IT'S NEVER TOO LATE
Chapter 4: The Nightmare Begins
Feral was surprised to see a limo waiting when they reached the street. He wondered how and when Shere had summoned it. The driver was already outside the car and opening the door for them. Shere practically shoved his lover in the vehicle then followed quickly.
"Get us to Megakat Trauma Hospital immediately," Shere ordered the driver. The driver's head nodded and the limo smoothly moved off into traffic then picked up speed.
Reaching into his pocket, Shere pulled out his cell then handed it off to Feral. Feral looked at it in puzzlement.
"Call your physician and tell him to meet us at the hospital, as soon as possible!"
Sucking in a breath to protest, he stopped immediately at the look in his lover's eyes. Sighing, he did as asked, getting a hold of Dr. Mewser at home. He explained as best he could why he was needed and received a grim, 'I'll be there as quickly as I can,' before the connection was cut off. He said nothing as he handed the cell phone back.
Shere took it back without looking and said, grimly, "don't fail to tell the doctors about anything you've been feeling since the incident happened. Every detail is important," he turned to give Ulysses a tight smile. "Think of it as the same as what you do to get every little bit of information you can on a case. Leave nothing out," he warned, firmly.
"I will," Feral murmured in a small voice. If Shere was this scared, those odd sensations he'd been experiencing since last night must be more serious than he would have dreamed. He felt sort of like a bomb waiting to go off. Not a pleasant feeling and one that made him more than a little afraid as well.
When they arrived at the hospital and went to the ER, Feral was stunned by how swiftly everyone was moving. He found himself stripped of his clothes and into a hospital gown before he could blink.
He now lay, uncomfortably, on a bed in the ER being hooked up to all kinds of equipment and being poked to draw a rather large amount of blood he thought, then told to give a urine sample, a small cup was shoved in his paws. Shere stayed by his side as he walked awkwardly to the bathroom, still hooked up to all manner of things which Shere helped to keep from hanging up on things, did what he was supposed to and was settled back in bed again.
Dr. Mewser arrived as did the head of the ER section. Soon they were spitting questions at him in machine gun fashion. Most of the information was a repeat of before when the incident happened.
"Any new symptoms since I saw you last?" Mewser asked, staring piercingly at him.
Feral sighed. He knew honesty was required, as prevaricating like he normally did when dealing with his health would not be tolerated this time.
"Well, since about six last night, I've been having this feeling of heaviness in my limbs. Sometimes I can even sit up or stand or move my arms for several minutes then it would be gone only to come back again, minutes or hours later," he admitted.
Eyeing him grimly, Dr. Fancier asked, "any other symptoms you've noticed?"
"No, that's the only one."
"I don't like the sound of that. We'll see what the chem panel shows but I think, to be on the safe side, we should do an MRI too," Dr. Fancier said, worriedly, to Dr. Mewser.
"I agree."
The two doctors left the room, talking softly in medical language that was unintelligible to Feral. He looked up at his lover, a worried look on his face.
Shere reached down and clasped his paw nearest him. "I'll not leave your side, my love. I just hope they can clean that stuff out of you before it can cause irreparable harm," he murmured, trying to keep a brave front. His love didn't know just how serious this was and Shere didn't feel he needed to know just yet, until there was a true cause for concern.
The hours wait was terrible for Shere and Ulysses. He'd just returned from getting an MRI done and was waiting for some kind of answers from the doctors.
Not too long after he'd had the MRI done, the doctors apparently decided to send Feral up to the critical care floor where they could monitor him more closely while the tests were being processed. He had to endure the humiliation of being rolled in his bed with all his equipment down a hall to an elevator that took him to the fourth floor then on into a private room. He was only a few paces from the nurses station.
After he was settled in, given instructions on how to summon the nurses and when he should do so...like if his body got that heavy feeling again...then he had even more equipment hooked up to him before he was finally left alone with his lover.
At first, they tried to watch some TV to ease their growing fear but it was impossible to concentrate on it at all so Feral flicked it off and dropped the controller beside him and stared at his lover.
"We need to talk," he said softly.
Shere eyed him a moment then nodded. "You have something to say?"
Feral sighed. "I'm sorry. I guess it had to take truly dying before I could see I was allowing my career to run my life and didn't make any room for a relationship. I suppose it was because I'd never been in a relationship before that I failed to realize I was required to nurture it like a flower if I didn't want to spend the rest of my life alone and I now that was the direction I was headed. So as I lay in that hospital bed I thought hard about what my desires were for the future and knew immediately any plans that didn't include you were worthless and empty. Once I had that epiphany the rest was easy. That's why I sang those songs to you and I meant every word in them. I will work hard to step back and stop micro-managing. I've come to understanding that I've been short changing my own officers when I wouldn't allow them to try and handle an omega problem themselves," he admitted.
"Now that is the best news I've heard in a long time, Uly. I've been begging you to see this but I guess you just weren't ready to acknowledge it," Shere said, relieved.
"You're right. Between the pressures from the Mayor and my own pride, I just couldn't allow others to shoulder the burden of trying to get rid of the omegas. Being so up close and personal all the time has kept me from seeing any other way to deal with those guys."
"Exactly why generals of armies never head into battle themselves. It's so they can retain their objectivity and see what can be done to solve the problem because they can see it from all sides and angles rather than the tunnel vision that occurs if you're directly involved," Shere said, gently.
Feral grimaced at that too true statement by his lover. "Yeah, I know. It's something my own superiors tried to drum into me in school but I just never got it. Believe me, I do now and will attempt to undo my bad habit."
Shere smiled and gently patted his lover's shoulder, "buck up love, it took you more than ten years to develop this mind set, so it will take more than just a near death experience to turn away from it. However, now that you've finally can see it is a problem, you should be able to begin to steer yourself away from it gradually. I couldn't ask more than that."
Feral smiled back, feeling relieved to have truly cleared the air and to be forgiven. "Thank you, love. I will try, I promise. I don't want to lose you."
"You won't. I will be here for you and we'll see what happens once this emergency is over, I promise," Shere murmured, kissing the paw he had taken into his own. And he prayed it would be over soon with Ulysses suffering nothing major.
"Wish we could make up properly, now," Ulysses murmured, wistfully.
"When you are better, we will take a much needed short vacation...no arguments...and make up properly as you said," Shere smirked.
Feeling better about their relationship, all Feral had left to worry about was his health.
More than five hours after he'd been admitted, Feral was hardily bored and decided to take a nap while Shere went to take a short walk to stretch his legs and get some fresh air. He took the elevator down to the main lobby then went outside to stand in the late evening air.
When he stepped off the elevator some twenty minutes later, his eyes widened at the sight of people scrambling from the nurses station, one grabbing a crash cart and racing it down the hall.
Frowning worriedly, he began to walk a little faster toward Uly's room then began running when he saw the first of the running people enter his lover's room.
Only ten minutes earlier, Feral's nap had been rudely interrupted by his sudden inability to breath easily. He woke gasping and struggling to get air into his leaden feeling chest. Distantly, he could hear alarms going off.
At the nurses station alert lights went off. "Respiratory distress, Room 409, stat!" The charge nurse called out urgently. She reached for the phone and sent out an urgent call for Drs. Mewser and Fancier to report to their patient's room then hurried after her crew.
When Shere reached the room, he was forced to remain at the entrance as many people were already crowded around Uly's bed. Someone was holding Feral's wrists to keep him from interfering with those that were trying to help him breathe. When attempts to clear his air way with an oxygen mask failed to help, the intern was thinking to intubate when the doctors on the case dashed in.
After looking over Feral themselves and hearing what attempt the staff had done so far, Mewser instantly asked for an intubation kit. In moments one was opened and set up, the doctor gloved and Feral paralyzed with a drug to make him not fight the tube as the doctor carefully slipped it into the tom's throat then hooked it up to a direct oxygen line.
They watched tensely as the machine began to forcefully inflate Feral's lungs for him. But after only a few short moment they realized something was wrong. It inflated his chest alright but the chest didn't lower on the deflate, it stayed firm. Feral's blood gases were plunging as his body became starved for air from lungs that were too stiff to move.
"We've got to get him in an iron lung now! Call down and have it brought up, stat!" Dr. Fancier shouted as Mewser began to manually compress the chest wall to expel the air in the lungs then allowed fresh air to pump in before doing it again, over and over as everyone else prepared Feral to be placed in the iron lung when it arrived.
The next hour was a harrowing time for Shere who watched with anguished eyes as his lover fought for his life. When Uly was placed in the iron lung, they watched him closely for several minutes. Shoulders slumped in relief when it appeared the machine was helping Feral breath. They waited for twenty minutes to see if they could remove the intubation tube. When his blood gases came up and his chest was maintaining a good rhythm via the machine, only then did they remove the tube.
The paralytic was reversed but it took Ulysses some thirty minutes to fully come out of it and when he did and found he couldn't move, he began to jerk his head around in horror and panic.
"Easy, my love...shuuuu...you're in an iron lung. It's helping you breathe," Shere said quickly, caressing the panicked face to soothe the tom.
Feral wasn't happy. "Kat's alive! People who are put in these normally don't come out again," he said, his voice hoarse from the tube and sounding scared.
"The only reason you're even in that thing is that strange heaviness you have been feeling apparently attacked your chest this time and prevented you from being able to inflate your lungs at all. Until you can tell us your chest doesn't feel heavy, you'll stay in there for now," Shere warned him. "My love, I know you're scared," he murmured closer to his lover's ear. "...but I won't leave your side until you're better so try and relax as best as you can."
Feral grimaced at that statement, 'what the heck else can I do when my body's encased in an iron tube?' He thought bitterly, but he did try to relax even though the heaviness still had not gone away. 'This is so scary and I'm afraid of what more may happen,' he shuddered mentally.
His lover's thoughts echoed his own. 'Curse that stuff, it can still do so much more damage," he moaned worriedly. 'Oh Goddess, please don't take my love away from me not when we have so much to live for now," he prayed.