IV – Dreams and madness
A.N.: Thanks to all my reviewers who keep waiting all the time. I know it's hard to do so and I must confess that I could have updated earlier this time. I hope you enjoy that chapter. Warning: Bad language.
Disclaimer: I don't own any of the KH characters nor the hospital itself, blabla. They belong to Lars von Trier and Stephen King. I nevertheless own Alice Deling and Carmen Crandall.
There is a small border
between the genius and the mad man.
Some cross it several times a day.
Alice Deling was on the move again, as always. She glanced at her watch briefly before she shouted orders at no one in particular, as always. She was used to messed up days. She was used to situations like the one she was in now. She was sure she was.
The telephone rang right after she had sat down to sort in the files on her table. Business was going well. Her firm kept earning money, the clients were content with the service and their number doubled with every week. Taking a sip from the hot coffee on the table, she grabbed for one of the reports before she took the phone in her left hand.
"Hey, darling, it's-"
"Michael!" She yelled excited and almost spilled some of her coffee. "Hi baby, why are you calling? Any trouble with the reservation of the table?"
"No." The reply came short, faint and above all, hesitating. She could already here the breath he took on the other end of the line. "Alice, we can't go on like that. It's over."
"Pardon?" The smile froze on her face, turning into a clown's grimace as the honesty vanished from it. "Darling can you repeat that please?"
"It's over, Alice." The man repeated again. "You know, I'm sorry we've come to that point. I like you, I really love you, but all the time you spent on the job during the last two months… How much time do we spend together a day? Two minutes? Alice, I can't do that. I'm sorry."
"You are sorry." Her voice was still calm, the grimace still on her face. Only a moment after, hell broke loose. "YOU ARE SORRY! YOU FUCKING, SELF-CENTERED MORON! WHO THE HELL DO YOU THINK YOU ARE TALKING TO?"
"Alice, I--"
"SHUT UP!" Her voice echoed through all of the halls, drawing the attention of every single one of her attendants. "You honestly think you can leave me just like that? Get the fuck out of my house, you darn scum and I tell you, if I find you there when I come home tonight I'm gonna bash your freaking little moron head!" Spouting a last curse at him, she threw the phone right onto the next wall. Her face was flushed now, her body was shivering from rage. Her usually perfectly styled hair stood in odd ankles and two of her freshly painted nails were broken. After a second of sheer blindness, she noticed the crowd glaring at her. "Get the fuck out of here!"
Immediately, most of her attendants decided to run. Alice was no one to fool around with. If she was mad, she could not be stopped. Clueless, two of her younger assistants kept standing in front of her office. Paralysed by the fury of their boss, they stood like a salt column.
"What are glaring at, huh?" Still not the least calmed down, Alice grabbed for one of the chairs in her office and smashed it against the glass walls separating her and the secretaries. Suddenly, the glass was everywhere. In her mind, one of her attendants juggled with the numbers. They would have a hell of a time getting the office repaired.
"You are all idiots! You are all ridiculous, goddamn idiots!" Finally, Alice anger started to fade and with it her strength. Tears came up in her eyes, as she sank down to the ground. Only a second later, she felt the worst pain she had ever felt in her chest. Panic set in when she felt breathing becoming harder. "Can't breath… ambulance… call the fucking ambulance." And then, everything got black.
She awoke to the monotonous beeping of machines. An ECG if she wasn't mistaken. She was dreaming. She goddamn hoped she was dreaming. But the male voice that reached her taught her better.
"How is she Ollie?" Danny asked while trying to keep the car in the right lane.
"Doesn't look THAT bad." His colleague answered while fumbling with another injection needle. "Had a little heart attack, but she's returning to normal. Vitals are okay and – hey – she is awake." Astonished, he looked at the widened eyes of his patient. "Hey, miss, can you hear me? Just blink twice if you can." When she did so, a smile stretched across his face. "Wow, can you believe that, Danny? We are actually having one patient who's not dead or unconscious when we reach the hospital. Guess that's our lucky day."
Lucky day? You pathetic moron! Again, rage came up insider her. She would hang him, that son of a bitch. And Michael would be the next. She would hang them all. She-
"Oh, shit, she's dropping again." Ollie exclaimed frustrated as he saw her ECG display some of the wildest outbursts he had ever seen. Frowning, he grabbed for another sedative. "Guess I talked too much again, didn't I?"
A smug smile stretched across Danny's face as he saw the Kingdom Hospital at the other end of the road. ""As always, Ollie. As always."
She fell back into the darkness, but this time it wasn't the cosy one she had come to appreciate. She was inside a building with long halls and lots of doors. It looked pretty much like a hospital. A damn dirty one. Disgusted, she tried not to step into one of the cobwebs or whatever the other stuff on the floor was. "Jesus, this place could need a cleaning crew."
"We are unfortunately out of money." A young, male voice answered. She found him standing right behind her, though she could have sworn that there had been no one when she had gotten up from the ground. "Who are you?" Her voice trembled. Whether from fear, disgust or pure confusion she didn't know. "What do you want from me?"
"No need to be scared." The boy answered, bowing to her slightly. "I'm Paul. Assistant of Doctor Gottreich."
"Gottreich?" She couldn't recall having heard of him.
"Yes, Gottreich. You are lucky to find us. The hospital is big. You can get lost here very quickly." A small grin on his lips, he offered her his hand. "Come. The doctor wants to meet you in the pain room."
"Pain room." She could almost feel her face pale. "This is not real, right? I'm dreaming. No, I'm not dreaming… I… I'm unconscious… yes that's it… unconscious, this is just some sort of vision, isn't it?"
He smiled lazily at the way her voice got higher with every word and sweat started to break on her forehand. Her hands trembled along with her voice. She was scared. On the other hand, she wasn't that wrong.
"So, how is she doing?"
"Hard to tell. She is switching between heart attack and baby-like sleep every half an hour." Lona answered on a sigh. "At the beginning I thought it was her heart, but she is perfectly healthy. Her EEG doesn't show any abnormal things either and the brain scans are as good as they could be. I honestly don't see her problem."
"She is talking to him." Christa whispered as she glanced into the room. Next to her, a grin stretched across Abel's face. "Yes she is. She is in the old kingdom."
"No place for unsteady minds." Both of them said simultaneously and chuckled.
"Get one of the psychs to see her and double the sedatives." Hook mentioned quickly before he rushed out of the room. "I fear her problem lies way behind the borders of reason."
Natalie Rickmann parked the car in the very next parking slot she could find and let out a sigh of defeat. "Peter, are you really sure that you dreamed what you dreamed?"
He grinned at her shortly, but it didn't last long. He could see the exhaustion in her eyes. The pleading look that said nothing more but: Not again, please. Can't we just like… drop that topic?
"I 'm afraid I did." Came his short reply. "I've got to see her. I know you don't like it and you have enough of it. I feel the same." When she glared at him with doubt in her eyes, he reached for her hands. "Believe me, darling, I would love to tell you that it is all just a joke and that we can just drive back home, go to bed and sleep like marmots till morning comes, but I'm afraid we can't. I've got to talk to her. The earlier, the better."
Sighing once again, Natalie got out of the car. "I'm really waiting for all this stuff to end, you know."
Christine Draper was quite surprised to find Peter and his wife already waiting for her. She had just thought of calling them, notwithstanding the fact that it was close to midnight again already and she had expected the two of them to be peacefully asleep in their bed in their glass home. "Strange. One would have thought we'd do this on purpose." She smiled at them and stretched out her hand to greet them. "Nice to see you once again. I hope it's not some sort of injury that takes you here."
"Nothing worse than an injury of my sleep." Peter mentioned. "I know it sounds strange, but I would like to meet Mona Klingermann. And I now THAT sounds even the more strange, but I have seen her in my dreams and she was telling me to come here over and over again. I just couldn't get the picture out of my head."
The smile faded from Christine's face. "Then THIS is probably the strangest of all: She has been calling for you."
"Calling?" Natalie raised an eyebrow sceptically. "But didn't the articles in the newspaper say she couldn't even bring out one word?"
"She can't. Biologically, she can't." Chris explained calmly. "But she did. More than one word. A whole sentence, actually. Please…" She turned around and motioned them to follow her. "This way."
A.N.: Shame on me, I updated so late. Okay, people, I hope you liked this chapter. I know it's all quite confusing right now and I've made up a lot of new questions instead of answering the old ones, but that's KH, right? Well… um … ready to read reviews