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Toronto General Hospital
Henry Fitzroy dashed into the hospital and up the flights of stairs to find his way to Vicki's room. He had to get to her and find out if she was indeed alive. He barely stopped at home to change his shirt from the blood soaked and torn fabric.
Mike Celluci had bought her to the hospital after staking her with the Illuminasium Del Sol to drain her of her demonic powers that Cascioli had given her in his Asteroth persona. He raced passed doctors, nurses, and other patients as he found his way to the intensive care unit of Toronto Memorial Hospital.
But the doors were sealed and he was unable to get inside.
He knocked on the doors trying to get someone to let him inside. "Dammit!" he shouted. "Dammit!"
The doors did open and there was a nurse wondering what he was screaming about by the doors.
"Can I help you sir?" she asked him.
"I need to find Victoria Nelson," he asked for her of the nurse. "I need to find her. She was brought in after she was stabbed earlier this evening."
"Are you family?" the nurse asked.
"It's OK," he heard a voice call out to him in his panicked state. It was Mike hanging out of the first room on the right side. "He's OK to come in here. It's his girlfriend anyway."
The nurse allowed him to pass and he walked toward Mike.
"Thank you," he replied.
"Don't thank me when you walk in here," Mike replied.
Henry walked passed the curtains and into the room. That was where he got the shock of his life.
His precious Victoria was hooked up to numerous machines; some for breathing and others for putting blood into her body. The smell of the blood covered bandages filled his senses, but the fact that Vicki was in as much pain as the machines that surrounded her scared him beyond reason.
He reached out for her tube and taped covered hand and felt the chilliness of it run through his own chilled flesh. His fingers left imprints on her skin, which gave him the impression that she must be on the verge of death.
"How…"
"We brought her in and she crashed on the emergency room stretcher," Mike explained to him. "They cut open her chest and realized that that thing that we staked her with pierced one of her ventricles that give her fresh blood had ruptured."
"Cut her right then and there on the table," Coreen added in with tears in her eyes. "They had to sew closed the hole and then try and give it blood before her heart gave out."
"She refused to come back and shocked her for over thirty minutes," Mike continued to explain what had happened while he had been fighting Asteroth. "They got her back long enough to intubate her with that tube down her throat. She's been comatose ever since we brought her in downstairs. She doesn't respond to anyone, not even me."
"This is all my fault," he said as he sat at her side. "If I had just stayed here and helped her fight him, none of this would have happened. I should have been able to save her," he shouted slamming his hand down beside Vicki's leg.
"Maybe you can," Mike told him. "You said that Asteroth has a hold on Vicki…"
"Her soul," Henry corrected. "It vanished into the vortex to where I could not get it. Now she is trapped there."
"Then give her a reason to fight back. Come on man, she loves you. I know it. If you give her the strength, maybe you can pull her out of the Underworld?" he asked him.
"I don't know," Henry replied. "It took everything I had to fight him physically. I don't know if I will be able to free her soul from him now that he is in Hell."
"Oh lay off it man," Mike said to him. "If anyone can do it, you can."
"Yeah Henry," Coreen added in. "You love her. She loves you. That should be the key to bringing her soul back. It was his deception without your love here that drew her into his embrace. You should be able to pull her back."
It could work, he thought to himself.
Henry lowered the sidebar on the bed and reached out to brush her tangled hair away from her face. "Vicki," he whispered into her ear. "Vicki, I know you can hear me. I have to tell you something. Something that I know that you have wanted to hear for some time, but I never had the courage to say it. Not to your face anyway. Vicki, you have to keep fighting. I nearly got myself killed in the tower this evening, trying to save you. Please don't leave me now. I know it was my fault for leaving you. I knew that I should have stayed and helped you kill Asteroth, but I couldn't face my fear and save Toronto. I ran away when you would not come with me. You can't leave me Vicki," he continued speaking to her. "I cannot and I refuse to live without you here."
Coreen's watch beeped and indicated that it was near sunrise. "Oh no," she whispered. "It's sunrise outside. You're trapped here in the hospital and won't make it home in time."
"I would rather die than go home right now," he told them. "I will not leave her alone anymore."
Henry reached out for her wrists and suddenly, they started glowing. It however was not the hellfire glow that they often possessed.
Her markings were glowing a heavenly blue.
"Fitzroy?" Mike asked him.
"It's working," he said.
"What is working?"
"My emotion…my soul. It's pulling Vicki back from the Underworld," he told them. "She's trying to come back." He turned to her again. "Come on Vicki," he begged. "You're stronger than him. You can beat him if you just awaken and fight to come back…and be with me."
They watched her heart rate begin to climb upward from the machine. It was still faint, but it was coming up slowly.
"Come on Vicki," Mike said. "Keep fighting back."
The unnatural blue light enraptured her entire body and they covered her form over in the blanket to make sure that no one out in the main part of the ICU was able to see what was going on. A glowing female would be very suspicious and raise concern.
Coreen watched the monitor and a smile began to come across her face as Vicki's heartbeats were increasing. She was getting close to a normal rhythm. "Come on Vicki, keep it up," she begged.
The Underworld
Asteroth was slowly his decent into damnation, the glowing crystal that contained Victoria Nelson's soul flaming in his hands. His hands smoothed around it, knowing that if he held onto it, there was no way that she would survive.
He grinned in appeasement.
Suddenly, the crystal trembled as it floated above his hands and glowed brightly.
"What is happening?" he asked.
Suddenly, the crystal shattered and the blue glowing mist floated away; back towards the mortal world.
"No!" he howled as a hand of glowing flame grabbed him tightly and pulled him deeper into Hell.
Now he was truly damned.
Toronto General Hospital
The sun was about to peak over the city.
Henry stood up and came closer, his body struggling to stand up as the sun was coming up outside. It was a good thing that there were no windows or he no doubt would be frying right now. He didn't know what he was going to do being trapped in this hospital in a perpetual sleep, but he had to place his faith in Coreen and Mike that they would take care of him.
He kissed the side of her mouth, his cheek brushing the tube that was down her throat.
From the floor, a glowing blue light floated upward, shattered into dust, and vanished deep into the core of her abdomen into nothing.
Suddenly, Victoria's eyes shot open and her back arched upward. She was in a panic and her heart was beating rapidly to show it.
"What's going on?" Coreen cried out.
"She's choking on the intubation tube," Mike said. "We have to get someone to take it out of her before she does die."
"Mike, hold her down," Henry ordered as he disconnected the oxygen supply from the tube.
"What the hell are you doing Fitzroy?" Mike asked. "You're going to kill her."
"Coreen, hook up the oxygen to that regular mask right there."
Coreen did as she was ordered and brought the mask to him.
"What are you doing Fitzroy?" Mike ordered, pulling out his handgun, and aiming it at him. "You can't do this nor do you have the medical training to do so."
"She's in distress because she knows there is a tube down her throat and she can't breathe," he told them. "You want to be useful? Prevent anyone from coming in here while I do this."
Mike was speechless, but did as he was told.
He could hear the nurses heading down the hall, calling for an emergency in the room. They were searching for equipment, but could not locate it.
"You've got about a minute Henry," Mike told him and locked the door from the inside.
They placed the bed down flat so Henry would be able to be behind her.
"Hang on Vicki," Coreen said to her.
He angled her head upward so her throat was in a straight line.
"It's OK Vicki," he suggested hypnotically into her ear. "Just relax."
Vicki did relax and her body stopped twitching.
"Here goes nothing," he said and pulled the tube from Vicki's throat in one quick pull.
"What are you doing?" Mike asked again. "I didn't know that drawing comic books allowed you to extubate someone."
Vicki began coughing very roughly to breathe and wheeze in the new clarity that was in her throat.
The nurses and doctors pushed Mike out of the way and were amazed at what was going on.
Coreen placed the mask over Vicki's face and she began to calm and settle down. Her coughing began to cease as she was breathing normally.
Vicki slowly calmed down, closed her eyes, and went back to sleep.
The nurses and doctors were in shock that normal people were able to remove the ventilation tube and get Vicki breathing on her own.
"What's wrong with her?" Coreen asked the nurse. "I thought that was supposed to help."
"She's exhausted," Henry said. "She's had a rough couple of weeks…" and he no longer could resist the sun's pull and collapsed to the floor.
The nurses and attendees that had come to answer Vicki's emergency wanted to rush and take care of him, but Mike asked them to stop.
"No, no, he's OK. You see," Mike said, "he has narcolepsy. He just goes to sleep at random anywhere. He'll be fine. Although we might want to get him off the floor."
Coreen saw the armchair. "Let's get him into the armchair so he can sleep and then he will wake up and be at her side when he does."
"Good idea Coreen," he replied.
Nurses and orderlies helped him to lift Fitzroy up from the floor and carry him to the chair. It wasn't easy getting him comfortable to where it would look like he was sleeping, but they could arrange him later once the regular people were out of the room.
"I am going to go report in, see how much the world has changed," Mike said. "You arrange him so that it looks like he just decided to take a nap."
"Sure thing," she replied.
Coreen was left in the room alone with Vicki and Henry. She covered him up in a blanket and popped the footrest up so he looked to be reclining.
"There," she said. "See you in a few hours."
But after Coreen left a sleeping Vicki and Henry in the room alone, she did not notice the ominous glow that was coming from underneath the blanket.
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