This is going to be a sad, sad chapter. Just thought you'd like a warning first.

November 2nd 2013

Christine's Pov

My back ached along with my head in a steady rhyme with my wild, anxious heart. The waiting rooms chairs were plastic and uncomfortable against my spine as I undid my curled up body from its position. I stretched and tried to keep the shriek of surprise from the stiffness from letting loose down the echoic halls.

I couldn't remember much of night's details, but what wasn't washed away from shock was enough to tell me why I felt so grim and numb and helpless.

I remembered Bree's horrid screaming as Chase rushed toward her side in an instant. His soft urging as he pulled her to him, muttering through his tears and kissing her forehead and hair so much his lips had to be numb. I remember her hoarse, terrified sobbing as she clung to him and alarms went off, everyone else rushing downstairs. The sight they came to were the two siblings huddled together weakly; I'd left without a sound.

I remembered hearing her protests of the dark, how she hated the dark, how she never wanted to go back.

Because of those handfuls of weeks, I couldn't blame her.

Shortly after I'd arrived at the hospital a mess, did Chase come. I felt guilty—the entire reason I left being so he could be there for her—but welcomed his comfort as I cried on him that night.

Most of all, I remembered Hunter with his sad eyes, staring sorrowfully at the tacky white and gray speckled tiles of the hospital, drifting there in the hospital room even after Chase was long gone (with promises to be back in the morning) and I'd had fallen fitfully asleep.

Groggily, I pulled at the elastic biting into my wrist and used it to pull my knotting hair into a sloppy low ponytail. I checked my phone. Two and the morning, but my tangled nerves and achy joints made me feel wired and squirrely. Anxious for news.

In order to get to the front desk, I had to walk out to the main hallway and swing a left until I saw the pudgy blond with two moles on either side of her face sitting at her desk hovering over a Danish and outdated crossword.

"Are there any vending machines nearby?" I asked as soberly as I could, still drowsy and wanting a nice, big bed to fall into.

"Third floor, fourth hall," her nasally voice said back without looking up. I was just grateful she hadn't found it necessary to look up and spit chocolate, stale Danish bits at me as she spoke.

I said a polite thank you and hurried to the elevator waiting at the end of the hall. I pressed impatiently at the up button and shuffled my feet until the door opened. The vacant cart opened with a uncharacteristic ding. I stepped inside and pressed the third button, leaning against the wall as I went up. My empty, sad stomach lurched as the elevator did so, upsetting it.

That annoying ding went off again as the doors open and inanimately ushered me out into the hall.

The vending machine stood like a landmark across from the glass window. It was wide and uncharacteristic light fell slanted against the speckled floor. Babies lined up in little rows in tiny glass-walled beds cried and slept. It was a cute sight.

I tried to enjoy as I paid for my tar in a Styrofoam cup. The coffee was gross, black and unsweetened and disgusting as it went hotly down my throat. But I couldn't get enough of it; caffeine charged my veins, distracting my mind if only for a little while.

I leaned against the wall, staring absently into the glass window and at my faint reflection. My hair was a mess, my clothes were wrinkled, and bag sagged underneath my eyes. I looked horrible.

Instead of going straight back to Admitting, I took the elevator up to the fourth floor—The Doom Floor as I'd named it last night. It was the floor where every critical unit possible in a hospital was; where they had put my father.

Doctors as idiots, I couldn't help but think as I stepped into the hall and out of the elevator. The halls stretched three ways into identically lit corridors. I went down the third and walked and walked and thought and walked until I reached the second door on the right, the fourth door from the end of the hall completely. The shades were drawn tight, no light escaping through. Dad wouldn't have been able to bear it—a habit for him was to have light on constantly because of late nights working.

"His case is a special one."

"We haven't had patients like this in Mission Creek."

"The path to recovery and health is very hard to take, Ms. Grant, I hope you understand."

Two doctors and three surgeons and all they could do was tell me the same three lines over and over like a broken record.

I sat on the bench across from his room with my knees pulled heavily to my chest. All I could think about was my dad, laying in that dark, plain room with problems while I remained outside, being thrown problems and no solutions on his case or status. He'd go in precautionary surgery tomorrow morning and wasn't due to have visitors of any kinds until the following day to "spare his condition."

This was why I never liked hospitals or clinics or anything of that kind; all they kind was smile and feed your nerves a bunch of bull while they wore scrubs and held a clipboard.

Stupid, stupid, stupid doctors.

I was crushing that Styrofoam cup in my hand with that same retched coffee dampening the skin on my hand when my phone bleated in the silence inside the bland white walls. I jumped nonetheless, even though I didn't think anything could scare me as how frightened and terrified I was now.

"Hello?" I asked into the line, my voice raspy and dry as it spilled from my throat.

"How're you doing?" Rachel asked sympathetically. Her words sounded mushed, like she was speaking through a mouthful.

I blinked to the wall, pulling my phone away from my ear to check the time. 7:30 looked back at me.

Either way, it was still incredibly early for her to be calling me on a Saturday morning.

"Horrible," I said, "what the hell are you doing up this early on a weekend?"

She sighed nosily into the phone, and must've finished whatever muffin she'd shoved into her mouth for breakfast. Rachel took a couple gulps of what I could only assume was coffee—it was all she drank nowadays.

"I've been getting into yoga," she explained easily through her end of the line. "On TV sunrise was when they usually did it, so I figured I should try it."

There weren't any windows in the halls that led to a view outside. Even if there were it would only be of the huge parking lot, probably only full of anxious visitors like me or nurses and doctors coming in for their day.

"Is he okay?" Rachel asked quietly. She was so quiet her voice almost tailed away into soft static. "Has any doctors talked to you about…you know?"

The struggle that came with her trying to say those words were comforting because that meant she cared.

"They have him under lockdown in a room on the critical unit floor," I growled out in dismay. I leaned against the wall, body suddenly heavy and mind tired. It shouldn't be this way. I should be sleeping, in bed, with my father fallen asleep at his desk over his latest works.

We shouldn't be in a hospital mourning over something we're regretting the effects of.

Rachel clicked her tongue. Her muffin must've been gone now. I could imagine her sitting on her kitchen counter, picking at her yoga pants and staring at the blank space in front of her.

"Dude, I don't know what to tell you," she decided to say finally. A crackle erupted; she sighed loudly. "I'm not gonna lie, because I, as a best friend, know lies will do nothing but worsen it in the end. But from where we stand, anything can happen, Chris, whether we like it or not."

I held the phone to my ear, numbly staring ahead. "Thanks for trying," I told her. And I meant it.

We said our goodbyes and hung up, leaving the dial tone to ring on merciless in my ear. After a quick second of consideration, I dialed his number.

While I waited, I thought back to my childhood. It was a spacey one, everything a big blob here and there. But I do remember everything pretty much the same: big. So big that people looked like mountains and trees. I liked it then, being so tiny and able to squeeze in the smallest of spaces, even with the trips here to there, school from school, class to class. My teachers were so fond of my size as well it seemed, being no bigger than a minute.

I wish I had power now; being so small nothing would bother with me, the grownups and big people willing and having to take care of all the world's problems.

Now it felt like the entire world was watching my every move; each person breathing down my neck. Picking and picking to see what made me tick.

I didn't remember falling asleep. By the time I wake up its well past noon and the hospital is alive with moving doctors and visitors. The halls smell more thickly of bleach and starch. Almost like a swimming pool, in a way.

Despite my long, fitful sleep, I felt less irritable than earlier.

"About time. The doctor came by. Twice."

I jumped at the voice of my boyfriend beside me. I didn't even notice my head being on his shoulder, resting their as he sat like a pillow. Maybe using him as a makeshift sleep space was what helped me get back to sleep somehow.

"When'd you get here?" I didn't remember seeing him before I went under.

Chase smiled down at me wryly. "About an hour ago. Bree was the one who convinced me to come. But I didn't want to let her out of my sight."

I nodded, just then comprehending his earlier words. "The doctor, which one?" Since my hysterical arrival, I'd encountered several meetings with a handful of doctors. Their names and faces blurred achingly in my head.

"Something Wyatt?" Chase suggested, sounding distant. "It doesn't matter—I didn't hear a word he said…"

"What? You didn't listen to the doctor that was conversing about my father's health? And you didn't bother to listen?!"

Chase shook me off, staring ahead, at the small plastic slot outside my father's unresponsive door, the one that held the clipboard.

"I didn't have to. The doctor came two hours after I did. But by then I didn't need him."

I furrowed my brows, suddenly confused. "And why is that?"

"Because I already knew before anyone told me."

November 5th 2013

It's been three days since chase broke his news. His new ability. It wasn't much of a surprise that it came, more than what it was. Davenport said that Chase's now powers offered him a unique scanning procedure that occurred whenever someone was in a strange physical or mentally ill state.

"It's incredible," Davenport muttered now, leaned over his cyber desk in fierce concentration. "When I created your abilities to suit each one of you, even I hadn't known the power held within them. But this—this breaks all boarders in scientific discovery…" He went off again, mumbling so low no one could hear what he said.

Chase and I sat together on the stools, Bree on the floor in between my knees. She kept her head down as I absently braided her hair. Wrecking it, and starting all over again.

"But what's its quality?" Chase wanted to know. "Is this app specifically emergency rated like the override, or can it be used more of a daily kind of thing like my senses?"

Davenport finally looked up at us again. "Well, I guess for now you save it until the need comes along otherwise, like for victims at the scene of a mission, or something along the lines of that."

Bree looked up, sleepy. Chase smoothed her hair away as I leaned into him, kissing his temple. "What about Grant?" she asked sleepily. I had a feeling that if I were to lean down to look at my pant leg, it would be covered in a tiny spot of drool. "You never told us what was wrong with him."

Chase looked down, his fingers nervously drumming against his thigh. "It all came at a rush at first," he confessed. He kept his head down as he spoke, everyone having to strain to hear. "It was so odd. Medical histories and patterns whizzing at me in a weird jumble. My brain works like a computer; it was like files being stored by the dozen at a time."

"What'd you get out of it?" Leo said from his chair. "I mean, you couldn't have seen all that and come up clueless."

"It was so odd," Chase continued, "Words that involved the heart kept staring me straight in the face. Words like minor heart failure and heartbreak pounding at me like hammers. It made me feel sick—lightheaded."

"Heartbreak?" I echoed, releasing Bree's hair as it fell from between my fingers to rest against her shoulders. "Do you think his interaction with my mother triggered all this? That he's suffering heart failure because of her?" Anger began to spill from me, my skin prickling at my neck and between my eyes.

"Not necessarily," Davenport explained, handing me his iPad. I scrolled through his brief, vague notes that'd he'd written. I felt like I was reading Chase's calculus notes; only he understand them fully.

"Heart failure and heartbreak suffering are two different things"—but he shrugged, looking at me with measured pity—"but both are deadly enough on the right person."

I gripped the iPad in my shaking grip. "So we can do something, can't we?" I asked the room desperately, feeling my chest swell and inflate like a balloon. "Are we really just gonna sit back and let the doctors screw everything up."

Bree spoke from between her knees. "We can't do much there as much as we could do here. We have more of an access here to them with Chase knowing his medical history now. At the hospital it's more likely we'll get kicked out more than accomplish anything.

"She has a point," Leo agreed. "Plus it's not like Super Girl is up for anything mission-y anyway. Not without fainting or corrupting the entire operation."

Davenport nodded. "Here's the layout: Over the next few weeks I'll work with Chase on retrieving the files he'd gotten on Allan while you, Bree, and Leo look into his and Maria's past—especially hers." He pointed at me while he said this, looking for my confirmation. It was all on me. "Sound good."

I nodded, my stomach knotting. "Let's do it."

I feel like crying whenever I get your reviews; keep this in mind while you flatter the story, if you do at all, kay?