New York General
"Christine!"
Bleary-eyed with pain and bloodloss, Stephen stumbled through the ER while shouting at the top of his lungs - lungs he could feel a little too easily as the muscles pulled at the punctured hole that went through his chest.
Stephen had no idea how the male Zealot had escaped from the rainforest Stephen had stranded him in; well, actually he did know but he couldn't believe he hadn't thought of the possibility before. He'd paid heavily for his lack of foresight and the only reason Stephen was even still alive was thanks to his helpful red cloak which had wrapped itself around the male Zealot's head while Stephen escaped to the first place he could think of: a broom closet in the ER wing that he'd once stumbled into in his very early days at New York General.
"Christine!"
At last, the familiar blonde head appeared from around the corner at the end of the hallway Stephen had stumbled out into. Christine's jaw dropped in shock as she stared at Stephen but her medical instincts kicked in almost immediately as she ran to help him when Stephen stumbled into the wall.
"Stephen?!" Christine cried as she ran over, going pale when she saw the blood soaking his robes. "Oh, my God. What-?"
"Get me in an operating theatre now. Just you."
Christine started to protest so Stephen added emphatically, "Now, I haven't any time."
Giving in, Christine hurriedly tugged Stephen along to the nearest available operating theatre, needing to support him the entire way as Stephen's legs threatened to give out beneath him.
"What happened?" She demanded as she pushed her way into the operating theatre and Stephen grunted in pain.
"Stabbed. Cardiac tamponade." He groaned as he all but collapsed onto the operating table where Christine started to pull off everything covering his wound.
"What are you wearing?" She muttered as she glanced once over his cotton robes, speaking mostly to herself while her hands busily cleared his chest so she was able to tap at his skin with her knuckles.
"The chest cavity is clear."
Chrstine turned to switch on the operating machines while Stephen mumbled almost incoherently, "The blood... is in the pericardial sac..."
He trailed off oddly and Christine looked over sharply to see Stephen's head loll and his hand drop off the side of the table.
"No. No no no no no no no!" She cried, rushing back to check on her ex-boyfriend. "Stephen! Stephen!"
There was no response so Christine hastily returned to the heart monitor that had just switched on with all the other machines. Strapping the sensor onto Stephen's chest, she was relieved to hear a heartbeat, even if faint and fading fast. Making her next decision automatically, Christine quickly tightened a long needle onto a syringe, working with quick and efficient hands even if she felt anything but calm.
Grabbing her gear, she returned to Stephen's side and she was just about to puncture the needle into his chest right where his heart was when-
"Just a little higher."
Christine let out a scream and she stumbled back into the surgical tray, needle flailing wildly while her eyes remained wide and fixed on the ghost of Stephen's upper body that was floating right above his unmoving physical body.
"Please be careful with the needle." Stephen warned in far too calm of a tone for Christine's racing heart.
Taking a deep breath, Christine looked slowly over the vision she was seeing: Stephen, semi-transparent and apparently breaking out of thin air as the air shimmered and cracked like broken glass around where his chest was protruding through some invisible wall.
"Stephen? Wh, wh, uh." She needed to take another deep breath. "What am I seeing?"
"My astral body."
His response was not very reassuring as Christine looked from Stephen's apparent ghost to his body lying on the operating table. The heart monitor was still beating (albeit slowly) but if Stephen's spirit was somehow floating above his body...
"Are you dead?" Christine croaked out, desperately hoping for… something. She wasn't sure exactly what, maybe that this was a dream, that she was hallucinating or just that Stephen was fine whatever he was.
"No, Christine," Stephen reassured, "but I am dying."
Christine breathed out heavily, needing to take an extra moment to regain herself.
"Right. Right." Squeezing her eyes shut for a moment and inhaling deeply, Christine returned to Stephen's body. "Yeah. Alright. Okay."
She readied the needle above Stephen's chest again but paused when his spiritual finger appeared in her line of sight. She watched as Stephen sank his forefinger into his chest before she breathed out in wonder as he pinpointed exactly where she should inject the needle.
"Oh wow..." Christine murmured as she sank the needle in where Stephen had indicated. Her eyes glanced again at the terrible wound in Stephen's chest that was like he had been stabbed by something thicker but less jagged than a knife.
"I've... I've never seen a wound like this before." Christine glanced up at Stephen warily for a moment before refocusing on the syringe that was extracting the blood from Stephen's heart sac. "What were you stabbed with?"
"I don't know." Stephen admitted and Christine looked at him in shock.
"Uh..."
Christine looked back down as her syringe filled up fast, before her head snapped back up as Stephen suddenly said in an odd voice, "I'm going to have to vanish now."
"No, what-?" Christine breathed.
"Keep me alive, will you?"
Christine watched, unable to protest or do anything as Stephen disappeared into nothing, his body seeming to duck back through an invisible wall as he vanished. Left alone, Christine breathed out shakily. Willing herself to believe Stephen would be perfectly fine, she muttered reassuringly to herself, "Okay! Okay. Uh-huh."
It was possibly a good thing that Christine was unable to see the astral dimension or else she would not have been able to convince herself so easily. Because floating right next to her, the male Zealot pulled his lips back in a fierce snarl as he faced off against Stephen across Stephen's physical body. Where the Zealot's body was, Stephen had no idea but he suspected the man's physical body was likely still trapped by the cloak.
Stephen moved first, whirling around in a round-house kick that hit the Zealot squarely in the shoulder. The man went flying back, sinking into the ground where he caught himself and launched across the room to punch Stephen right in the stomach. Stephen crashed into the operating room window, and he didn't have time to orient himself before the Zealot was on him again. Punching Stephen in the gut once more, the Zealot then wrapped his hand around Stephen's neck and threw him across the other side of the room.
Stephen flew through the large lamp set up beside the operating table, causing the light to shake just a little bit. Christine noticed and she slowly looked around the room, spooked. She then flinched as the sterile tray sitting next to Stephen's head trembled as a result of the Zealot throwing Stephen onto the operating table in the astral dimension where he proceeded to punch Stephen's head in.
Stephen grabbed the other man's fist and pushed at him, trying to get him off. The two men went toppling over the side of the table as a result, rolling away right through Christine's body. Their combined weight pushed Christine back a step, shocking her and freaking her out.
"Oh, shit!" She gasped as she barely hung onto the needle in Stephen's chest to keep it steady while she hastily returned to her position.
Meanwhile on the astral plane, Stephen and the Zealot went tumbling right through the floor as they both kicked and punched and struggled to get an upper hand. Their brawl took them through the wall and a vending machine, upsetting the contents of the machine. A passing doctor noticed and hurried to pick up the fallen snacks inside the machine's tray while Stephen punched the Zealot away. In that split second of respite, Stephen recognized the doctor as Nicodemus West, his old colleague and one of the surgeons in the ER alongside Christine; and then the Zealot was back and the pair went tumbling away again.
The Zealot threw Stephen up through the roof and back into the operating theatre where Christine was still working over Stephen's body. Not that Stephen really noticed as the Zealot punched him so hard he almost lost consciousness. The Zealot followed up with a fast roundhouse kick to Stephen's head and Stephen blacked out from the impact.
Christine's head jerked up as the heart monitor beeped when Stephen's heart flat-lined, and she hurriedly removed the needle before running for the defibrillators. Charging it up to 200 joules, she warmed up the metal pads before pressing them down on Stephen's chest.
In the astral dimension, Stephen's eyes snapped open before his astral body let out an explosive energy. The Zealot, who had been pushing his hands down on Stephen's head in an attempt to crush his mind and keep him unconscious long enough for his physical body to shut down, was thrown back in the blast and he went crashing right through the surgical tray.
Christine flinched as the surgical tray behind her clattered and rolled away from seemingly nothing. But her priority was still on her friend and she muttered as she glanced at the heart monitor, "Stephen, come on."
She relaxed minutely when the monitor beeped, only to jump out of her skin when Stephen's ghost appeared in her face again.
"Hit me again!"
"Stop doing that!" Christine yelped, glaring at Stephen's floating head but he ignored her as he nodded at the defibrillator.
"Up the voltage and hit me again." He ordered.
"No, your heart is beating!" Christine protested.
"Just do it!" With that, Stephen disappeared again, leaving Christine to grind her teeth angrily.
Still, she trusted Stephen more than he'd trusted her and so she did as he said. Upping the voltage to 360 joules, Christine rubbed the defibrillators before getting ready to hit Stephen again.
In the astral dimension, Stephen launched at the Zealot as the man reappeared through the operating theatre wall and he shoved the Zealot into the wall. The other man tried to fight Stephen but he pushed all his weight against the man just as Christine hit Stephen's body with the high voltage.
Stephen's physical body jerked and his heart almost stopped from the shock; in the astral dimension, Stephen's entire body glowed with bright yellow-orange energy as he hit the Zealot with the powerful energy surge he'd received. The blast was enough to create an electrical surge in the physical world and Christine shrieked as all the light bulbs in the room shattered around her while in the astral dimension the Zealot's spirit exploded into dust.
When at last everything was quiet, Christine slowly peered up at Stephen's motionless body. For a split second, she feared she had killed him as he failed to move and nothing appeared around her.
And then Stephen jerked up, wheezing for air while Christine let out another shriek and almost collapsed from shock.
"Oh god!" Christine gasped, willing herself to be calm before she focused on Stephen as he continued to wheeze. "Are you ok?"
"Ugh, yeah." Stephen groaned, still gulping down air but at least he was still alive. And not… that ghost thing of his.
Stephen breathed deeply while Christine stitched up his chest. She had been silent for a while and Stephen allowed her the time she needed to recover from the multiple shocks he had given her; he knew too well how it felt. Besides, the morphine was making his head feel unusually light (or perhaps that was the after-effect of whatever he'd done in the astral dimension) although he was slowly returning back to Earth with every passing moment.
But as Christine punctured the flesh near the wound and pulled his skin together again, she finally spoke in a quiet voice, "After all this time, you just show up here… flying out of your body?"
"Yeah, I know." Stephen mumbled. "I missed you too, by the way."
Christine raised a brow as she glanced at his face before she looked back at her work while he continued slowly, "I wrote you emails, but you never responded."
"Why would I?" Christine challenged and Stephen looked up at her.
"Christine, I am so, so sorry." He murmured. "For all of it. I mean, you were right. I was a complete asshole and I treated you so horribly and you deserved so much more."
"Stop." Christine interrupted, shaking her head slightly. "You're... you're clearly in shock."
Stephen laughed although it might have been a scoff, and Christine went on sounding more than a little shocked herself, "I mean, what the hell is happening? Where have you been?"
"Well," Stephen sighed, "after Western medicine failed me, I headed East. And I ended up in Kathmandu."
"Kathmandu?" Christine repeated in disbelief and Stephen hummed.
"Yeah."
"What, like the Bob Seger song?" Christine asked skeptically.
"1975, 'Beautiful Loser', side A, yeah."
Christine rolled her eyes at him, his little parlour trick annoying her even as it endeared him to her, and Stephen smiled a little; this was what his life had been before, this was what was comfortable.
"And then, I went to a place called Kamar-Taj and I talked to someone called 'the Ancient One', and-"
"Oh." Christine's brows were up again. "So you joined a cult."
"No, I didn't." Stephen disagreed before he amended, "No, not exactly. No, I mean, they did teach me to tap into powers that I never even knew existed."
"Yeah, that sounds like a cult." Christine muttered.
"It's not a cult."
"Well, that's what a cultist would say." Christine hinted as she snipped the thread on his stitches, making Stephen chuckle.
He had missed this: their friendship, their easy camaraderie, the way Christine could make it simple and better. Maya on the other hand always seemed to make it all complicated and difficult. But at the same time, it was the thought of Maya that forced Stephen to his feet, even though it made him wince.
"Wait, Stephen, wait... what do you think you're doing?" Christine demanded as she fluttered her hands around him as if she wasn't sure whether to push him back down or not.
"I'm late for a cult meeting." Stephen answered as he staggered to his feet.
Christine sighed but helped him, lending him her shoulder to lean on as she led them out of the operating theatre. It was so normal outside, no-one else aware of what had just happened inside the operating theatre and Christine couldn't help but comment.
"This is insane." She whispered and Stephen nodded.
"Yeah."
"Where are you going?" Christine asked as she let Stephen lead the way while he used her as a human crutch.
Her question made Stephen pause and Christine narrowed her eyes at him.
"Can you tell me the truth?" She demanded and Stephen relented.
"Well, a powerful sorcerer, who gave himself over to an ancient entity who can bend the very laws of physics, tried very hard to kill me, but I left him chained up in Greenwich Village, and the quickest way back there is through a dimensional gateway that I opened up in the mop closet."
He gestured at said closet and Christine sighed.
"Okay. Don't tell me. Fine." She said resignedly as she pushed Stephen up onto his own two feet, noting with relief that he was able to remain upright without staggering.
She was surprised when Stephen just looked at her with utter seriousness before he opened the door to the mop closet… and Christine's jaw dropped as she saw a spinning circle of golden-orange light in the middle of the closet. A spinning circle of light that opened up a hole into a long hallway filled with historical-looking artefacts and Renaissance-inspired decor.
She slowly stepped into the closet, unable to tear her eyes off the portal while Stephen closed the door behind them and walked past her and toward the circle. Christine's jaw dropped as Stephen stepped into the circle, walking into the mysterious hallway where he turned to face her.
"I really do have to go." He said apologetically and with a strange look of longing. He stared at her for another second longer before he turned and the circle closed behind him, making him disappear from Christine's sight as he walked away.
She stared in stunned silence into the empty air where the portal had been seconds before, unable to believe what she had just seen. She looked around at the perfectly normal mop closet that no longer held any signs that Stephen had been there which just wasn't possible. Except it was.
Christine breathed heavily; she wasn't sure how much more she could take… and then she let out another shriek as a mop fell over behind her and upset an empty pail.