Chap. 4: Rejected

Stephanie's mother stared dazedly into space in the waiting room of the Sunnytown hospital emergency room. She had been waiting to hear news of her daughter for over an hour now, and she was getting more and more worried by the minute. She hadn't understood any of things that the paramedics had said, as most of it was medical jargon, but she didn't have to in order to understand that her daughter was not in good shape. Suddenly, the door to the waiting room opened and she looked up expecting to see her brother in law Milford Meanswell and his wife Bessie walking in, but instead she saw someone she wasn't expecting.

Sportacus walked into the waiting room, hoping to see if there was any news on Stephanie's condition. It had taken the better part of an hour to get the fire under control, but once the firemen finally got it put out and Sportacus was not longer needed, he had gone back to his airship. It had been around 8:15 by then, but he had been too upset to go to bed. He couldn't stop himself from thinking about what she had told him. I love you. I always will her voice replayed over and over again in his head, even as he'd jumped into the pilot seat of his air ship and headed for Sunnytown. Why did you tell her that…Stupid, stupid, stupid. He continued to beat himself up as he walked into the waiting room.

"Sportacus...hi" Mrs. Meanswell looked at him confused "What are you doing here? Shouldn't you be back in Lazytown helping the firemen?"

"The fire's already been put out. Thankfully it didn't spread to any of the other houses. How's Stephanie?" He said, sitting down next to her.

"I don't know. They haven't told me anything yet."

"Oh, well, I'm sure she'll be alright. Oh…" He stood back up again as a doctor entered the room.

"Marie Meanswell?" He asked, looking at Stephanie's mother.

"Yes?"She said anxiously as she too stood up.

"Hi, I'm Dr. Gramenz. Can I talk to you in private, please?"

"Of course." She followed him into a hallway and looked at him expectantly.

"How is she."

"She's going to be alright. As I'm sure you already know, she was burned pretty badly. She's in a sort of coma right now-"

"Oh, no." The Mrs. Meanswell said, barely above a whisper.

"Like I said, she'll be alright." Dr. Gramenz responded quickly. "It seems to be just her way of responding to all of the chaos that was going on around her at the time It was too much for her to handle all at once, so her brain just shut down. She'll come out of it when her body's ready, but until then there's nothing we can do except wait." There were some other things that he needed to talk to her about, but he decided that they could way for later, given how shaky and worried she was.

"I…okay. Can I see her." She wanted to ask more questions, but knew that it probably wouldn't help her understand it anymore than she already did.

"Sure, she's down the hall, in room 210. I'm sorry, will you excuse me."A female voice came over the loud speakers, paging him to another room, and he walked off down the hall in the opposite direction no doubt to tend to another patient, and Mrs. Meanswell walked into her daughter's room. A nurse was there, doing various tasks with the medical equipment that Stephanie was hooked up too. She sat down and looked at her daughter, whose cheeks were red and slightly shiny from the sweat dripping down on them. I'm so glad your okay, dear. She thought to herself. I honestly don't know what I would do without you.

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Back in Lazytown, Robbie Rotten smiled as he pulled off his firemen's costume in his underground lair. After he had gotten Sportacus to eat the apple he had rushed back to his lair for a costume change. There had been no way on earth he was going to miss that. However, as he ate the piece of cake that he decided was his reward for a job well done, he felt a slight twinge of guilt. After all, Stephanie had been in a fire that had probably destroyed her entire home, and he knew that he hadn't made things any better by influencing Sportacus with his potion and making him feel like he didn't love her. He quickly threw these thoughts out of his head, scolding himself for thinking them in the first place. He was the villain, after all, and his plan had worked. He should feel proud not guilty. And besides it wasn't like he started the fire. He shook his head as all these thoughts got pushed aside by a new plan that would blow his last one out of the water. If could get Sportacus' feeling's to actually change, if only temporarily, than he could only imagine what he could do to Stephanie.

He jumped up abruptly, throwing his cake, which landed somewhere behind him, and then headed back over to his potions book. He flipped through it looking for the concoction that he wanted, the one that would make Stephanie evil, or at the very least make her think more like him. He flipped through the pages, rather violently, until he finally got to the one he wanted. He began to put his concoction together, picking up one vile off of his experiment table after another, until finally he held up the finished product. The apple in his hand was big, red, and juicy, and he knew exactly how to get her to eat it.

"I'M A GENIUS!!! MUAHAHAHAHA!" he laughed maniacally, knowing that this was going to be his best plan yet.

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What time is it? I'm so tired. Sportacus thought as he began to make his way, only half awake, towards his airship. He had wanted to wait for Stephanie's mother to come back into the waiting room so he could ask her how she was, but it was late and he couldn't wait any longer. He had to fly his airship back above Lazytown, and then he needed to get some sleep. Oh well. I guess I'll just have to wait for tomorrow to find out about Stephanie. He wanted to go back in and beg the nurse at the reception desk to let him see her, but he knew she wouldn't and that he had other things to do. The last thing the mayor needs is for the hero of his town to be sleep deprived and out of it. I wonder how he's dealing with all of this anyways…

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Milford Meanswell was in bed, trying to sleep, but he simply couldn't with all the questions running through his mind. How had the fire started? How was his niece? How was his sister? Where had Sportacus gone off too? He hadn't seen Sportacus since around 8:00 that night, when he had flipped off to his air ship and then flown off to somewhere. He hadn't paid much attention; he had been too busy talking to the firemen to see if they knew how the fire got started. He hadn't even noticed that the airship that was usually hovering somewhere above the town hall was gone until he'd gone home and Bessie had come out to him panicking, asking numerous questions about what was going on and if everything was ok and why had Sportacus suddenly flown away without telling anyone where he was going. He had wanted to go to the hospital right then but Bessie wouldn't let him saying it would be best to wait and go in the morning. As he finally drifted off to sleep, his last thoughts were of hoping that he would wake up and that it would all be just a dream…

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Of course, that's what everyone wanted, but no one could change things no matter how much they wanted to. Mrs. Meanswell woke up the next morning from a restless sleep. She was still in the chair next to Stephanie's bed, and she had fallen asleep with her head resting right next to her daughters. She looked up groggily to see that nothing had changed, and that her daughter was still in a coma. She stretched and began to stroke her daughter's hair. The nurse that had been there last night walked into the room again, and seemed somewhat surprised to see the very out of sorts woman still sitting there with her daughter.

"I'm sorry to disturb you ma'am."The nurse said politely. "I have to change her bandages."

"It's fine." The nurse went about doing just that in silence until she was getting ready to leave the room and Stephanie's mother decided abruptly to ask her a question that she had been pondering for a long time.

"Excuse me, but the doctor said she's in some sort of coma. I just want to know, if I talk to her, could she hear me?" The nurse looked at her with pity and said. "I don't know. It's possible. People in coma's do tend to come out of it faster if you talk to them."

"Oh, well, thank you." The nurse nodded, and then walked out, and Mrs. Meanswell looked at her daughter hopefully.

"If you can hear me, than I hope this will help you come to sooner. If not, well no harm done anyways…" She paused, wondering if her daughter could or would actually respond, but nothing happened. She sighed and continued.

"I love you so much. When I pulled up to the house and saw the smoke I… I thought you were in there and I almost had a panic attack. You and your uncle… are all I've got. It's been that way ever since your father died when you were only 6. Do you remember him? I'm sure that it's a subject you'd rather forget altogether. There are times when I would too, but I can't. I loved him more than you could even imagine. I still do." Tears began to form in her eyes. "Please, dear, come out of this soon. Please…"

She looked to see a man coming in with a basket full of fruit. The man didn't say anything, just set the basket down on a table and walked away. There was a note attached to the basket, and Mrs. Meanswell took it off. She knew that she probably should have left it for Stephanie to read, but she was too curious as to who could've sent her daughter something so soon. She was just about to read it when she heard a faint noise coming from Stephanie.

"Mm…mom." Stephanie's chocolate brown eyes opened. "I do remember daddy."

"Oh Stephanie, dear, your awake. Oh, thank god. What is it that you said?"

"I do remember daddy. I loved…love him too. I couldn't forget him even I tried…Where am I? Why are my arms and cheeks burning so bad?"

"Oh my, don't you remember. There was, uh, a fire. You were burned pretty badly."Her mother said gently.

"I member being in an ambulance…It's kinda fuzzy though. I dun member anything else." She said groggily. "Smells like fresh fruit in here. I'm kinda hungry." Mrs. Meanswell couldn't help chuckling at this.

"Is that the first thing that comes to mind, dear?"She laughed lightly. "I think I should get a doctor before we do anything else, ok?" Stephanie gave her a slight nod, and she walked out of the room and down to the nurses station.

10 minutes later and the doctor was there, checking Stephanie out and making sure she was alright. He checked her vital signs on the monitors and making sure that there wasn't any kind of brain damage that had somehow been done, but he couldn't find anything wrong other than the fact that she couldn't seem to remember much.

"It's temporary I'm sure."Dr. Gramenz assured them. "Give it a little while and I'm sure something will jog her memory."

"Uuumm, doctor, what happened exactly. I remember being in an ambulance and a whole lot of chaos before that, it's kind of fuzzy but…well everything after I got in the ambulance is a blank."

"Your brain basically shut down because it was so chaotic. Your body didn't know how to handle it all, so it just gave up temporarily."

"Oh, I see." She really didn't understand at all, but she was too confused to ask any more questions. "Um, I'm kind of hungry. Can I have that apple in the basket over there?"

"Sure." Her mother took the apple out of the basket (strange, apples were her daughter's favorite fruit, and yet Sportacus had only put one in the basket. Wouldn't he have known they were her favorite?), and handed it to her daughter.

"Hmm, it tastes kind of odd. Who's this from?" She said pointing at the basket.

"Well there's a note here… It says 'I know how much you love sports candy. I hope you get better soon.' It's from Sportacus—"

"Sportacus…" She gagged and threw the apple across the room into a waist basket. " I don't believe him. He totally rejects me, and then he has the nerve to try and be nice to me? You can throw his gross fruit away. I don't want it." She practically growled and the machines she was hooked up too, particularly the heart monitor, went berserk. The look in her eyes startled her mother. It was a look of pure hatred. It was a look that her mother had never seen before.

"What in the world?" Mrs. Meanswell mumbled as the doctors swarmed around her, trying to figure out what was happening. "This is going to be a very…interesting week."

I just noticed how overly dramatic this story is so far. Trust me, the drama won't last forever…I don't particularly like too much drama. As a matter of fact, things should start to get very interesting and funny after this, considering how fast Robbie's potions are taking effect… This is also a very long chapter.

Meanwhile, I hope you all have a very Merry Christmas. (Well, that is if you celebrate Christmas. If not well…Merry Christmas anyway)