CHAPTER SEVENTY-SEVEN
Jane remembered nothing of how she got to the hospital. Her memory was shot. She couldn't remember any of the doctors that asked her questions. She couldn't remember that she hadn't answered them.
All Jane could think of was her mother lying on the bathroom floor in a pool of her own blood, taking her last breaths. She felt as though someone had scooped out all of her insides and filled her with lead.
Patrick Hensworth, who had gotten a call in the hotel in London he'd been staying at, finally arrived when the sun was starting to come up. There, he found his daughter covered in his wife's blood, rocking slightly back and forth, staring off into space, and not responding to anything.
He kneeled down in front of the chair she was in and grabbed her arms to still her.
"Jane! Jane, what happened?"
Jane vaguely registered the sound of her father's voice, but it was so far away, and she couldn't see him for the mental picture of her dying mother.
"Jane? Jane, say something!" her father begged, but once again she did not respond.
Jane did nothing to indicate that she even knew he was there. She continued to rock back and forth, staring off at nothing.
Her father stepped back from her.
"What's wrong with her?" he asked a nurse in a frantic voice.
"She's in shock, sir," said the woman.
"Where's my wife? What happened to my wife?" he demanded to know, his voice getting loud.
"Sir, you're going to have to calm down," the nurse said.
"Calm down? You want me to calm down? I get a call in the middle of the night telling me that my wife and daughter are in the hospital. I drive for two hours to find my daughter covered in blood and looking like a bloody mental patient, and you tell me to calm down?" he said, elevating his voice further.
"I want to see my wife! Where is she?" he continued.
The nurses and doctors that were around said nothing, but they all had rather identical looks of pity for the man. He did not know that just a few floors down, his wife's cold body was being wheeled off to the morgue.
"Where is she?" he demanded again. "What happened to my wife?"
And when a brave doctor stepped forward to inform him of his wife's passing, Patrick Hensworth fell to his knees, weeping like a small child.
It was a sight to see. A fifteen-year-old girl, who for all intents and purposes was incapacitated by her own mind, covered in the drying blood of her dead mother (after hearing of what damage had been done to the house, people were afraid to touch her), and a grown man crumpled on the floor, his body being racked with sobs.
Jane would remain unresponsive for two whole days. She remembered nothing of finally being cleaned up. She remembered nothing of the wizards from the Accidental Magic Reversal Squad coming to talk to her. She did not remember being removed to St. Mungo's. She did not remember her father holding her in his arms and begging for her to be okay. She was busy reliving the scene of her mother's death. The blood. The screams. The last breath. Her frantic cries of:
"No! No, no, no! Please! Please wake up! Please, don't leave me! Don't leave me!"
Jane remained in such a state of shock, that the people who tried talking to her were almost scared that she had gone mad. She said a few words now and then, but they were inaudible. On very few occasions, she would scream and throw a fit in which things would fly across the room. No amount of magic would break her from her stupor. It seemed her mind was on lockdown, and no one could reach her.
The first thing Jane remembered was waking up in a hospital bed. She wasn't sure how she got there, and she felt very faint. She spotted a woman in lime green robes with the symbol of a bone and a wand crossed on her uniform.
Jane called out to the woman, and she found that her voice was hoarse with lack of use. The witch rushed to Jane's bedside, and gently pushed Jane back down on the bed, as she had been trying to get up.
"You need to take something to revive your strength first, dear," the woman said. "You haven't eaten in a while."
With this being said, Jane noticed that her stomach was painfully empty. And it lurched and turned, begging for some sustenance. Again, Jane noted how faint she felt; the woman had only to use very little force to push Jane back down again.
"Where am I?" Jane asked.
"Saint Mungo's Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries," the woman replied.
"But I'm not sick," Jane said.
The woman gave Jane a pitying look, and suddenly it all crashed back to her. The screaming and crying. The blood. The blood was everywhere.
Jane's stomach gave a sudden lurch, and she leaned over the side of her hospital bed and vomited yellow stomach acid which was all she had to throw up. She coughed and gagged, and she kept picturing her mother's body. Why couldn't she stop picturing it?
The Healer pushed Jane back onto her bed and cleaned the vomit with a flick of her wand. Jane was breathing heavily now. It all seemed so surreal, like a very vivid nightmare. But Jane knew it had happened, and though her body shook, and though she wailed in grief and agony, she found she could produce no tears. It was as though her supply of them had been dried up.
The Healer soothed Jane until she was back to her right mind. And she held out a cup of orange liquid for Jane to take.
"Drink this," she said. "It'll make you feel better."
Jane downed the insipid potion and waited. While it revived her physically, nothing could be done for the emotional drainage that she felt.
"What day is it?" Jane asked, still trying to remember how she'd gotten there.
"It's Monday."
Jane's brow furrowed.
"No," Jane said, as though the woman had lied to her. "No, yesterday was Friday."
"You've been in shock for two days," the woman confirmed.
"I-I don't—I don't remember," Jane said, stumbling over her words, trying to recall the past two days.
"That's quite normal with shock patients."
"Where's my dad?" Jane asked.
"He stepped out for a minute. Said he needed some fresh air," the woman said.
"I want to see him," Jane said.
"I'll see if I can find him," the Healer said before walking away.
Jane sat up in her bed with her knees pulled to her chest. She buried her face in her knees and shut her eyes really tight. However, she immediately snapped them open again when the picture of her dead mother came into view.
And too frightened to even blink for fear that she might see her mother again, Jane waited for her father to show up.