Day four... fourth chapter

Chapter 27

Pam ducked her head and crouched down like a dog which hide its ears and the tail between its legs, hearing the piercing cry of her master. A scream in frustration and helplessness. What was happening?

Months before...

Eric Northman awoke minutes before the sun went down that night, restless with a sense of unease inappropriate for his age and vampire condition. He inhaled deeply, although he didn't need to, and tried to calm down. His creature, Pam, would still be dead for the day, but she was fine. And he didn't felt anything disturbing through his bond with Sookie, perhaps she was still sleeping, resting to be ready at night to live with him. But he wasn't sure... he rubbed his eyes (another unnecessary act) and stretched when his cell phone started beeping. As he stood and watched the flashing red light on the landline indicating he had messages waiting, in that moment he knew something was wrong. His mobile was at hand, so he took it and jump up out from bed to stand up in his feet: Text message from Jason Stackhouse: Come as soon as you are awake. Sookie's brother will never call him. If he need something from him, he would ask his sister to intercede in his behalf. If Sookie didn't call was because she couldn't call or she was in danger.

He reached for the phone and dialed Stackhouse, approached the landline and hit the button to listen to the messages, waiting to hear the voices of the shifter and the werewolf. If Sookie was in danger and she needed help and if her brother was aware of his condition, he would have called Herveaux and/or Sookie's boos to do during the day what he couldn't: protect her.

The messages began to play to be listened.

Beep

"Eric, I'm Jason, Sookie's brother. What did you...? … Hang up, Jason, if he did, he isn't going to tell you."

Beep

"Eric, I'm Jason Stackhouse, call me as soon as you get up."

Beep

"Eric, it's me again, come flying to Captain Henry hospital as soon as you wake up, something has happened."

Beep

"It's me, wake up, fuck, and come here, fuck up."

Ring. Ring.

He placed the cell phone in his ear. After several rings, somebody answer the phone.

"Eric."

"Stackhouse. Explain yourself."

"Haven't you heard my message? Why are not you here?"

"Here where?"

"The hospital."

"It won't be totally dark until few minutes. What the fuck is going on?"

"You tell me. Have you done it?"

"What have they done to her?" silence "I'm flying there" he hung up. He dressed quickly and left his bedroom. There was still sunlight, but it wouldn't harm him too much. He opened the door and took off.

He used the glamor with the woman at the front desk, skipping the line of people in front of him and all the protests and ran at vampire speed in the direction they had pointed him: the Intensive Care Unit.

In a room with several glazed and insulated booths were Jason, Sookie's brother, and Sam Merlotte, her boss and friend. Inside one of these cabins, around which her relatives gathered, was Sookie. She lay on a bed with white sheets and white pillows attached to a lot of machines around her, and each on emitting its own repertoire of sounds. She had an intravenous line attached to a hand.

"I found her at the foot of the stairs. I don't know what could have happened" Jason said, acknowledging by the face of worry, indignation, frustration and anger of the vampire, he had nothing to do with what ever had happened to his sister.

"Soon we'll find out" Eric replied. He opened the glass door, a nurse tried to stop him and called to the others, but the vampire ignored them. Eric bit his wrist and held it to the lips of his wife. Blood dripped into her mouth. The bump on her head soon disappeared and the other scratches that were covered by the sheets, too.

"¡Mister, Mister!" Several nurses tried to pull him away from Sookie.

"Help!"

"¡He's a vampire!" shouted one of the nurses, when Eric pushed her because she was falling over Sookie.

"What are you doing?" A doctor asked "¡Oh, fuck!" he cried when he saw Eric's fangs "Did you give her V?"

"I gave her my blood. This woman is mine."

"Why don't she wake up?" Jason wanted to know "I thought that your blood cured everything."

"It should" He looked to the side and another "What has happened?"

"We do not know."

"And what do you know?" he asked grabbing the doctor from his coat. He stammered and Eric used the glamor.

"She have a nasty blow to the front of the head. We think that's what has caused the coma. She also has other bruises on knees, elbows and ribs, presumably because of the fall. There aren't signs of struggle or physical violence. We've done a CAT scan but she didn't have any perceptible lesions in the brain... but, but..."

"What?"

"We don't know why she's still unconscious."

"Run another test" and released him. He went from there stumbling. Eric turned to Jason "Tell me what you know" Jason took a deep breath and stroked the back of his hand to Sookie.

"Sam called me this noon, because he wasn't able to contact my sister and she hasn't showed in the bar. I went to my grandmother's house, I knocked at the door but did not answer. So I used my key and I found Sookie at the foot of the stairs. She was wearing a silk nightie, but nothing more. I called an ambulance and that's it. The paramedics said that she must have fallen down the stairs, because of the bruises and her posture. They checked her neck was okay and loaded her into the ambulance, and then here, they did the tests and told me she had just a bad blow in her head and she was in a coma and they didn't know when she will wake up. I thought you could fix it."

"Gentlemen?" A man dressed in suit and tie approached them "Is there family of Sookie Stackhouse?"

"I am her brother" Jason said.

"I am the attorney for the hospital. I brought these papers so you could check them out."

"What are they?"

"Urgency health care, hospital admission and the tests done to your sister bills. You see, your sister doesn't have insurance, and the hospital has to be sure that you are able to afford the expenses."

"I..." a roar was heard and suddenly the lawyer was lying on his back on the floor with a huge Viking vampire pissed on top of him. Eric got into his mouth a handful of bills.

"Do the tests to her."

"Yes sir" a pair of stretcher bearers, at the signal from lawyer, approached the bed and proceeded to move Sookie. The doctor received them out of the room and told them where they should take her.

But after four hours, it was showed that Eric's money, like his blood, couldn't do everything, because despite thousand of tests they did to Sookie, they didn't found the cause of her coma, especially after the V, according to doctors, it had fixed all the traumas that the patient had at the time of her admission. Eric was meditating a while, not quite understanding what was happening. He put his thoughts in order and thought the best thing was to go to the root of the problem.

"Stay with her" he asked Jason.

He left the hospital at vampire speed, thinking investigate by himself what had been happen to his wife. He flew to Bon Temps, landed in Sookie's garden and walked through the same door he had left the night before. He saw the crumpled rug at the foot of the stairs, saturated with her aroma. He sniffed at the entrance of the house, but it only smelled like Sookie, Jason, and from the smell of medicine, the humans that came in the ambulance. He climbed the stairs and went sniffing around, the smell seemed to a fairy, but it was a distant aroma, a residue, probably left by Claude and Dermot long time ago. In Sookie's room the bed was unmade. It smelled like her, a vampire and sex. It smelled of them. Whatever would have happened to her, it must had happened immediately after he leave. His side of the bed was still undone. Sookie asked him not to go, to stay with her, she ever had joked with the possibility that something could happen, but still, he had gone...