"Shall we say grace?" I asked, looking around the linen-covered table that Heero, Trowa and Wufei were sitting at and staring at my Christmas Eve dinner with varying expressions of surprise and apprehension.
"Er, is that a goose?" Trowa asked me. He was squinting at it like he'd never seen one before.
"Yup!"
"It looks sort of…singed."
"It's Cajun goose."
"What's that red jelly?" Heero asked, poking my cranberry sauce with the handle of his fork. He looked sort of startled when it wobbled at him.
"Cranberry sauce." I explained.
"Why is it that weird shape?"
"It came out of a can. Ahem. I'd like to pray now if you don't mind." I grabbed Trowa's left hand in my right and groped around for Wufei's hand with my left.
Heero went quiet, although he looked like he might want to shoot the cranberry sauce if it made a funny move. It's a good thing we have a house rule about not bringing firearms to the table.
I got ready to pray again, but Wufei wasn't cooperating. "Er, traditionally we hold hands during family prayer," I told Wufei. He reluctantly put his callused hand in mine. Trowa's warm hand held me on the other side. Heero accepted Trowa and Wufei's hands as we completed the circle. I cleared my throat and began to say, "Come Lord Jesus, be our guest and let these gifts to us be blessed", but I was interrupted by the phone ringing. Wufei, Heero and Trowa all leaped up to answer it.
Oh, forget it. I want to eat.
December 24, AC 199I won the race to the phone, which was a relief since Duo's cooking attempts were scaring me a little.
"Mr. Chang?" Asked the voice on the other end. I recognized him as the idiot doctor who was presumably looking after Quatre.
"Speaking. How can I help you?"
"This is doctor Whitman. I've finished my examination of your, erm, family member, and I have an X-ray that I would like you to see. Can you come by the hospital this evening?"
What a stupid man. What a stupid question.
"Yes, of course. I am on my way right now." I slammed down the phone and turned to face the rest of my 'family members'. "Quatre's doctor has asked me to look at an X-ray. If anyone would like to accompany me, I'll be in my Jeep."
Duo nearly spat out his bite of food. "In the middle of Christmas dinner?"
I was about ready to scream at him when Trowa, already wearing his jacket, picked up a spare plate and began to load it with goose, stuffing, Brussels sprouts, sweet potatoes with Nataku-only-knows why one would want to put marshmallows of all things on sweet potatoes—
Maxwell's cooking has obviously affected my mind. He will be paying for my therapy.
Trowa used the plate full of food (and I'm using the term 'food' in the loosest possible sense here) to lure Duo out the door, and then we all piled into my Jeep and took off for the hospital.
December 24, AC 199Apparently Duo is over being angry with Quatre. As soon as he came into the room and saw the stricken look on Quatre's face, he immediately sat down behind him on the bed, wrapped his arms around him, then gave Quatre his braid to hold like a teddy bear. I don't think it's having the same effect on Quatre as it does on Duo when he's upset, but it is kind of a cute picture.
Wufei is outside ripping Dr. Whitman several interesting new orifices. I certainly wouldn't want to be in his shoes. If I strain a bit I can hear Wufei's voice…"What do you mean you don't know? If I hear 'I don't know' one more time, I'm going to flay you alive with a Swiss Army knife! Go find someone who does know and find them now!"
I love my 'Fei.
Heero, now…well, he's beginning to worry me. He's been staring at the X-ray for over an hour now, and it looks like it's about ready to melt from sheer eyepower. He's also developed the slight nervous tic under his left eye that means that he's getting ready to shoot something just on general principles. I can only hope that he waits till we're out of the hospital before he does it. I don't think the other patients would appreciate the chaos.
When Wufei instructed the doctor to examine the wound on Quatre's head thoroughly, apparently he only saw the patch of scratched and reddened skin at first. They wasted an entire day testing him for every skin disease known to medical science, every allergy, and every drug reaction, etcetera and so on until Quatre finally broke his self-imposed vow of silence and pointed out the scar. I'm beginning to suspect that the good doctor really is as dense as Wufei thinks. Since they were unable to schedule an MRI scan on such short notice, they did a simple X-ray and came up with the image that Heero is scowling at as if it, personally, was the cause of all the woe and suffering on Earth and the colonies.
I don't know how he can stand to look at it like that. When I saw it—that opaque square of foreign material embedded in Quatre's skull—I nearly threw up all over myself. No wonder Quatre looks like he's just seen a whole churchyard full of ghosts. The object is flat and thin and about two centimeters square, and there's some indication that it was originally larger than it is now. The scar tissue from the surgery he must have undergone indicates that it was put there about six or seven years ago, when Quatre was in early puberty.
He was just a child. How could someone do that to a child? Why would someone do that to a child? Well, since we didn't even know what 'that' was, I suppose I'm getting ahead of myself.
I was just about to try to get Heero to put the awful thing down when 'Fei burst back into the room, red-faced and scowling. "Trowa, pack Quatre's stuff. Duo, help him get dressed. Heero, take his chart and that X-ray. We're leaving. Now."
"'Fei? What's going on?"
"We're taking Quatre where we should have taken him in the first place. We're going to the Preventers HQ so Sally Po can take care of this situation. Dr. Whitman is no longer capable of it."
My hands felt very cold all of a sudden. "Wufei? What did you do to him?" I asked slowly.
He gave me the sharklike grin he usually gives me when he's about to inflict a particularly painful love bite on me. "Oh, nothing much…I just put the fear of Nataku into him."
That didn't bode well, but I decided to drop it and leave it for some other time when we were feeling more relaxed. The curiousity probably wouldn't kill me. As I set about collecting Quatre's books and things, I happened to glance at the clock and saw that it was just past midnight.
Merry freaking Christmas.