like this.
The Emergency Room of the hospital was filled with the metallic scent of fresh blood, making his heart beat faster. His jaw clenched, as he rushed towards the doors, ears straining for details as he grabbed a stretcher.
"Huge pile-up on Highway-"
"This one's losing too much blood!"
"Hold this here, steady-"
"Where... my daughter?"
So many voices. Doc focused on the last one, too faint for his liking, coming from the lady on his stretcher. She was struggling to breathe through a crushed chest. It was amazing that she had the ability to talk at all.
"Don't worry, Miss," he tried to soothe her, as his gentle fingers poked and prodded, assessing the damage. What he found had him frowning, even as he reached for the tube to insert into the lady's deflated lungs. "I'm sure your daughter's fine..."
"My... pet..."
This woman's ribcage was destroyed. Both lungs close to collapsing. It was amazing she had even lasted this long. She'd be gone in seconds, no matter what he did.
Doc tried, as useless as it was. His hands were covered in her blood by the time she was gone, and his eyes were filled with sadness over his sterilized mask. This was not why he went into medical practice. What was the point, if you couldn't make a difference?
Moving to strip his gloves off, wash the blood from his arms, he walked past another cubicle. The occupant looked no older than ten, and was unmistakably the daughter his last patient had been talking about. The resemblance was evident, even to Doc's distracted eye. She looked relatively unharmed- most of the blood that covered her wasn't her own, then- but kept asking in a light, strained voice why she couldn't feel her legs. Doc sighed, allowing himself a moment to gather his wits.
He was going to need a drink after this.
It took Melanie Stryder almost sixteen years to figure out what death really was.
The day stands out clearly in her memories, too. It was the day when her mother received the phone call. The one saying that her best friend had died in a car crash the night before. It had sent the whole family reeling. Melanie had known the kind, gentle woman since as far back as she could remember. She was Mother's friend from high school. They had grown up together, and Melanie had always called her Auntie Cloud, no matter that they weren't related.
When Melanie had been younger, her and Cloud's daughter would pretend they were sisters. Twins, even, when they were little enough to erase the four years between them. But Melanie hadn't seen the younger girl in ages, now. They had drifted, as her life got filled with school and friends and boys... Letting relationships with childhood friends fade, collapse into dust.
Still, when Melanie first heard, her first thought was of her one-time playmate.When she heard of Cloud's death, her heart squirmed.
What about Wanda? She wanted to shout. Were was she?
She insisted on following her mother to the hospital, leaving her dad home with little Jamie. Her feet betrayed her before she could take one step past the stark white waiting room, so she crumpled into one of the not-quite-comfortable chairs, and watched her mother's tear-stained face disappear into the hallway.
It seemed to take hours before her mom returned, though the clock on the wall promised it hadn't been more than twenty minutes. There were fresh tears in her mom's eyes, and her attempt to smile through them let them loose, free to slip down her cheeks.
"Wanda's sleeping," her mother choked out the words between tears, but Melanie just blinked. She felt worn out, all dried up. Stuck somewhere between shock and breakdown. That's were she was. She didn't even cry when she saw Wanda's sleeping face. Instead, she felt distant surprise. Had it really been long enough for this little girl's face- one she thought she knew so well- to turn into a stranger's?
"She'll probably never be able to walk easily again." Melanie overheard a nurse saying to her mother. "Severe trauma in both legs, and it will be a miracle if either of them manage to set correctly. And unless we have any luck finding her father, I'm afraid she's going to foster care."
Her mother shifted, unsure whether this statement made her angry enough to force an annoyed reaction. "I'm her godmother," was her somewhat haughty reply. "As soon as she's ready, she can move in with my family."
Melanie chose to tune the conversation out after the talkative nurse began to outline the difficulties that came with such a decision. Instead she gazed at Wanda's unconscious face, so peaceful in it's drug-induced slumber.
In that moment, mortality clicked into place in Melanie's brain. And with it, the last piece of children's naivety vanished.