Part Five
Mick kept an open box of Cheerios in the cupboard, next to the coffee can and the unused filters. At some point, he'd have to throw out that box and buy another decoy. Maybe something sugary, with a cartoon character telling hungry children to beg their parents for it. Or maybe oatmeal. Good for the cholesterol now, he'd heard.
But, as twilight descended, he gulped down his real breakfast, liquid and crimson.
Like the old man he was, Mick flipped to the obituaries first. Every other day now, someone he knew and sometimes loved in his past life was gone.
It was there he saw it in black and white - a grainy, smiling mug shot, a few inches down, in the back pages of the second section.
"Michael Turner, age 48, passed away Monday afternoon, April 14, 1993 at St. Francis Mercy Hospital.
Michael was born November 11, 1955 in Colorado Springs, Colo. to Carl and Charlotte Turner. He married Diane (Smith) Turner June 4, 1980 and she survives in Long Beach.
Also surviving are a son, Matthew Turner, and a daughter, Elizabeth Turner..."
He couldn't get past that line. It was only one he needed. His heart ached for her.
Then his logic kicked in. Diane had sent him an update just a week ago. With a snapshot of Beth sitting on a dock, smiling next to a very healthy-looking father. They were at a family reunion in San Diego. Diane had kidded about Beth's crush on a cute cousin or two. His chest tightened, borrowed trouble on his mind.
Mick flipped the pages, hard enough to rip one, creasing the newsprint and scanning the headlines.
There – a shot of a crumpled car, a short story with a stark headline, "Accident leaves two dead, two injured." His eyes took in the words faster than he could comprehend them.
"Two people were fatally injured in a two-car accident on I-10, at 9:02 p.m. Monday.
According to the Orange County post of the State Highway Patrol, Beatrice Perkins, 83, was driving a 1983 Oldsmobile Ninety-Eight west on I-10 when she drove off the left side of the roadway and into the center median. The vehicle struck a raised crossover, causing the vehicle to go airborne and overturn several times before striking a 1992 Honda Accord driven by Michael Turner, 48.
Ms. Perkins was ejected from the vehicle and was declared dead at the scene. Mr. Turner was taken by Med-Flight to St. Vincent Medical Center, where he died.
Treated and released from the same hospital was Matthew Turner, 19. A second passenger, Elizabeth Turner, 12, was also transported to St. Vincent where she is listed in critical condition.
Obituaries for Perkins and Turner appear on page A9 of today's paper."
The paper dropped and Mick's silent heart thudded. She was hurt. Bad.
This was a morning paper. There had been hours and hours since the accident.
He'd know if she was gone, Mick told himself. His heart was walled off from her everyday existence, but the trickle of life from her to him never stopped completely.
Without a thought, he dropped the bloody glass. Out the door and a risky plunge down the stairwell. Mick slowed his descent, knocking against the banister, before landing with a bone-cracking thud at the bottom.
Faster than human sight could comprehend, he sped down the road.
At the hospital, the antiseptic odor barely dented the whiff of blood in every corner. The broken, sick bodies as unappetizing as rotten meat. But others, fresh, screamed for him to stop.
Mick raced to the third floor, past the nurses' stations in a blur. In the intensive care unit, he caught the faint odor of Diane's perfume lingering in the hall outside a private room.
He listened. A heartbeat. Faint but present. He opened the door gingerly.
The little blond, older than he remembered, but small, so small, under white blankets. The machines kept time with her heart and the bellows pumped her lungs for her. Tubes everywhere, up her nose, under the sheets, another down her throat, wires pacing her life in and out. An IV drawing faint blood from the hand clutched by a sleeping mother.
She didn't smell right. Her insides were outside and foreign blood invaded her every part. The starchy hint of black surgical thread sighed against her skin. He listened, a lung weeping. Something torn. Things that couldn't be fixed.
Silently, he closed the distance to brush her forehead. To prove that she was still in the world, however close to the border she shuffled. No pumping, breathing warmth that he should have felt under his cool hand.
He felt the machines count off to him. Beth. Not Beth. Dead. Not dead.
Desperate, Mick backed from the room toward the bank of payphones down the hall.
"Josef," Mick said as soon as the receiver clicked through. His tone silenced any smart-ass reply from his friend. "I need to know. How much of my blood can a human take without turning?"
"What the hell are you doing, Mick?" for the first time in years, the older vampire sounded genuinely shocked.
"She's dying, Josef." He didn't need to explain.
"What do you think you can do about it?"
"Just answer the question. A pint? A drop? How far is too far?" Mick worried the ring on his finger. "How much is too much?"
"Don't do anything stupid, Mick." Josef hesitated.
"If you don't tell me, I'll have to guess."
A beat of silence.
"If you want to turn someone, you have to drain them. Maybe seven, eight pints. She'll need your blood. Fast. As much as you can get her to drink."
"I'm not asking how to turn her," Mick growled into the phone, his grip nearly shattering the plastic. "I want to know how much of my blood can she take without turning."
"Jesus, Mick," the sound of Josef sinking into his chair came over the tinny wires. "That's dangerous. For you and for her. Are you thinking long term?"
"Yes. Josef, I need her to be in the world, really in it," Mick felt panic rise in him.
"I have to believe that somewhere the sun rises and drives my darkness away. That somewhere she's safe, even if I can't see it."
The silence stretched this time.
"How old is she?"
"Twelve."
"How bad?"
"Very." Mick closed his eyes and willed away the image of her brokenness, the smell of bodily fluids.
"Less than half a pint. We're a vicious little breed. Any more will eat her alive and I'm sure you don't want that," the clink of bottles and an unabashed gulp came from Josef's end. "Do it slow or they'll notice. A little bit every couple hours until she's better or until morning, whichever comes first. If it doesn't help her by then, it's causing more harm than good."
"Okay."
"And you drink, too. Something clean. Where are you?"
"St. Vincent."
"I'll send something to the place on Talmadge."
"Thank you."
"Wait a couple of days before you say that."
Mick gently set the phone down and raced back to Beth's room.
Of course, he'd forgotten her mother was there, making things more complicated. He intentionally bumped one of the metal stools, making a shrieking noise as it shuddered across the floor. Diane started. Her blood shot eyes opened and, after a second focused on Mick. Then she took in the hospital room.
"Oh, for just a second I forgot," the woman whispered. "Mr. St. John, what are you doing here?"
"I saw the paper and ... I thought maybe ... I just wanted to help," Mick's eyes flickered to Beth. Her heartbeats were steady. A little faster maybe? He wanted to count the beats, keep the time, but Diane was already staring at him. "I didn't know how bad she was."
Tears edged the older woman's eyes.
"She wasn't even supposed to be in the car. I was running late and Mike was getting Matt at the airport. I asked him to pick up Beth from dance practice. He wasn't supposed to be there, none of them were. Mike should have had Matt and been home. They shouldn't have been on that road," Diane told him flatly.
"She's going to be fine. You can't waste time blaming yourself for something like this," Mick felt like such a fool. Her words were the same ones that came from him on a regular basis. "Bad things happen. And you have to be strong for her."
Diane wiped at the tears that continued to leak out. Mick fished in his pocket, pulling out a handful of coins.
"Why don't you get us some coffee? Go to the bathroom, call your son," he pressed the money into her shaking hand. "I'll sit with her."
Beth's mother just nodded and left for the lounge.
The vampire counted the footsteps, opened himself to the sounds and smells of the other humans. Nothing near. Then he turned his attention to Beth. She couldn't drink him in, not with the tube.
Mick carefully searched her body. All the major wounds were bandaged and wrapped tight. He sniffed for fresh blood. There, her left arm, a tiny cut, not wide but deep. He pulled back the bandage slowly.
His fangs descended and eyes flashed. In one smooth moment, he punctured his skin, angling the wound over hers. Her body absorbed the blood like a sponge, just a trickle, but enough. The flow stopped as Mick's cut healed itself.
Her color was just as pale, but Mick counted her heartbeats. They picked up. Just a fraction.
And the horrible whooshing sound from her lung relented infinitesimally. Maybe. Mick sat in Diane's chair and held Beth's hand, letting the sounds of the hospital wash past him until the only sound was Beth's heart, Beth's breath, Beth.
Three hours later, Diane's face was washed, her teeth brushed and she was back at her post. Mick sat with her for an hour and when she left for the bathroom, she was gone long enough for a second deposit. Shortly thereafter, a surprised nurse ushered Mick out, accompanied by a lecture about protocol, sign-in procedures and hospital rules.
Mick nodded respectfully and exited the hospital, thankfully just a mile or two from Josef's establishment. A place with emergency supplies, fresh, that Mick sucked down. He had the proprietor fill a silver thermos with a couple of pints and returned to the hospital.
Time seemed to drag. The shifts changed at midnight and he still had an hour to fill. A small brown room with the glow of candles in red votives caught his attention. The familiar smell of incense drew him into the small chapel. An large open Bible dominated the small altar with its wooden cross and clusters of candles.
Mick shut the door and sat in one of the pews. Churches should probably make him feel nervous or unclean, but they were one of the few places Mick felt at peace. It was as though his beast was banished from him inside the holy place. He didn't go often, afraid the remnants of his faith wouldn't last with regular use, but today he needed it.
Wishing for a rosary, he fell to the kneeler and recited a Hail Mary, then an Our Father, secure in the comfort of ritual. The prayers faded into his own murmured, desperate hopes that he was doing the right thing, that Beth would be fine, that God would forgive him for all his sins, past, present and future enough to grant him this request.
Time slipped from him, his head bowed and every part of him in desperate prayer for Beth. At last, he ran out of words. Mick stood. He moved to the altar, picked up a candle and lit it, chanting her name silently.
At last, well past midnight, he headed to Beth's room, skirting the nurse's station again. Her mother slept a drug-induced sleep on a pull out couch at the other end of the room.
Mick put his head to Beth's chest, listening intently to her heart, counting. The beats were steadier. He imagined he could hear her bones knitting themselves together, her bruises fading.
"Beth, keep fighting," he whispered.
He inspected Beth's hand where the cut had been. It wasn't nearly as deep. More a scrape than a gash.
The rest of her injuries were worse – skin ripped away, chunks of missing flesh – protected from infection by the layers of gauze. Mick looked around and found a surgical tray with a clean hypodermic.
In the reverse of his regular habit, he drew out blood from his arm and rubbed Beth's, feeling for a vein. At the crook of her arm, he injected her and hoped that his vampire status would actually do her some good this time.
He stared at the broken girl. The blond hair had grown out to her shoulders and mellowed to a rich golden tone. Taller, of course. And she had hips. Beth was on the verge of moving from a child to a young woman.
She had changed so quickly, but children did that, didn't they? He couldn't really remember. He'd had nieces and nephews, but they were just toddlers the last time he'd seen them and after Coraline, he didn't see them. They were old enough to have children Beth's age by now. He was probably a great-uncle to a brood somewhere.
He heard footfalls and the rustle of scrubs from the hallway. Mick tucked himself in the tiny private bathroom. The movement of cords, the scratching of a pen and the flipping of paper. Buttons pushed and the paper again.
"What the hell?" a soft alto said. Footsteps out of the room echoed and a few minutes later, two women returned. Mick peeked through a crack in the door.
"I'm telling you, this kid was dying six hours ago. The internal injuries, the blood loss. I've never seen anyone, especially not this young, make it back from this. I didn't even expect to see her by my shift," the first nurse insisted.
The older woman she had brought studied the chart, watched the numbers flash on the monitors. She pursed her lips.
"You're right," the woman laid a soft hand on Beth's forehead. "She's not out of the woods yet. Every once in a while we get a miracle. Maybe she's it."
Mick emerged from the bathroom once their footsteps faded. He settled back into the chair and grasped her hand, worrying her digits like a rosary and hoping that she would be his miracle one more time.