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(Warning: There will be a lot of hospital scenes now and not much action. I hope you like it nevertheless.)
36 – CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX – 1,105^36
"Anyone here for Charles Eppes?"
Five heads jerked up and five pairs of eyes looked with fearful questions into the face of a woman around fifty years old. They had been silent for an eternity and had only been living for the next second, always hoping to finally get an answer to the question of whether Charlie was going to survive; waiting until at some point the world around them almost faded away.
The woman scrutinized the five tense faces. "Family members?" she clarified her question neutrally, though with a slight smile that bravely tried to bring a bit of warmness into the cold hospital corridors. With a slightly confused gaze she looked at the people in front of her who were hardly likely to all belong to the patient's family. One of them wore an FBI-jacket. But he couldn't seriously be thinking that he'd be allowed to question her patient now?
Then, however, she noticed that the FBI-man looked rather worn-out and as concerned as the others. So maybe his presence wasn't merely official after all? Well, maybe she'd soon find out.
He and the eldest of the men had stood up. With the latter she didn't need the explanation. "I'm his father. The others may hear what you're going to say."
The doctor nodded. "Very well. I'm Dr Porter, and I'm treating Mr Eppes. You can see him now."
Instinctively, a flash of a long lost feeling, something like joy, shot through Don before it became obvious to him that the news didn't have to be necessarily good. "How... how is he?" he heard himself say.
Dr Porter glanced quickly at the floor before she forced herself to look into the tense faces. "I don't want to give you false hope." Don briefly wondered if doctors were taught such sentences in training, but his attention immediately went back to Dr Porter's words. "He's in a critical state. We don't know if he'll make it through the night."
A roaring filled Don's ears. Had that woman actually just said that Charlie could just be gone within the next few hours?
Don thought that the ground was being pulled away from under his feet. His surroundings were turning in front of his eyes. In a reflex gesture, his fingers clung to the nearest thing they could reach. After some seconds his field of vision became clearer again, the roaring gradually subsided and he realised he was clutching his father's forearm. The doctor's voice became clearer as she answered a question posed by one of the others.
"...worried about most is his heart. It's under a lot of stress because of the pneumonia and the weakened condition of the organism. The malnourishment itself isn't really a problem and with all probability a pneumonia on its own wouldn't have grave consequences. However, the combination of these two factors, together with the dehydration... I really can't tell you anything concrete at the time being."
"But we can see him?" Don could only guess that it had to be his father's voice.
Dr Porter nodded. "Yes. But only ten minutes in every hour, and only one person at a time."
All of them agreed that Alan should go first. And Alan didn't have enough strength left to resist. Even Amita had let him go first without hesitation though it was clear to all of them that she would be the second. Of course, they could have split the time, but Amita had been against it. Ten minutes – that was six hundred seconds, and she knew that six hundred seconds were quickly over. No, after everything that had already happened or rather not happened between her and Charlie, Alan had the right to the full time.
Time, however, didn't exist anymore as soon as Alan stepped into the ICU. He was nervous. In few seconds he was going to see his son, for the first time after nine much too long days. He hadn't had a good feeling about leaving his sons when he'd flown alone into safety and left them both to deal with the situation without him. He had feared that something might go wrong. It would have been better if he'd listened to his father's instinct.
The first thing Alan noticed was how still Charlie was. It was such an unusual sight that he at first wasn't sure if the motionless figure in that death-like rigidity in the bed was really his son. When he came nearer, however, there was no doubt left: Charlie's curls, his features, his skeletal figure... It was indeed his ever active son who was lying so motionlessly here, oblivious to his surroundings.
The tears Alan had successfully repressed until this moment now ran down his cheeks to the corners of his mouth that had twisted to a slight smile. Charlie was here. He was lying directly in front of him. He was alive even if that didn't seem very evident at the moment.
Alan stood at the head of the bed and stroked his youngest son's forehead. It was very warm, hot with fever. He had hoped for a reaction, anything, even a movement under his eyelids, anything that would have proved to him that Charlie's body was still functioning. But there was nothing.
He gently took Charlie's hand in his. His gaze ran over to the other hand into which a needle was pinned then his gaze continued wandering from there, along the up to the bag. An IV. His youngest son was lying motionlessly in a clinically white hospital bed, wearing an oxygen mask and pierced by an IV while every sign of life he gave was being recorded and measured by the machines and screens around him.
Alan gently shook his head. This wasn't possible. It was all wrong. Charlie shouldn't be lying here. Charlie should be in front of his blackboards calculating or delivering a lecture or sitting with them at the dining table laughing... Alan saw in front of his inner eye the longed-for images. At the same time he saw the truth that totally blew those wished-for images out of his mind.
This was his fault. Alan knew it, and denying it would not only have been a betrayal, but also cowardly. He shouldn't have allowed Don and Charlie to stay with those mafia groups, even less when he himself was safe. He was their father for God's sake! A father was meant to protect his children! And everyone who saw Charlie could note easily that Alan had failed.
Fifty minutes later it was Amita's turn. Out of a sense of duty she had asked the others if they should not split the time at their disposal. She had been terribly relieved when the other four had refused. She was going to have Charlie to herself. For six hundred seconds. For a sixth of an hour.
When Alan had returned, nobody had missed how haggard he looked. They all had been tactful however, so that they hadn't asked him any questions, even if the urge had been hard to resist. But in general they had all the information they needed and Amita knew anyhow that it would be difficult for her to see the man she loved like this.
She wasn't mistaken. It was difficult, and for some seconds she remained motionlessly at the door of the room. Even from here she could guess how pale Charlie was. And then all that machinery around him, the oxygen mask... This wasn't the Charlie she knew.
Hesitantly, she drew nearer, having to force herself to take every single step. Eventually, she stood at his bedside and the sight of him was almost enough to make her collapse. Instead, she merely lowered herself onto a chair next to the bed trying to ignore that without the monitors she wouldn't see any signs of life from Charlie.
Lightly as a feather she laid her hand upon his. At first she was relieved that the skin was warm, that Charlie was really alive, until she couldn't stop herself noticing that the hand was too warm. With increasing preoccupation she stroked his forehead with the fingertips of her other hand. Also too warm. He had a fever. But compared to the complicated machinery around her, Amita found her diagnosis 'fever' to be pretty obvious.
However, her examination had made her realize that she had missed that. She had missed Charlie, to see him, scrutinize him, to touch him. To talk to him. For a brief instance, Amita lowered her gaze before she came to terms with what she could get and not to mourn for what she couldn't. With immense softness, she stroked Charlie's forehead and cheeks, glad for every square centimeter of skin she could caress.
She could feel the lump in her throat rising up and again the tears overcame her. Charlie didn't move, didn't show the slightest reaction. They hadn't found him in time. Charlie had counted on them, but they had let him down. If they had found him earlier, if Amita had concentrated more on the really important things, if she had just pulled herself together a bit more then perhaps everything would be totally different now. This was her fault. And she couldn't hope that Charlie would ever forgive her. She had failed and he had to pay for that.
"I'm sorry, Charlie," she whispered, but nobody heard her words. "I am so sorry." Also repeating them didn't make the matter better. The only thing that remained for her to do was to be there for him. She would care for him as long as necessary for him to recover, and then she'd withdraw discreetly and leave him alone. It was better for both of them; Charlie wouldn't have to forgive her and she wouldn't have to think of that guilt every time she even just saw Charlie. No, she would keep her distance. It was better that way.
A nurse stepped into the room, informing her of the end of her six-hundred seconds. Amita nodded silently and once more stroked Charlie's forehead. Reluctantly, she stood before she pulled herself together and resolutely left the room. She had to accustom herself to that sort of thing. If she really wanted to stay away from Charlie she also had to learn to live her life without him.
Don let Larry go first. As a matter of fact he literally forced him. Larry had initially refused, though once the time had come when they had again been allowed to see Charlie, Don had regained the upper hand and Larry had stopped resisting. He stepped into the sterile room with a slight hesitation.
It was quiet.
Not completely quiet, but it was the first thing Larry noticed, and that had to mean that the difference in volume between the corridor and the room wasn't insignificant. For also the waiting area had been rather quiet, but this... No occasional words, no agitated people. Only serenity and the continual sounds of the machines reigned here.
He didn't even hear the sound of the drops of the IV. He could only see how they fell down into the tube steadily. Drip, drip, drip... Perfectly regular, no inconsistencies. Pure and beautiful like Charlie's mathematics.
And it seemed as though the bottle didn't get emptier. Larry couldn't see any lowering of the water level, but of course he knew the reason for that: the IV bottle contracted due to the negative pressure. It bulged inwards; the label showed that very nicely.
Also, the label was a completely other matter. NaCl was printed on it. However, Larry had severe doubts about Charlie being administered pure cooking salt; it was more likely that it was salt in a water solution. Maybe he would have been able to decipher the tiny printing if the words hadn't been upside down on top of that. After all, why did people stick on the text upside down? It was clear that an IV would be hung up. Didn't they want the text to be read? But it was because of this wrong angle that people became curious, right? The whole thing just didn't make sense...
Especially when it was Charles of all people who was attached to that IV.
So now he had finally made it. He couldn't maintain his gaze upon that un-important IV any longer, but it had arrived at the really important object in this room – Charles.
Larry could hardly bear the helplessness with which his former protégé was bound to these machines. This was wrong... Charles wasn't somebody who could be bound; he had a spirit that needed freedom and wings! However, some power had decided that it should not be.
You are such a coward, Larry admonished himself tiredly. The decision of 'some power' was a very comfortable solution that allowed him to close his eyes to the horrible truth, the truth that made it nearly impossible for him to sit here and to defile Charles with his presence.
This was his fault.
There was not the slightest doubt in Larry's mind. He had made so many mistakes, had loaded so much guilt upon his shoulders that he dimly wondered how it was that he was still able to walk at least close to upright. How could he even dare to be here with Charles, pursuing his egoistic impulse to see him? At first, he hadn't recognized the signs of danger and had let Charles down, preferring to attend to his own problems. Then he had even sent Charles into the trap in his office and finally he had also been unable to rescue him from his dungeon. No, there was no possibility in this world how anyone might ever forgive him this fault. At least as soon as they recognized it, but that was only a matter of time. As soon as the others' worry for Charles decreased and no matter which kind of change of Charles' state might be responsible for that, as soon as that they realized his responsibility they would expel him from their society. He'd be like a comet diverted from its orbit, wandering aimlessly about, just like Charles...
He'd deserve it. For what he had done to his friend. He couldn't hope that Charles would ever forgive him, despite his generosity. He could only hope that his friend would do him one last favor by getting well again. Charles had to be fine; that was the only thing that mattered. Everything else, no matter how it was going on with himself, wasn't important to him.
An hour later, Don was running out of excuses. Megan refused his offer that she should spend the valuable minutes with Charlie. There was no one left whom Don could send in. His excuse that he had already seen Charlie had become irrelevant since it was the same with the others. The fact that they didn't understand his resistance had to mean that he was wrong. Even if he couldn't get the image of Charlie out of his head, he had to force himself to go back to him. He couldn't let him down just because he thought he couldn't bear the sight of him.
At first he had thought he didn't deserve to see his brother again. But then maybe he had deserved it, not the joy and relief, but the pain. But whether deserved or not – there was no way he could put up any further resistance. He had to stand by Charlie, be with him and give him strength.
Don found it strange.
He didn't really feel uncomfortable, just somehow like he didn't belong here. It was a strange sensation to see Charlie lying there so still. Charlie was never still. He was always in motion. And even if you didn't see it directly – there were always some brain cells working, maintaining his features in that witty tension and giving his eyes that sparkling fire.
Now those eyes were closed. And there was no new, ground-breaking formula being created behind the forehead. The tired thoughts behind the gray forehead were primitive and only directed to maintain the body alive.
And it was Don's fault.
It was he who had got the whole thing started in the first place, it had been through him that his brother had come into danger, only by him and that stupid job. And as soon as they had once got into the whirl of the two mafias, the course of things couldn't have been stopped.
Until now, Don had been stroking his fingers over Charlie's hair, now however he stopped short. Who told him that all that couldn't have been stopped? Maybe there might have been some possibility of rescuing Charlie from his dungeon in time?
Don shuddered. Had they really made a mistake, a mistake that had endangered Charlie even further?
Maybe they should have used more pressure just as he had done when Megan had been abducted? Of course Don still loathed himself for his actions at that time, for allowing Ian Edgerton to hurt the boyfriend of Megan's kidnapper physically. But didn't they say that the end justified the means? Maybe he should just have shouldered the life-long self-loathing and then they would have released Charlie earlier? What did his principles matter to him when his brother's life was at stake?
From somewhere, there came a quiet rational voice, Are you sure that Charlie would have wanted you to betray the law and yourself for him?' Under normal circumstances, Don wouldn't have been so sure; he'd even have supposed that Charlie would have tried to dissuade him. But now...
Charlie's helplessness was obvious as well as the lack of any sign of life. And Don knew that Charlie would surely not have wanted that. He wondered if his brother would reproach him because he had not done everything he could for his release. As long as he was going to be able to reproach him.
It seemed as if Don had done everything simply wrong. It seemed he had let pass every chance of protecting his brother without taking it or he had shattered it at once. And now Charlie was fighting for his life. No, nobody would make Don waver in his conviction. This was his fault.