Author's Note: So, about a year ago, I promised you a rewrite of Down the Twisted Path, along with a prequel and a couple sequels. Well, it's taken longer than I expected to get this up, but that's because it's grown. Down the Twisted Path has now spawned its own universe, and fairly substantial rewrite of Charmed canon. For those of you who enjoyed the original, the central premise is still going to be the same, but everything else is up for grabs.
The original Down the Twisted Path is coming down with the posting of this fic. And updates will be once a week, on Tuesdays. If I'm late, feel free to shoot me a PM and bug me.
A million, billion thanks to my absolutely amazing beta, liron-aria. Without her, this story likely wouldn't have seen the light of day.
December 18th, 1994
Paige closed her eyes, trying fruitlessly to shut out the sounds of the noisy emergency room. Her stomach was still rolling, wildly, and she swallowed, hard, against the impulse to run to the nearest garbage can and be sick. Again.
She hated hospitals, and she wanted desperately to be anywhere else, right now. Being here, in the emergency room of San Francisco Memorial, with the screaming of sirens in the background, it was just too much. Especially with the ghosts of her parents still hanging around, not even gone three weeks.
But, there was nowhere else that she could go. This latest dizzy spell had hit her with all the force of a freight train, and she'd gotten so violently sick that, for a minute, she'd actually thought that she was going to die. And, going all the way across town to her regular doctor had been out of the question; she'd barely had the strength to drag herself the few blocks from her school to the hospital.
"Sit there!" a voice barked, suddenly, and Paige jumped in shock, half-expecting the voice to start yelling at her.
But, when she opened her eyes, she saw a teenage boy about her own age dropping gracelessly into the chair beside her. There was an insolent smirk on his face that she recognized from having worn far too many times, herself.
The owner of the gruff voice turned out to be a very large man with huge shoulders and hands that looked like they could crush bricks. His entire demeanor practically screamed Supreme Authority Figure, and the rebellious part of her that she still hadn't managed to suppress all the way bristled at the hostile tone he was taking with the boy.
For his part, the boy had slumped down in his seat and was smirking openly at the man. The man was going absolutely crimson with rage as he yelled at the kid, apparently not caring who in the emergency department heard him.
Finally, after what seemed like forever, the man ran out of steam and stalked off to the admitting desk to talk to one of the nurses.
"You know, you probably shouldn't antagonize that guy like that," Paige spoke up, after the man was gone, glancing quickly over at the boy as she spoke. "He looked like he was going to have an aneurysm."
The boy shrugged, seemingly unconcerned with the idea.
"Dan and I have a routine going," he told her. "I do something stupid that provokes him to the point of having a stroke, he yells at me about how worthless I am, and then I get dumped in yet another foster home. Everybody's miserable, and the status quo is maintained."
"Aren't you tired of getting yelled at?" Paige asked, without thinking, and then she blushed. "I'm sorry; that's none of my business."
But, the boy just shrugged, again, seemingly nonplussed.
"How else would I fill my days?" he asked, rhetorically.
Paige noticed, then, that his voice sounded kind of nasal, and she looked over at him, more closely. He had his head tipped back against the back of the seat, one hand holding a large handkerchief in place over his nose.
"Nosebleed?" she asked, sympathetically.
"Broken," the boy corrected her. Then, without warning, he pulled the cloth away from his face, examining the blood-spattered surface critically. "Looks like the bleeding's almost stopped," he said, cheerfully.
As Paige stared in horror at the blood on the cloth, and the mess of his broken nose, she could feel bile forcing its way up from her stomach, and she pressed a hand tightly against her mouth. When he noticed the look on his face, the boy tried for a reassuring smile.
"Hey, if you think this is bad," he told her, "you should see the other guy."
"Excuse me," Paige said, faintly, and then she bolted across the room.
She grabbed the garbage can that was sitting on the floor beside the nurses' station and threw up. She was bent double from heaving so violently, but nothing but bile and water was coming up after her earlier bouts of sickness. She could hear someone talking to her, saying her name, and when she thought that she was finally steady, again, she looked up to see a nurse standing in front of her.
"Doctor Ashby is ready for you, Miss Matthews," the woman said, calmly, as if seeing people throwing up in her garbage can was an everyday occurrence. Which, considering her job, it probably was.
The nurse led her back to a curtained off exam area, handing her a paper robe to change into.
"Doctor Ashby will be back to see you in a few minutes," the nurse told her as she climbed onto the exam table.
Paige nodded, wordlessly, taking the emesis basin that the nurse handed her, gratefully. She stayed silent as the nurse took her vitals and recorded things in her chart, listening to the woman's cheerful chatter as she worked.
Ashby came in a few minutes later, his face expressionless as he read the chart that the nurse handed him. When he finished, he looked over at her and gave her a small smile.
"So, Miss Matthews," he asked, as he pulled his stethoscope off from around his neck and put the earpieces in his ears, "how have you been feeling, lately?"
"Like crap," Paige admitted, honestly. "I've been getting sick all the time, really, really sick."
"And you've been having some dizzy spells, I understand?" Ashby prompted.
"I fainted last week," Paige told him. "I fell down half a flight of stairs, and my cousin broke my fall."
"You were lucky," Ashby commented. "You could have been seriously hurt in a fall like that. So," he went on, glancing back down at her chart, "how long has all of this been going on?"
"About three weeks," Paige said, quietly, grimacing when Ashby looked at her, sharply, at her words.
"Your parents died about three weeks ago, didn't they?" he asked, gently. "A car accident, from what it says in your chart?"
Paige nodded, pressing her lips into a tight line as she struggled not to cry. A few tears escaped her control, anyway, and she hastily wiped them away.
"You think this is all in my head, don't you?" she asked, bitterly, echoing the words she'd heard from everyone she'd told about her symptoms.
Even her aunt and uncle didn't believe that there was anything seriously wrong with her, although neither of them had actually come out and said it. But, Ashby surprised her.
"I don't know what's wrong with you," he told her, honestly. "But, we're going to run some tests, and see what we can find out. How's that sound?"
"Sounds good," Paige answered, managing to muster up a small smile when Ashby looked at her.
Ashby took some blood – Paige very carefully looked away from him when he was doing it – and asked her a bunch of questions about her health, and about everything that she'd been doing over the last few weeks. Some of the questions were of an intensely personal nature, and she found herself blushing furiously.
But, she answered everything honestly. She'd spent too much time lying and keeping secrets from people, in the past, and she wasn't about to fall back into those bad habits. Her behavior had already cost her so much, and she couldn't lose anything else.
When Ashby disappeared down to the lab, she lay back on the table with a sigh, pillowing her head on her hands. She was tired, and she closed her eyes and just let herself drift until she heard a noise at the curtain. Opening her eyes, she sat up, expecting to see Ashby coming back into the room. But, the boy from the waiting room was standing there, staring at her.
"What do you want?" Paige asked, and then she winced when she realized how rude she'd sounded. "I'm sorry-"
"That's okay," the boy said, with a shrug. "My fault for barging in on you."
Paige noted, with relief, that he was no longer holding the bloody cloth in front of his nose. His face had been cleaned up and there were strips of tape across the bridge of his nose, realigning the broken bones.
"You're looking less gruesome," she commented.
"I tried to convince them to give me a scar," the boy told her, "to make me look tougher. But, they wouldn't go for it."
"Darn code of ethics," Paige quipped, and the boy grinned at her. "So, why are you here?" she asked, curiously. "Come to see me get sick, again?"
"Actually, I wanted to apologize for making you throw up the first time," the boy said, sheepishly. "I wasn't thinking, and I'm sorry you got sick because of it."
"That's okay," Paige told him. "Lately, everything's been making me sick. If it hadn't been your nose, it just would have been something else."
"Well, at least I know it's not personal," the boy told her, with a smile. Holding out his hand, he added, "I'm Henry Mitchell."
"Paige Matthews," she returned, shaking his hand.
"So, what are you in for, Matthews?" Henry asked, leaning against the exam table sitting on.
"I don't know, yet," Paige admitted. "I'm still waiting to find out."
"Well-" Henry started to say, but then a bellow cut off the rest of his sentence.
He jumped in surprise as his parole officer, or just whoever the guy was, appeared in the doorway, glaring at the boy.
"What's with the disappearing act, Mitchell?" he snapped, and Henry just shrugged, nonchalantly.
"I just went for a walk," he said, dismissively. "Is that a crime, now?"
"Look, kid," the guy gritted out, "you're in enough trouble, here-"
"Excuse me," a cool voice spoke up, interrupting the man's tirade, "you're disturbing my patient."
Paige hid a smirk behind her hand as the man snapped to attention, turning around to see Ashby staring at him with an impassive expression on his face.
"I'm going to have to ask you to leave," Ashby continued, calmly, "or I'll call security."
Then, without another word, he pushed past the man and into the exam room. After a minute, the man stalked off, with Henry following him. The boy had a suitably sheepish look on his face, but there was a mischievous glint in his eyes that had Paige grinning. Then, she turned her attention to Ashby, who was holding a sheet of paper in his hands.
"Well, doc," she said, hoping that she didn't sound nervous, "what do I got? Is it the cold, or some kind of flu?"
Ashby sighed, looking down at the piece of paper in his hands with an unreadable expression on his face. Paige could feel the butterflies start in her stomach as she waited anxiously to hear what he was going to say.
"Miss Matthews," Ashby finally said, looking up at her, "Paige. You're pregnant."