Chapter 15 – Epiphany

At some point her eyes ran dry and her sobs choked down into weak hiccoughs. She was sitting in a sort of daze, still crouched down on the floor in the wide hospital hallway without the inclination to move. She didn't have any idea how much time had passed or what was going on around her. She only stirred back to reality when someone knelt at her side and placed a hand on her shoulder.

"Ma'am?" Audrey blinked slowly, her eyes feeling coarse and gritty, and looked up at the face. He was an older man, flecks of gray in his brown hair, and his eyes were compassionate. "You're Agent Parker, right? My name is Travis Martin."

It took a minute before Audrey realized that she recognized the man's face. He was the doctor that had pulled Nathan's hand out of hers. "Nathan, is he?"

"He's stable," the doctor assured her quickly, the hand on her shoulder tightening supportively.

"What happened?" Audrey asked. Now that she was faced with information, the fog in her head was clearing away and she was reverting back into cop mode.

The doctor grimaced for a moment, and then resumed his professional expression. "It was a stroke," he said. "A hemorrhagic stroke, meaning there was a blood clot in his brain. Judging by the loss of motor skills and the ability to speak, it was most likely located near the brain stem. Because of its location, it was too dangerous to operate and relieve the pressure, but we managed to stabilize him. However, his situation is still very dangerous."

"Can I see him?" Audrey asked hopefully.

At this Dr. Martin stood up and offered a hand down to her, which she accepted. "He's in ICU and normally you wouldn't be allowed in, because you're not family," he said.

"Please, I'm working his case," Audrey said quickly. "We were working a double homicide and he was targeted by the killer. I need to see him to continue our investigation."

Dr. Martin nodded. "I understand, Agent Parker, I wasn't going to stop you," he said but his voice had taken on a gentle tone again that made Audrey's nerves prickle. "But I have to tell you, he won't be able to help you." When Audrey frowned, he took a deep breath and said, "I'm afraid he's comatose. The pressure on his brain is what forced him to lose consciousness in the first place, and even though he's stabilized, he hasn't regained consciousness yet."

Audrey placed a hand back against the wall to steady herself, but beyond that she showed no obvious signs of what she'd just been told. Nathan was in a coma. Yesterday he'd lost his hearing, this morning his sight, and now, just hours later, he'd lost consciousness. He was deteriorating so quickly now, she couldn't help but wonder what next? What did he have left to lose?

"I want to see him," Audrey said firmly. Dr. Martin nodded and gestured for her to follow him. He led her to the elevators and when it stopped on another floor he led them down several long corridors until they reached a set of sealed off double doors. With a nod to the nurse behind the glass, the doors opened and he steered her to the third door on the right.

The room looked just like any other hospital room; stark white, with a standard metal bed frame and lots of beeping computers positioned around the headboard. Nathan's long body was tucked beneath the plain blue blanket, several wires attached to his bare chest with another few stuck to his forehead and a thin rubbery tube running beneath his nose. Under the harsh light, the shadows on his face looked deeper and he looked to have aged a decade since the last time she'd seen him. His only movements were the faint rise and fall of his chest. If she hadn't known better she might have thought him asleep. But she did know better; this was the sort of sleep he might not wake up from.

"If you need anything, just call," the doctor said in a quiet voice – Audrey recognized it as the sort of voice one used on a death bed and she hated him for it. "I've got to call his father and get the rest of the affairs sorted, but I'll be back shortly." With that he patted her shoulder one last time and then left the room. Audrey hardly noticed.

"Oh God, Nathan," she breathed and she walked to the edge of the bed as cautiously as if she were walking over ice. Like at any moment the ground would slip out from beneath her, even though she was certain it already had. She perched herself on the plastic chair that had been set beside the bed and reached up to touch his hand lightly. Although she'd only discovered it an hour or so ago, she knew that under normal circumstances he would have felt it. Reacted to it. This time he simply slept on.

She was lost. She didn't really know what to do anymore. Rationally, she should be out, hunting down the killer and trying to make them reverse whatever they'd done to Nathan. But she didn't know who it was and she wasn't any closer to having some stroke of brilliance that would solve everything. Now, with Nathan balanced so closely on the edge, she didn't dare leave him. Every time she had left him over the last few days, he'd gotten worse. She was afraid if she left again, this time he wouldn't be there when she got back.

Sometime later, her phone rang and Audrey answered it on autopilot. "Hey Audrey, it's me," Duke said through the phone. "Sorry but I've been over this list like three times now and I'm not finding anything. Did you find anything out?"

"No," she said distractedly. "Nathan got worse."

"Worse how?" Duke asked and she could hear a note of anxiousness in his voice.

"He's in a coma," Audrey explained. From the other end of the line she could hear a stunned silence and then Duke breathed out a quiet oath.

"I'll be there in just a bit, 'kay?" he said. Audrey tried to argue but he just talked over her. "No offense Audrey, but I'm pretty sure you shouldn't be alone right now. You're a crazy chick with a gun. Bad combo. Besides, Nathan's dog won't leave me alone. She's been glued to my side since you guys left and I'm pretty sure my pants with be forever drool stained." Without giving her another chance to argue with him, he hung up.

Audrey simply sighed, placed the phone back in her pocket, and went back to her steadfast holding of Nathan's hand. She had wrapped both of her hands around his, hoping that somewhere deep in his subconscious he would be able to feel it and know that he wasn't alone.

Fifteen minutes later Dr. Martin returned and said, "Agent Parker, there's a man waiting for you outside the ICU. He wants to talk with you." Audrey hesitated, looking down at Nathan and their intertwined hands. The doctor smiled sympathetically. "We're going to run a few neurological tests on him, if you could just step out," he said. "And Chief Wournos should be here any minute. He won't be left alone, I promise."

For a moment Audrey wanted to dispute that fact with him; after all she was the only person that Nathan would know was here. That was provided he even did know that she was there. Instead she just nodded and stood up, squeezing Nathan's hand one last time before walking past the doctor and out into the main hall. Outside the ICU doors, Duke was leaning against a wall with his arms folded over his chest, looking deep in thought. He glanced up when she walked out.

"How is he?" he asked, trying and failing to sound nonchalant. "They said I can't go back there and they wouldn't say much."

"He had a stroke," Audrey explained in a toneless voice. She found that the less she thought about it, the less it terrified her. "He's been unconscious ever since. They haven't said what his chances are of coming out of it."

"You think it's more to do with this sand business?" Duke pressed.

"It's got to be," she said with a small shrug. "I mean I don't know all about his medical history, but I'm pretty sure he wasn't exactly a high risk for having a stroke at thirty-two." Duke nodded in understanding and slouched back against the wall again. "I don't know what to do anymore," she admitted wearily, not daring to meet the smuggler's dark eyes but instead staring at the bleached tile floor. "I've run out of ideas and I really don't think we have much more time for brainstorming."

"We'll figure something out, Audrey," Duke said firmly. He wrapped an arm around her shoulders and for once she didn't brush off his physical contact. "You know Nathan, he's an annoyingly stubborn jackass. He won't be going anywhere any time soon. Especially not when he's got you to come back to." At this Audrey glanced up at Duke and his expression was resigned. "You two, you've got something different between you, don't you?"

"I don't know," Audrey said truthfully. "I'm not even thinking about that right now. I just – I think right now I just want to make sure he doesn't die first."

"Fair enough," Duke agreed. "Alright, but don't think this means I'm giving up on you, Agent Officer Parker. After all, you still owe me a dinner date." It felt like it had been ages since she'd done it when she cracked a small smile at his teasing.

They simply stood there in a companionable silence for several minutes. After a while Chief Wournos passed them, acknowledging them only with a shallow nod before continuing on through the ICU doors. As much as Audrey wanted to go back to Nathan's side, she knew she should give the Chief some time to be alone with his son. They were family, after all, whether they acted like it or not.

"Excuse me, Agent Parker?" Audrey looked away from the double doors as they swung shut behind the Chief and saw that the nurse from the front desk was standing in front of her. "I, uh, I was just wondering about Detective Wournos. It was a stroke, wasn't it?"

Audrey grimaced but nodded, and the young nurse hung her head for a moment.

"I thought so," she said quietly. "That's the second one we've had today. There's a boy who went the same way early this morning. He's still comatose in the ICU, the poor thing. Just seventeen years old. It's the strangest thing."

At this Audrey straightened up attentively, her mind immediately changing gears. "You say there's another person with the same condition?" she asked.

"Yeah, Marcus Cates," the nurse responded. "No one is really sure what's wrong with him though. They figure it must be from the blood clot pressing on his brain stem and ruining his sensory control, but they don't know what to do about it yet."

"I know that name," Duke said abruptly. "Marcus Cates. It was on that list from the art store. I saw it like four times."

"That doesn't make sense," Audrey said, shaking her head. "If he was the one with the sand, how come he's in a coma now? And how's he connected to the others?" Duke shrugged and muttered something that sounded like, "you're the detective." Ignoring him, Audrey turned back to the nurse. "Can I see him? This Marcus kid?"

The nurse bit her lip hesitantly but then nodded. "This way," she said and led them back into the ICU, even as the older nurse at the entrance gave them a suspicious look. Their nurse took them far down the hall and then stopped and poked her head into a room. When she stepped back out into the hall she looked up at Audrey and said, "His parents are in there with him, perhaps they can help you. But please, be careful. You're not really supposed to be in here at all."

"Thank you," Audrey said sincerely to the nurse and then made to step past her, but the nurse caught her arm.

"Oh and this is for you," she said, pulling a thin manila folder from her clipboard and pressing it into Audrey's hand. "It's Angie's rotation list. But, uh, don't tell my supervisor where you got it from, would you?" With that she gave a weak smile, nodded and left. Audrey watched her go for a moment, and then stepped into the hospital room. It looked almost exactly like the one Nathan was in, only the bed held a lanky, freckled teenage boy with strawberry-blonde hair, and there were two chairs beside his bed filled by a tall, stocky man and a wispy looking woman. They both looked up when Audrey walked in.

"I'm sorry to bother you," she said quickly, "but I'm Agent Audrey Parker with the FBI, and I'm working with the Haven PD on a case that we believe might involve your son. I was wondering if I could ask you a few questions."

"Involving our son?" the man asked incredulously, his eyes narrowing. Beside him his wife gave a shuddery sob. "Can't you see him? He's sick. How could he be involved with any of your cases?"

"We think that his illness might be connected to a string of similar illnesses that have occurred in town over the last few days," Audrey explained carefully. "It's an unusual illness, isn't it? One the doctors can't really explain. It started out simple, like a head cold, and then turned into an inner ear problem. But it got worse. He started feeling tired and stiff and heavy, and then he lost his sight. And then the stroke; a healthy young boy having a stroke."

"How do you know all of that?" the man asked suspiciously.

"Because it's the same thing that's happened to others and that's what we're trying to get to the bottom of," Audrey said. She could see a shift in the man's eyes, something starting to slide more towards trust, but he was still scowling.

"So you think what happened to Marcus, you think it's some sort of – virus that someone's spreading around?" Mr. Cates asked. "Like some sort of cheap bio-terrorism?"

"Something like that," Audrey agreed, because she couldn't really come up with a better explanation than that. If the Cates weren't locals, people who'd lived here long enough to have been through it before, she really didn't want to try and explain the Troubles to them. She didn't have time for that anyway. "During our case, we found your son's name on a list of records from Mary's Art Supplies, for having bought a deal of white decorative sand recently. Do you know anything about that?"

"Sand? Probably gets it for one of our neighbours, this old guy who lives around the corner," Mr. Cates said, sitting up straighter. "He's an artist, like a sculptor or something, and Marcus had been taking lessons from him on weekends. Marcus likes sculpting. He's really good at it too. So in return for lessons, Marcus does a lot of chores for him; helps him clean up the workshop, runs errands for him, picks up his supplies. Stuff like that."

"This neighbour, do you know his name?" Audrey asked, a strange tingling going up her spine.

"It's foreign or something," Mr. Cates said slowly, his forehead beetling in concentration. "Marcus always just calls him Mr. D."

Something cold and heavy dropped into Audrey's stomach. "Demarcio."

"Yeah, that's it," Mr. Cates agreed enthusiastically but Audrey wasn't listening anymore. She flipped open the folder that the nurse had given her and her eyes panned up the list, searching for one particular name. And there it was, listed directly above 'Haven Regional – Cancer Ward 3.'

Sunnyside Haven Hospice Centre

Heart hammering, Audrey looked up. "I know who did it."