Saving Stiles Chapter 1
Sheriff Stilinski looked down at the drawn, pale face that he knew, intellectually, belonged to his son but which emotionally he found hard to believe was the same boy. Stiles was always animated, vocal, fidgety. The wan boy in the bed in front of him was deathly still and silent as the grave. Which struck the sheriff as ironic since he knew now that the graveside was where this was going to end.
It didn't seem a moment since he was having these same thoughts in this same hospital but in respect of his desperately ill wife. She had been hooked up to much the same machines that her son, their son, was now connected to. And they did as much good for her as they were doing for Stiles.
Stiles' doctors had explained as best they could, but ultimately they didn't know what they were fighting. It seemed to be a virus of sorts but they couldn't find it in any of their tests. They could only detect Stiles' reaction to the infection not the infection itself and that meant they really had no idea how to treat it.
Stiles was on a broad spectrum antibiotic cocktail, morphine and an anticonvulsant following the grand mal seizure two days ago, which had been new, unexpected and all kinds of frightening. His boy's blood was being recycled through a state-of-the-art dialysis machine which was attempting to both clean his blood of toxins, the result of the battle his body was waging against the infection, and to lower his core body temperature to reduce the risk of swelling to his brain.
The doctors had told him that a scan of Stiles' brain showed a degree of swelling that would account for the blackout that had resulted in his admission to Beacon Hills Memorial five days before. It was practically the only pronouncement the medical staff had made with any degree of certainty.
Then the High Dependency Consultant had seemed very positive, cheerful almost, that Stiles was breathing for himself and that they had only needed to intubate him when he was first admitted. After 12 hours they'd removed the tube and Stiles had been able to breathe without the ventilator.
The sheriff had been encouraged by that at first, assuming that, given time, his son would fight off the infection, or the doctors would find the right treatment.
But the days passed, more scans were ordered and a ridiculous amount of blood was drawn for testing, but Stiles remained in a critical condition.
The seizure had been unforeseen and hugely shocking, but in a strange way the sheriff derived some level of hope from it; that this new symptom would help the medical staff to narrow down the cause.
But no new treatment emerged, just the anticonvulsant and more faith placed in the noisy machine linked into the boy's circulatory system. The sheriff found little comfort in that because he knew that aggressive dialysis alone could not save his son.
For most of the five days he'd been lying in this bed, Stiles had been so high on medication that he was barely conscious and never alert enough to know what was happening to him, much less talk and laugh and backchat and, well, be Stiles. Like this he was just a husk, the dried outer packaging that lacked the vital spark that made Stiles Stiles.
They say that you don't know the value of something until it's gone and Stiles' endless chatter was a case in point. Somehow the world seemed knocked off its axis without Stiles pronouncing on everything, over-explaining and offering an opinion on anything that captured his fleeting attention.
The sheriff thought of those interminable conversations over dinner when he was too tired to actively listen, when he had often prayed to a god he no longer believed in to keep Stiles quiet for just a moment so he could enjoy his meal in silence.
How he regretted that now. He would do anything to hear his son's voice again, yammering on about nothing in particular and everything in specific.
Perhaps he was responsible for Stiles' current grim predicament because of his prayers for some peace and quiet. Yes, he could feel guilt rise in his gorge. He had asked for quiet and his prayers had been answered in the worst possible illustration of the old adage, 'be careful what you wish for'.
So this was his fault. He had caused this. Caused his son to be lying mute and unmoving in a hospital bed, waiting for death to claim him. The sheriff's hand flew to his mouth to stifle a cry or to prevent himself from throwing up. Maybe both.
He was sure that he'd swap places with his son in a heartbeat. But he wasn't stupid: he wouldn't wish for anything ever again.
Yet part of his brain not yet frozen by the horror of the situation was still reaching for reason, looking for logic in the irrational occurrences of the last five days. He heard the various doctors telling him that sometimes science wasn't enough, that sometimes they didn't have all the answers. This he already knew. But they talked of viruses and infections, of antibodies and white blood cells, not of poorly phrased wishes or divine retribution for selfish prayers.
Blood was tested, drugs administered and hope dispensed regularly. But all the clinical indicators showed that his son was slipping away, dying quietly, motionlessly. Uncharacteristically. And as the days wore on, the doctors prescribed more drugs and gave out less hope.
The sheriff knew now that they had been preparing him. Preparing him for something he believed would never happen, just as he knew now that it would.
The last doctor to examine Stiles, just two hours ago, had sought out the Sherriff in the hospital canteen, where he'd been sent by well-meaning nursing staff, and had taken him to a small windowless room for privacy to tell him that, in his medical opinion, Stiles was unlikely to survive the next 48 hours.
It was a surreal conversation because it was practically word for word what the Oncologist had told him the night before his wife had died. Did these doctors have any idea what that was like, to hear the same hopeless message couched in sorrowful platitudes? To hear that taking your wife from you wasn't enough? Now they want your only son. Your only child and the only reason you have to get up in the morning.
The sheriff turned away, suddenly no longer able to look on the shell that doctors told him was his dying son. He turned and left the room, almost in a panic, before he could catch his breath. Then he was wandering aimlessly down the corridor towards the elevators. He couldn't think where he was going, or why. He just knew he needed to go. Somewhere. Anywhere. Away.
He stepped into the elevator and the doors closed behind him. He stood facing the back wall of the car and waited. Lost in his thoughts, he didn't register the need to select a floor, he just remained staring at the elevator wall not seeing the poster in front of him that warned of the perils of lax hand hygiene.
Some moments, minutes, or maybe a half hour later, the elevator door opened with a shushing noise at the behest of a young intern on a hurried break. The sheriff turned at the sound and came to his senses, more or less. He pushed past the man in pale blue scrubs and found his feet taking him back to Stiles.
Approaching the doorway to his son's room, the Sheriff saw a figure bending over the bed and for an instant hope fluttered in his stomach. Perhaps a new doctor with a new treatment?
But something in the man's demeanour immediately informed the lawman that he was not a member of the medical staff, even before he noticed the leather jacket. The man's hand was resting on Stiles' forehead as though he was judging his temperature, but he wasn't doing it in that impersonal, clinical way that he associated with the doctors and nurses that periodically came to check on his son and to adjust the machines surrounding him.
As the sheriff watched through the observation window from the corridor, he thought the body language of the man bending over his son suggested sentiment or emotion of some sort. Intimacy even. In his current detached state the sheriff was slow to understand the possible implications of this and he continued to watch while his brain attempted to process this information.
Then he realised that the man's hand was moving and he was actually stroking his son's forehead. This seemed incongruous. Who knew Stiles well enough to be that familiar with him, even given the dire situation he was in? He could only really imagine his wife caressing his son in such a seemingly caring way, and that thought had his guts churning anew.
The sick feeling grounded him, bringing him fully back to reality and he stepped into the room ready for a confrontation. He drew in an audible shocked breath when the man turned to face him and he recognised Derek Hale, erstwhile murder suspect and shadowy stalker character who had cornered the market in bad luck.
"Get away from my son," he ordered, his voice scratchy, with an audible tremor, his hand flying to the Glock on his hip.
A/N: Chapter 2 up tomorrow. Thank you for reading.