You can skip the first two parts if you like, they're just a prologue. The story starts (in the present time) at the third part, but I this is a little bit of background I thought was missing when I started this story before. This will probably end up as a Logan/OC some time in the near future.
Disclaimer: I don't own the Xmen or anything affiliated with them. Haven't we been through this already?
Here I am, starting this again. I'm changing quite a bit here, though keeping a lot of the basic background information I used in 'Damnit, I'm Trying'. The rest? Is a whole other ballgame. Starting with a flashback, how the chain of problems started when she was a child, when everyone thought it was a solution…
Reviews and constructive criticism are always loved, appreciated, and worshiped!
Fourteen years ago, March 16th 1992...
"Have you even heard of this doctor, Jared?" Miriam looked down at her unconscious daughter, brushing a strand of strawberry blonde hair away from her face.
Her husband stood at the window on the far side of the room, staring at the scene reflected behind him, in its darkened mirrored surface.
Alicia had been admitted to Miami Children's Hospital three days before, sicker than she had ever been, even in this difficult year.
It started slowly. The illness seemed relatively minor- the first doctor had diagnosed the young girl's stabbing belly pain as appendicitis. Closer inspection had found something with much more dangerous ramifications.
Her internal organs had started to mutate, seemingly without purpose. Miriam knew her daughter was a mutant. Just like she was, her grandmother before her, and her great grandmother before her. Four generations of mutants.
But physical mutations? No one in the family had ever encountered those before.
Negative mutations. They happened all the time, but no one talked about them. Most people were afraid enough of those who had control over their abilities. What would they care about one mutant child who's genetic structure would kill her?
Well, Miriam cared. What mother wouldn't? But for that reason, she kept her own abilities secret. They were shameful and impure. They were nothing but a hindrance.
And now they were killing her daughter.
"What other choice do we have?" Jared turned to face his wife, taking the few strides it took to close the distance between them.
His daughter. A mutant. He hated the very concept of mutation.
Not because they were different, not because they were dangerous, but because mutant DNA had left his only child in a hospital bed, too small and too thin under a mass of Ivs, beeping monitors, and an oxygen mask.
Because it drained the spirit out of his wife, leaving her with deep circles under her eyes, making her seem much older than her thirty seven years.
Despite the fact that he himself was a doctor, this was so far out of his area of expertise. He dealt with quadraplidrics on a daily basis, made life altering diagnostics that decided whether or not a person would ever walk again- but he was clueless about how to save his own daughter.
No one knew how to deal with 'the mutant problem' within the constructs of society, let alone in the medical field. There was no standard of care when it came to mutants, because there were no standard mutants. It was too unpredictable.
When one mysterious doctor had stepped in and claimed that he could save Alicia with a single surgical procedure, it seemed too good to be true.
Miriam had her misgivings about the situation. The name was familiar to her somehow, and left her with a distinctly uneasy feeling. When she tried to reach out telepathically to figure out who the man was, she found nothing. Literally nothing- not a thing to prove or disprove her unease.
When Alicia's acting physician, Dr. Kullson had mentioned the possibility of a little known, but extremely talented surgeon who had offered to take her case, Jared had jumped the gun and signed the release forms before telling his wife the scant details he had received.
It had seemed odd that he refused to have a pre surgery consultation, but he claimed to have all the information he needed about the girl's medical history. Jared wondered briefly how he had come across those records- privacy laws non withstanding, but dismissed it.
That this man should coincidently choose to appear just in the nick of time to save her suggested that perhaps there was something unsavory going on. But if he could save her life, her father would be willing to look the other way on certain issues.
Whether or not his wife agreed to it.
But knowing there were no other options, she did agree. The mother in her could not condemn her daughter to certain painful death.
So they had come to one conclusion: with no one else to turn to, they would leave their daughter, Alicia Rosen, in the capable hands of Dr. Nathaniel Essex.