Chapter Ten

Donny's Secret

Tara Maclay, RN, prophet-dreamer, truth seeker, and demon killer awoke to a whitewashed slat of morning sunshine directly over her eyes. The sun confused her for a moment – she was diligent about drawing the heavy drapes in her bedroom before slipping off to bed. She blinked several times; the glow wasn't quite powerful enough to sting her eyes, but it was enough to wake her from a slender and painful sleep. It took only this slim moment for her to recognise the antiseptic smell of the hospital, the faint tang of industrial laundry detergent right under her nose, and the slightly hissing sound emanating from the bank of dials and machines surrounding the bed. She slowly lifted her chocolate brown head and looked about her in shock.

Where was she?

She was lying in a narrow hospital bed, her left hand stabbed with an IV needle, and she was covered with a light blue blanket. Her face throbbed with her every heartbeat, so she lifted her right hand to touch her cheek. Her shaky fingers traced three wicked lines that weren't deep enough for sutures, so they were being held together with white tape. She tried to sit up, but was violently clenched with a sword of pain through her chest and she sat back, wheezing. She looked down and carefully peeled the blanket away from her chest, then lifted her robe to have a peek.

Tara's entire chest was covered with a bandage already pink with blood, and she gulped, dizzying fainting stars blooming on the edge of her vision. Near frantic, Tara looked for the nurse call button, and depressed it as soon as she found it.

It took only a moment for an apple-cheeked matronly woman to bustle past the curtain separating her from the others in her room. "Goodness, Tara, we didn't expect you to be up so soon," the woman clucked. Tara looked at the woman (Helen, by her name tag) and weakly asked, "What am I doing here?"

The nurse was already taking Tara's blood pressure and slipped the monitor over her finger to take her temperature. "We were hoping you could tell us," Helen said. "The police want to file a report, we're to call them when you feel up to it."

Helen had very dark brown eyes, and as soon as Tara looked at them she felt her face whiten. She remembered. She remembered looking into the maddened eyes of the demon, and seeing her own reflection, her own black and hate-filled eyes staring back. Tara was just about to ask the nurse what colour her eyes were when she stopped herself. That was a question you asked only if you wanted a one-way ticket into the psych ward.

"Police report?" Tara managed to ask.

"Well, yes," Helen said, the blood pressure cuff finally exhaling on her arm and the nurse calmly ripped it away. "The young man that brought you in early this morning said he found you like that in the park. Said you'd been attacked, and he managed to scare some of them off. Though what you were doing in a park that late at night, I just don't know," the nurse added in a blank tone of disapproval.

Tara looked around the room and saw her purse sitting on the shelf next to her. Helen followed her eyes, and said, "We found your contact information in your purse and we phoned your father. I think they said your brother was going to try and see you."

Tara grimaced and closed her eyes, wondering if Donny would really come. Her home was on the other side of San Francisco, which meant it was a nearly seven-hour drive to Los Angeles. Would he come, or would it be her father? Hoping against hope that it would be indeed Donny coming and not her father, she managed a small smile, but her face creased with too much pain. Helen noticed and said, "The doctor has approved you for painkillers. Would you like something for the pain?" With her eyes still closed, Tara nodded. "Are you allergic to any painkillers?" Tara shook her head.

Helen left and returned in a few more minutes with a syringe that she pushed into the port on Tara's IV. "Just some Demerol and Gravol, dear," the nurse said as the drugs liquefied her consciousness and she tossed herself into a narcotic sleep.

When she groggily opened her eyes again it was late Saturday afternoon. She looked around her room but couldn't see much owing to the curtain drawn around her bed. Now she could hear the bustling sounds of the hospital and thin shreds of conversation from the people around her. She found the call button and pressed it again, not trying to get up.

It was a different nurse this time, a short and stocky fellow named Daniel. "'Bout time," he said with a smile. Again the inevitable blood pressure cuff came on her arm and the monitor on her finger. "And how are we feeling?"

Tara's tongue felt thick with sleep and the narcotic drug and she answered, "I'm all right. When can I go home?"

Daniel pierced her with a glare. "Do you even know how hurt you are?" he asked, starting the blood pressure machine. She felt the uncomfortable pinch of her upper arm as the cuff bit into her. She shook her head. The nurse seemed about to start a massive recitation (ah the poetry of wounds) when there was a knock on the door and she could hear the familiar voice of her older brother say, too loudly, "Is there a Tara Maclay here?"

Daniel strode to the curtain and pulled it aside, letting in Tara's brother. He already looked angry, and Tara wished the good nurse would just knock her out again and spare her the lecture. Donny stood in stoic silence while the nurse finished scribbling down Tara's vitals, and only spoke once Daniel had left.

"So. Here I am. To rescue you like usual," Donny said, pulling up a cheap plastic chair and sitting next to her. "What were you thinking? Why are you in LA?"

Tara closed her eyes. Between the incessant throbbing of her slashed skin and the hurtful words of her brother she felt like sobbing. Couldn't he just once be nice to her? Just once?

"I mean, it would sure be nice to pick up the phone and hear something other than, 'Oh, Tara needs an animal,' or 'Oh, Tara needs to stay at work', or how about, 'Oh, Tara has been knifed in the chest in the middle of the night in LA'." His voice was thick with derision, but he kept it low, not wanting to alert the three other patients in their large hospital room.

Tara couldn't help it now. She began to weep, and she felt her tears slide down her face to sting the three slashed grooves in her ravaged cheek. It was true. He was always rescuing her. Couldn't she ever just grow up? Her silent tears threatened to turn into sobs and she desperately held them at bay, knowing what exquisite pain would knife her chest if she allowed herself to bawl. "Please, Donny," she whispered, not even knowing what she was really pleading for. Forgiveness, maybe. For him to stop hurting her, surely.

She heard him sigh, then the chair creaked and she opened her eyes a slit. He was leaning back, taking out a toothpick and putting it in his mouth to gum to death. "I mean, Tara, it has only been a few days since I saw you last," Donny continued. "So what happened?"

Tara opened and closed her mouth, not sure of what to say. And Donny saw it. "Want to lie to me?" he asked viciously. "Honestly, Tara, how am I supposed to love you when you act like this?"

What did he just say?

Tara blinked her eyes slowly, adjusting her teary focus. Donny pulled his chair close to her bed, the toothpick splintered in his mouth. "I don't know why you have the magic," he continued in a low voice. "You are so weak. All someone has to do is bat their eyes at you and you'd die for them. If I had your power, I'd…" and he trailed off, trying to regain his temper. Tara could only stare at him in amazement.

"In all your running around to save the world, have you ever discovered how to save yourself?" he asked her, threading his voice with black menace and stabbing her with it. "You're a healer, why don't you heal yourself?"

Tara closed her eyes again, his words crashing in on her like physical blows, and more tears seeped from her eyes. Oh, why did he come? She cleared her throat and opened her eyes again. "You know I can't heal myself, Donny. It doesn't work that way."

A momentary flicker of triumph passed over Donny's face and he actually laughed at her. Laughed! A red-hot sheet of anger passed through her, and she let it show on her face. She opened her mouth to say something, but Donny over-rode her, and she allowed herself a momentary sigh of frustration. Seemed that everyone was interrupting her these days.

Donny had masticated his toothpick into a pulp, and he spit it into the small garbage pail by her hospital bed. It was nowhere near dark outside, but Tara still wished that visiting hours would close soon, so he would just leave her alone. The narcotics had almost entirely worn off and she could feel nausea under the intense pain. She needed another shot, and soon.

"I guess it's time for me to give you a magic lesson," Donny was saying. Tara looked at him in surprise. Donny's face had softened immeasurably, and for the first time in many years Tara thought that he could actually be handsome. "Mom died before you were ready for the last two lessons. She gave me instructions to teach them to you at the right time. Guess that time is now."

"Mom gave you magic lessons?" Tara breathed.

"My secret is out," Donny chuckled, and Tara could just sense his elation that he knew something about the magic that she didn't. "Are you ready, sis?"

"Yes."

"You need to be sitting up more," Donny said, moving to the foot of her bed. "Brace yourself, I'm going to crank you up a bit." Not really waiting for a response, he cranked the foot of the bed, slowly, and she rose up to a half-reclining position with a resulting screech from her wounded chest and she grit her teeth.

He returned to his seat next to her, took a deep breath, and started to speak. "Mom knew that there would come a time when you would injure yourself physically. Not by taking the pain of others, but a hurt you acquired all on your own. She told me to wait until at least five years after she died, and to wait until you were really badly hurt, too. When I asked her why I had to wait, she said that you weren't emotionally prepared yet for the lesson. But I guess it's cuz you're just plain stupid. Honestly, I really thought you'd figure it out by now. It's not even that hard. I guess you've never had occasion to use it, though."

Tara frowned at him. "No reason to get all snippy," she said.

He shuffled close to the bed and said, "Take my hands." She softly took them, and felt the hard calluses on his palms. "Close your eyes." She closed them, panting a little because of the pain. "Now extend your awareness into my body, but stay close enough to hear my voice." Tara did as he asked, and in the darkness of her mind she extended a tendril of thought through his hands and into his body and waited there. "Next part is simple. It's healing, just backwards. Take my cells into your body and use them to knit your wounds together."

"That's it?" she asked, frowning at herself for not picking up on it. Stupid, stupid, stupid Tara!

"Yes, but it has to be your own pain, not someone else's. That's the point."

Tara thought back to yesterday and the overwhelming pain she felt as she healed Willow's wound, and then the pain of the demon attack and she felt weary. She had been in so much pain lately, glutted with it, clotted with it, and all because of Willow. She thought back to her dream and how she had so eagerly fed on the purple stain of the goddess. Gods, she was naïve. Why was she sacrificing herself like this? For love? Willow was in a coma. Besides, who even knew if Willow was gay? It would be just like her to throw her heart and soul into healing a woman who would just leave her in the end.

And the taste in her mouth was bitter, bitter.

No use crying over spilled milk, Tara. What's done is done. Besides,

not even the poet knows the end from the beginning

where there is love, there is always hope. And I think I love her. So I'll do whatever it takes, even using Donny like this. Tara grasped his hands a little tighter, and the tiny part of Tara that was still awake and mindful heard Donny gulp.

"What is it?" she asked, her eyes still closed.

"What if you take too much?" he asked quietly, and she could actually feel his fear through his fingers. She almost asked if mom had ever used him like this, but she didn't, fearful of the answer.

"I won't. I promise. Besides, you can pull your hands away anytime and it will sever the connection."

Gladly and rejoicing, Tara sunk into Donny's body, his healthy farmer's body, and lined up a procession of cells. She eagerly pulled them across the barrier of skin and sent them flying to her chest. Long minutes passed as she continued to pull, and she could feel new flesh growing, as the horrific flaps of demon-shredded skin began to knit together.

"Tara," Donny choked, trying to pull his hands away.

But she felt exhilaration, and power

(you are the Kraken)

and she pulled and pulled and pulled, her pain dissolving into nothingness, wonderful streams of strength and vitality, and she felt buzzed, just like after taking an animal.

Wait.

This was no animal. This was Donny.

She wrenched herself away and Donny collapsed on the floor, shivering. "Donny, I…" Tara stammered, sitting up in her bed and putting a hand to her chest. She touched herself tenderly, then with more force. She lifted the top of her robe and peeled away the tape that held the bandage to her.

The three terrible gashes had shrunk to three shallow cuts, much like the ones in her face, and she bitterly reflected that if she had hung on longer she might have healed them entirely.

But then she might have killed her brother in the process, and she whirled to look at him, deep concern written plainly on her face. Tara wanted to apologise, to say, 'You didn't tell me,' but it was probably far too late for that.

"You bitch," Donny snarled, wheezing on the floor. "You just use me. That's all you ever do."

"No, Donny, I – I'm sorry," Tara said, and suddenly her heart was breaking. He was right again. All she ever did was use him, and keep him out of her life, and for what? She wasn't a child anymore. Couldn't she find enough compassion to forgive him?

Donny lurched to his feet, clutching at his side, his face white with fury and pain. "Get your own gorram animals, Tara. We're through." He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out an envelope, throwing it at her face. She put up her non-IV'd right hand just in time to intercept the white bullet and looked at the writing. It was her mother's.

What?

"Donny, please," Tara gasped, her voice breaking, reaching out an arm to stop him, to tell him she was sorry and more than sorry, and that she would do anything to make up for what she had just done. Her questing fingers found the edge of his jacket as he turned to leave and she pulled.

Oh no.

Donny hadn't hit her in years, and her reflexes had dulled in the passage of time. His balled-up fist streaked unerringly for her face and she did nothing to stop it. With a resounding crack and a bloom of pain, Donny punched her in the eye, the same eye nearly ripped off by the demon's claw.

"Hey, what's going on in there?" she heard a tremulous voice say from somewhere beyond the curtain. Tara put her hands up to her face and cried, so she didn't have to see the precipitous departure of her only brother, the brother she had just used, as horribly as he had ever used her. Amidst the agony of her face she could remember the horrifying tableau in the cemetery, as she saw her reflection in the demon's eyes, her own eyes deadened and blackened and rotting in evil.

Gods, what is happening to me?

Is Willow truly worth all this?