I slumped down against Tucker, watching Dad clench his hand around Mom's. We hadn't seen a doctor in hours, and I had no fucking idea how Jazz was doing. The only thing that any of us knew was that she was in the ICU (no fucking visitors, although I had half a mind to phase in to see her anyway) and that everything was going wrong.
"Hey," Tucker nudged me. "Want to take a walk?"
I looked up at him like he was insane. "Leave?"
"It'll do you good," Mom mentioned. She rubbed her hand against my knee. "Go on."
I lurched to my feet and Tucker scrabbled up behind me. I could barely look at his face. He looked devastated, and it reminded me of how shitty I felt. The whole thing made me mad. It made me want to kill things. Except, the fact that Jazz had been attacked drained me so completely that I couldn't go and kill Vlad right now, even if I wanted to.
Tucker and I headed into the staircase of the hospital, where we always seemed to end up. We began to shuffle down the steps toward the ground level.
"It doesn't seem fuckin' real," I admitted to him. "I was flying by, thinking that she … I don't even know what I thought she might be doing. I just never thought she wouldn't be fine."
"She will be." Tucker turned on his phone. "You know she will be."
His phone lit up, buzzing wildly. I glared at it. How dare the outside world exist right now? How dare someone else need him when Ineeded him? Tucker ran his hand over his face and he opened the text. He looked completely exhausted, and then something in his face changed.
"What?" I managed, although I couldn't put enough effort into my words to make it sound like I actually cared.
"It's Sam."
"Sam?" That caught my interest. "What the fuck is going on?"
I tried to steady myself, feeling the world begin to fall away. Not Jazz and Sam. Even Vlad wouldn't have the balls to go after them both in one night. He had to know that was a guaranteed death sentence. I would have fucking beheaded him without another thought if something else had gone down while I had been preoccupied with Jazz.
"It's not a huge deal," Tucker said quickly. "She was over at Vlad's last night and she just said that he was freaking her out."
"She okay?"
"She's okay," Tucker repeated.
I groaned, partly from relief that it wasn't anything worse, and partly because of the state of the fucking world since Vlad was still alive in it. I dropped down on the bottom step, running my hand across the top of my head and down the back of my neck. I was too tired to think about anything except for the hospital bubble, but that wasn't an option. Regardless of what was happening in my Fenton life, I still had a responsibility in my Phantom one. I looked down at my pale hands and clenched them into fists, mentally placing white gloves on myself. Life would be so much better if I didn't have these fucking powers.
"Danny?" Tucker prompted.
"What?" I looked up.
He was standing over me, his expression hooded. "What should I tell her? About Vlad and everything?"
"Nothing," I said quickly. "She can't … Now is not the time to try and explain …"
"Then when?"
I dug my nails into the palms of my hands. "I'm worried he's going to try to do something to her … or you. Maybe me. I don't know. I think he's more concerned with watching me suffer right now. Fuck."
Tucker sat down next to me. "Breathe. I'm fine. Sam's fine. Jazz will be fine." I pretended I didn't hear his voice crack when he talked about Jazz, because that's what he'd been doing for me all night.
"I feel so helpless," I forced out, and before I could stop myself, the sobs came out. My entire body shook. I was always the person who did things. Phantom got shit done. To know that I could only stand on the sidelines and watch as my sister either lived or died was destroying me. I didn't even say a word when Tucker hugged me. He wrapped his arms around me completely, smothering me, and I didn't even think about how it made me feel like a child or how it was so uncharacteristic of the two of us.
"You're not helpless," Tucker said finally, when I had stopped fucking crying. "And something you can do is tell me what to tell Sam."
I sat up and rubbed at my eyes. "I don't like the thought of her alone ..." Then I had a flash of brilliance. "You can go to Sam's. You can watch her. I'll fly you over so that neither of you have to be alone. We can stop and get ecto guns."
"What?"
There was something strange in Tucker's voice, but I bypassed it. "You can protect her. She'll let you protect her, because she won't fucking let me near her. Look, don't explain anything about Vlad. Just figure something out to get her to let you come over."
"It's seven-thirty in the morning!"
I glared at him. "This is important. You know it's important. Besides, what are you going to do here anyway? Babysit me? I thought you'd be glad to get out of the hospital since you fucking hate them."
"I, um, sure," Tucker agreed quietly. "Just … let me go call her."
I nodded and he slipped out of the stairwell. The door clanged behind him, and I felt a flash of panic as he disappeared from sight; my heart only settled when he stood in front of the little window so that I could see the back of his head and neck. I couldn't handle this. I thought of my parents, sitting upstairs in the waiting room, but I didn't worry about them. Vlad had given no indication that he would hurt Mom or Dad. Whatever his plan was, they didn't matter in it.
I looked up as Tucker came back into the stairwell, his expression heavier than when he'd left.
"Ready?" I asked, standing up. I wanted to drop him off quickly, so that I could get back to the waiting room.
He nodded. I quickly checked for security cameras before I rested my hand against his arm, turning us both invisible. I transformed subtly, and then phased us out of the hospital. I was too tired to go as fast as I would have liked, although I desperately tried to make good time on getting to FentonWorks. I phased us into my room, grabbing one of the smaller ecto guns. He tucked it into his front pocket. He looked a little green as we prepared to fly again, but only because he hated it.
"So, remember," I said as we approached Sam's house, "Don't tell her anything about what's going on."
"I won't."
"I'll call you if anything happens." We touched down on Sam's front lawn, and I couldn't help but stare toward Sam's bedroom.
"Make sure you do."
"Make sure you both stay safe." I couldn't stop my anxiety from slipping into my voice. "Call me if anything happens. If you need me. If you even think Vlad is showing up or if you see Gregor or anything."
"Got it."
I let go of him, staying invisible while he walked away from me toward Sam's door. I watched it crack open and I saw the very top of her head before she and Tucker tumbled into the interior of her house. I stood there and let my heart ache for her, because I was familiar with that pain and because it was easier to deal with. When Sam had broken up with me, I had known that she was somewhere safe. Even though I wanted her next to me, I knew that she was alive and that everything in her world was okay. But when it came to my sister's attack, I had no such assurance. I didn't know if Jazz was going to get out of this alive; I didn't know if Vlad's plan allowed her to live – if it allowed anyone I cared about to get out of this alive. With that thought weighing heavily on my mind, I forced myself back to the hospital.
I stumbled into the waiting room. Mom and Dad were leaning heavily against one another. I dropped into the chair beside Mom, and her hand curled around my wrist.
"Where's Tucker?" She asked.
"He had to go home," I lied.
Mom nodded, and her hand moved from my wrist to my shoulders. I collapsed against her, ignoring how the armchair dug uncomfortably into my ribs. It was surprisingly still in the waiting room. The nurses and doctors that we did see moved with such calming efficiency that I barely registered them. That is, until there was a woman standing right in front of us. She was the social worker. She talked to us so the doctors didn't have to … At least, that was my understanding of her job. I hadn't been there the first time she popped up.
"What happened?" Dad demanded before she could say anything.
"Jasmine has suffered a cardiac arrest," the social worker said. "They think that it was just trauma from the surgery or her attack."
"Is she okay?" Mom cried.
"The doctors are with her now. Everything is going to be fine," she assured us quickly.
Fine, I mocked her voice in my head, because a huge part of me believed that it was bullshit. If it was fine, then I wouldn't be in the hospital, hoping that my sister wasn't going to fucking die.
"Honey," Mom said.
I pulled away from her, suddenly feeling overwhelmed with guilt. If I had been a better hero – the kind of hero I swore I would be when I was fourteen – then none of this would have happened. Jazz would actually be fine. We wouldn't be sitting in the hospital. Sam would have actually fallen in love with me because I wouldn't have been a dick bag. And I probably would have been smart enough to do something about Vlad a long time ago. Everything that had happened was my fault. I jerked away from my parents, retreating to the stairwell.
I sat down on one of the steps, dialling Tucker, because I promised I'd call him. As the phone rang, I found myself whispering, "I'm sorry, Jazz. I'm sorry, Jazz," as if she could actually hear me.
"Hey Danny." Tucker's voice was raspy and thick. I wondered what had been happening at Sam's. "What's going on?"
"Cardiac arrest," I choked out.
"I'm sorry, cardiac arrest?" Tucker repeated with alarm. "Is that what you just said?"
"Mhmm," I mewled.
"Is she …?"
"Alive!" I gasped out, not wanting to think about how close she had come. "She's alive."
"Good. So was it just the trauma of the attack that caused it?"
"Yeah."
"Okay. Do you want me to come back over?"
"No! It's important that you stay with Sam. I can't leave anyone alone. You're not going to leave her, are you?"
"No. I understand the importance. I just …" Tucker's voice dropped. "I want to be there for you and your family too."
"Stay with her, okay?"
"Okay."
"Thanks, Tuck."
"Call me if anything else happens. I want to know."
"Absolutely. Bye, Tuck."
I hung up the phone as I stared at the grey wall across from me, and then I stood up again. It wasn't fair for me to keep running out on my parents like this. I dragged myself back to the waiting room, running into my father on the way there. I looked at him with alarm. Why had he left the waiting room? Had something happened?
Dad read my face with ease.
"I just got off the phone with Vladdy," he explained to me, his big hand resting on my shoulder as he guided me into the waiting room. "He heard about Jazzy-pants. Wanted to see how she was doing. You know how he loves you kids like you're family."
I ground my teeth at the idea, feeling like I wanted to knock Vlad the fuck out. I bet he wasn't concerned with her wellbeing. The bastard was probably hoping that she was dead.
"What did Vlad have to say?" Mom asked when we reached her again. Her lips tightened at the mention of Vlad. At least she wasn't as blind to him as Dad was.
"He wants to host a benefit for Jazz," Dad said, and I looked at my father, too shocked to even curse about Vlad in my head.
"Why?" I exploded.
"Medical bills are expensive," Mom began, as if I were just a kid.
"I know," I interrupted her. "But why would he have anything to do with it?"
"Vlad is my best friend. He's done things like this before." Dad was using the same tone Mom had. "He's going to host it on Saturday."
I was probably going to kill the fucker before he made it to Saturday.
"Maybe Jazz will be awake to go," Mom said hopefully, but her voice was so thin that we all knew that she didn't believe it.
I rested my head against Mom's shoulder, pushing all thoughts of murder from my brain. I couldn't think about revenge right now. I just had to think about my sister.
I don't own anything recognizable. Thanks to my lovely betas: Forever Sky.
~TLL~
