Chapter Seventeen: The Trail's Cold
Three months later…(Max's 6.5 month of Pregnancy)
Max moved slowly around the spacious apartment, hearing her own movements echoed back to her. She grimaced as her belly tightened, laying one hand on it to try and still her steadily moving baby, "Feels like your running a track there," She whispered softly, lovingly. This was the longest she had carried any child and she found herself having to squash the hope that was rising inside of her for fear of being let down yet again. She prayed again that her luck would hold with this pregnancy, that she wouldn't feel the pain that had always told her before when she was about to lose it, "Don't even think it," She admonished herself.
Sam had said that the baby was developing even better than he had hoped and no signs of deformation existed in the fetus. And he had said that if everything went well she could expect to deliver anytime, and the baby would be able to survive. He wanted to reestimate her due date, but decided against it, unsure whether it was her genetics and coincidentally Logan's, or whether he had made a mistake when he had measured the baby. Either way, the baby was a big one.
She had thought that this was going to be another long and boring day. She had gone shopping early on to get some fruit and such to restock the place. When she had returned she had been greeted with a huge surprise.
Somehow, and certainly that somehow was Bling, Original Cindy had set up a surprise baby shower, and all of her old friends had shown up. She glanced back at the stack of unwrapped gifts sitting on the dining table. The baby had nothing to want for now, somehow her friends had come up with some serious cash and gotten everything that Max needed to get her and her baby started. She had every thing from a bassinet to clothes and food, "You my friend are set for a while." She muttered happily.
OC and Kendra had stayed with her after the rest had taken their leave. They had sat and talked for hours about the good ole days of Jam Pony and Crash and all the friends that they had not seen in years. It was just like old times…well mostly. Kendra was now married to Walter, the cop that used to shake them down every month for money. They had two kids since Max had last seen her a boy and a girl, three and eight respectively. She had thinned considerably, looked great and she seemed happy, though the thought of the two of them together still sent shivers down her spine, it was still weird to her even after all this time.
Original Cindy had not changed a lick, still after the tight-assed white girls and unfortunately still working at Jam Pony. She had said that Normal was still in charge and as ornery as ever. Herbal and Sketchy had gotten together and started their own delivery service some ten sectors away. While OC would have preferred to go and work for the homey's at "Flying Low", she found it too far from the action and had stuck with her job. She had said that there was not nearly as much flavor there as the set that hung out at Crash. Max smiled to herself.
She had relayed to Max that Sketchy hadn't changed a bit, well maybe a little more like Normal really but was still the diz-brained schemer she still remembered. It surprised Max that Sketchy had taken on the responsibility to start a delivery service considering his lack of scruples and just incorrigible behavior. But he managed it somehow and was actually making a profit from it. He was finally coming up in the world the way he always wanted to.
Herbal had finally married his girlfriend after so many years, probably on her threat of leaving him after seven years of living together and not having any legal claim. They were still newlyweds it seemed and OC said that Herbal was happier than she had ever seen him.
She smiled at the remembrance of the last several hours fully realizing that small talk with good friends was something that she desperately needed after the last several months of hopeless search for Logan.
They had been careful not to mention Logan to her or within her earshot, and sometimes that was a very conscious effort. So much of Max's life had revolved around Logan and very early on. She knew they were all thinking in that direction. Zach, Tinga and Tima while trying to be helpful had only succeeded with stressing her out further in regards to the cold trail they were trying to reconstruct.
She smiled wryly as she thought of Zach and Tima, what an odd couple. Zach the straight laced Military man, and Tima, the Rebellious Loner. They were perfect for each other, Ying and Yang and they were very much in love. She was happy for Zach, glad that he finally had someone he could pour all of that caring and passion into and have it returned tenfold.
And she had been wrong, she had thought that Tima would eventually shy away from his Militant manner, instead she had seemed even more attracted to him because of it. Logan had told her just how much Tima had wanted back into the fold at Manticore when he first met her, craving the order and discipline in her life when she had so little of it.
Now Zach? He had just needed a little chaos in his life, just to balance him out. He had mellowed a lot and, she thought she was going to have to thank Logan for introducing them. She sobered as her thoughts settled on Logan again and the silence in the apartment pressed in on her again. She wished the gang had not had to go.
They had been smashingly unsuccessful in finding her husband. Matt had assured her that he was still in the Western United States someplace but could not give her any good evidence to support the boast. He said he had clues, but they were circumstantial at best. He had been able to wheedle some information out of the air traffic controllers about the Helicopter that they had been trying to track. They had been able to confirm that it was headed south, but that was all that they confirmed. Matt had used the heading information that they were able to provide him to further investigate. And that was as far as he had been able to get. The Controllers south of Portland were unwilling to assist him with any information concerning the helicopter citing all kinds of FAA rules about divulging that kind of information. Even Matt's argument about obstructing a kidnapping investigation did nothing to thaw them out.
He had come back and given them the heading drawn out on a map and there were many bases within the line of that heading, but they all knew that the further South the line went that the rate of error went up exponentially.
Unnerved by the silence she decided that she was going to the hospital and visit Kito again. At least there was some background noise to comfort her there, she kept forgetting just how insulated the walls of this apartment were. She grabbed her jacket and quickly left.
She found herself sitting next to Kito as she had done so many times in the past few days. It was the only company he was bound to get, really. He had no family, he had forsaken that when he had opted to rescue her, and though the others knew Kito it was not well enough to feel comfortable sitting at his bedside while he was in a coma. Not that she felt comfortable about it herself, it was awkward to talk to an unconscious person day after day, wondering if it has any affect at all on the patient.
She looked at the younger Manticore. He looked peaceful, the first time she had seen such on his face at all, he had always looked grim, determined or downright unhappy since he had freed her from the prison that was Manticore. She knew he regretted his own decision to leave there, she knew he felt lost and out of place and Max empathized with him remembering her own first years outside of Manticore's influence.
A bandage, one that Sam had instructed that only he was to remove, very carefully covered his barcode. He had recently gotten on the paranoia bandwagon about spies among the staff. The last thing he needed was storm troopers breaking down the doors to retrieve his still very sick patient. Kito's face was now untouched by the scarring that had been heavy on his face when he had first been brought here. The only evidence he had ever been subjected to a near deadly beating was the slight lump on the bridge of his nose. His arm was no longer cast, the bone long healed but still showing the scar where the bones had worked their way through his skin.
Sam had said that Kito's vitals were improving slowly. The swelling in his head had eased and the tissue damage had been less than he had estimated. Yet he remained unconscious, unresponsive to external stimulus. He was still unable to breathe on his own, the mechanized respirator keeping him alive until such time as his brain took over the autonomic function of breathing for him. Just looking at the endotracheal tube made Max gag.
She looked up into his slack face, leaning closer, tucking her elbows into her waist and clasping her hands together over her knees. "Why won't you wake up?" She asked squinting at him, at the back of her mind she knew that Kito could help them determine Logan's location, "Doc say's your fine physically. I need you to wake up. We…I need your help to find Logan…If only you could tell us what you know. I know you have information about where they took him. I've tried…I've tried so hard to find him on my own, we all have. The trail's cold. We are searching out facilities all over the West Coast doing recon to find out if they have him there. But God that is a slow process, and I don't know how much longer I can do without him. You're the one resource we have left and we can't even access the information you have." She stated desperately. Abruptly she leaned back, frustrated and feeling even more silly. Like she was going to wake him on will alone. She shook her head again, smiling grimly, even if he did, there was no way he was going to be in any kind of shape to tell them anything.
For long moments she sat just staring, not really seeing him. Her thoughts raced through her head reviewing the roller coaster of her life, wondering when the people in her life were ever going to catch a break.
She wondered also why it was that Kito lay here motionless, suffering a head trauma, possibly a vegetable for the rest of his life. Her own fall was nearly as severe as his beating had been yet she had been spared, she had suffered no consequences save the scar on her face. How was it that she was so special, that she deserved to live while Kito withered away in a hospital?
"I'm sorry, Kito, for ever getting you mixed up in this mess." She said sadly, "I'm sorry for a lot of things, including the way that I thanked you for your help when I saw you again."
She smiled laughing at herself for never having the courage to say these things to him when he was still with the world.
"Well," Max said sighing grandly, "I think I have taken up enough of your time for today. I will come again soon, I promise, get well Kito."
With that she slowly turned away. As the door shut behind her in the darkened room one finger on Kito's hand twitched.
Smoke obscured the tree where he was hidden, he heard sound of the other kids passing under his perch smiling to himself for his own ingenuity. He was up high and were it not for the smoke he could see everything. A definite advantage, the edge he needed to win the game.
Suddenly a thunderous clap sounded near him and his perch shook violently, and he had a momentary feeling of weightlessness as he was flung out into the air. Then gravity returned and he knew he screamed as he hurtled toward the earth. His vision grayed out as the ground reached up suddenly and grabbed him….
Bright lights were all around him, he was surrounded by doctors in white smocks. His eyes were open he could see everything around him. He was unable to move, not even to blink over his suddenly dry eyes. He tried to tell them that he was OK, but they did not seem to hear him. His heart leapt as he saw the device come out, endotracheal tube, and with it the tool they used to insert it. He tried to protest, again to no avail as his head was tilted back and the cold metal device was inserted into his throat to ease the insertion of the tube…
He started awake to a feeling of gagging, accompanied by a sound like someone gargling and it took him a moment to associate the sound as a product of his choking. Something hard and painful kept his throat open forcefully and he coughed once, seeming to feel every inch of the tube that had been inserted into his airway, he gagged again, his eyes watering from the pain. His body spasmed once causing him to flop in the bed as a fish on land would.
He willed his arm to move intent on removing the source of his discomfort, and he felt it jump and twitch with the confused signal his addled brain tried to send to his fingers. He concentrated harder trying again to get at the thing that was continuing to make him gag. Twitching again it slowly raised off the bed at his side, it felt leaden detached from his body, he could see it move in his still blurry vision but there was no sensation associated with the act. Eventually the hand reached his mouth practically slapping himself in his awkward try to grab the tube. Three tries later he latched onto it pulling it with feeble strength. He was heartened to try again when he felt the pain as it gave a little, and wrapping his still weak fingers around it he tugged some of his strength returning and his throat steadily released its grip on the tube. His gagging continued as the tube came free of his sore and swollen throat. Finally, it was out and he ended up trailing a line of mucus from his mouth across his front and over the railing on his bed as allowed it to roll off his strengthless fingers, where he heard it plop dully on the floor.
He coughed heavily and then gagged, somehow managing to roll to one side before the contents of his stomach ended up all over him. Granted there wasn't much there, but he still didn't want it on him. That act took the last of his strength and he lay there on his side for long moments staring past the monitoring devices all around him to the curtained window. He swallowed convulsively against the feeling that there was something still in his throat, reminding himself that the irritation was gone and that his throat felt that way because of the swelling. How did he know that? Again his brows knit at this new puzzle piece.
His vision was still blurry and he discovered that his depth perception was skewed when he reached for one of the monitors seemingly right in front of him, only he was unable to lay his fingers, even with his arms outstretched, onto the device. He blinked several times alternately closing one eye and then the other trying to judge the distance to that elusive piece of equipment that was suddenly his center of attention.
His body jerked sharply at the sound of a door swinging open behind him, and he wanted to roll back over and face the threat, but his body had betrayed him, no longer responding to his wishes. He lay there his heart racing trying to determine how close whoever had entered the room was to him. His eyes shifted as a blob of white came around the end of the bed and approached his motionless form. "Who are you?" he wanted to say, but an indiscernible sound came from his tortured throat. "What's wrong with me?" He wondered suddenly, his thoughts were working why wouldn't his mouth?
A face swam into his view, a man's face, he was older. There was something-shiny hanging from his neck drawing his attention a moment away from the face. He returned his wide scared eyes to the face as it leaned even closer to him. He was breathing heavy and fast as he stared at the man, wondering who he was and what he wanted with him. He saw the man lift his arm up checking something about him, momentarily he set the arm back down again. A hand reached into his field of view lifting his eyelids and a bright light shone in it making it water some more, it was repeated with his other eye. There was sensation as if some insect was crawling against his scalp and he realized the man was running a hand over his head, checking for something, but he was unsure what.
The man spoke, or so he thought, what he heard was a bunch of deep toned noise, and he wrinkled his brow again at the man. The man stepped away from him momentarily, and he heard a whooshing sound nearby. The man returned and sat by him, and suddenly there was something cool being set against his face and it occurred to him that the man was probably cleaning up the mess he had just made of himself. A few minutes later the cool object was taken away and he felt something set against his lips. He looked up at the man some of the fear coming back into his expression.
The man spoke again, "…water." He heard clearly out of the droning of noise from the man's mouth. He was more than happy to drain the cup closing his eyes at the blissful feel of the cool liquid as it slid down his throat. The small amount the man had offered him was gone all too soon and he found that it was only a tease to his parched throat.
He met the mans eyes, noticing that his face was no longer so blurry as it had been. He pressed his lips together intent on getting the word out right, "Muh…" he wheezed at the man, closing his eyes knowing that wasn't right, "M…more" he finally hissed out through his sore throat. Inside he leapt knowing that he had gotten what he wanted across.
The man shook his head saying in suddenly understandable speech, "Not right now, too much will make you sick," He smiled, "again."
The man stood and helped him roll onto his back again, adjusting the bed a little to raise his head. Kito looked over at the man again, trying to remember something that would explain what he was doing here.