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Sue let more tears flow down her face as she held her husband's hand, lightly fingering his white gold wedding ring.
The private room in the hospital was quiet, on account of the steady bleeping of the heart monitor wired into Reed. 'Stable' was how the doctor described his condition. Ben had shrugged at the mention of the word, 'stable' only meant his condition hadn't changed for a few hours. In fact, he hadn't improved at all since they'd brought him in.
It was Sue that found him lying on the floor of the laboratory. No-one knew what he had been doing, or about the experiment he was working on. He'd been working on something for the past few weeks, but had kept quiet about it. He had injected himself with a syringe, but a syringe filled with what?
Johnny had been sitting in the kitchen, Sue had just left him to take Reed a coffee. He hadn't been to bed that night, she'd assumed he'd gone for an all nighter. Johnny had told Ben he'd heard the cup hit the floor, and Sue call for help.
He'd found her kneeling next to Reed, who was lying on the floor. "He looked dead," Johnny had confessed to Ben as he'd told him what had happened.
Ben had raced back from the Baxter building as fast as his body had allowed him. He'd been with Alicia, it was their five year anniversary-dating wise, not marriage.
Johnny had joked as he was getting ready that it was time her was to make an honest woman of her. "You looked good in your suit at Sue's wedding," he'd offered in support. Ben smiled un-easily, and suggested that it too was time for him to think about settling down.
Johnny pointed out that teenage girls wouldn't find him attractive and loveable if he had a ring his finger.
These fun, laughable, occasions had only happened in the last twenty-four hours, but to the trio, it had felt like a lifetime away.
Reed's face was pale, and his eyes were sunken in, surrounded by dark circles. His normal flexible was taught like rubber, rather than it's regular elasticated form, and he was cold.
Sue was glued to the spot in the chair, and didn't notice Johnny behind her until she felt a gentle hand on her shoulder.
"Thought you might like some herbal tea," he offered gently.
She blinked away the tears in her eyes, and forced a small smile and said "Thank you," taking the plastic cup from him.
"Dunno how good it is," he said, "Came from a vending machine."
"It's fine," she relied, taking a sip and grimacing slightly.
"I didn't even know vending machines did herbal tea," Johnny had said, "Don't even think it is herbal…" he was babbling, he knew that, but he was nervous.
He turned on the sounds of heavy footsteps behind him, and saw Ben standing in the doorway. He signalled to him to come over, Sue had turned her attention back to Reed.
"You find something?" Johnny asked Ben. The Thing had been doing some digging in Reeds laboratory to see if he could find anything that made sense with his friend's condition. Ben decided it was best for him to do the snooping as opposed to Johnny, as he figured he knew more about Reed. The real reason was because he couldn't bare to see his friend lying in a hospital bed looking so helpless.
Ben nodded, "Yeah," he was silent a little. "It's not good," he confessed, and held up a piece of paper for Johnny to read.
"It's just a letter…" he said glancing at it.
"Read it!" Ben commanded, and Johnny did so. Too slowly for Ben's liking, "Down here," he commanded pointing at the end of the letter.
Johnny's eyes focussed on the signature, his eyes widened in a mixture of surprise, horror and astonishment. "No…" the young man whispered.
The orange man nodded, "Yeah…" he said. The letter was dated just a week before, and the letter signed 'Victor Von Doom.'
