CHAPTER FIVE

LUCIFER

I LOVED ALL of school except gym. Gym sucked, to put it flatly. I was easily the fastest and strongest, but sports were just... stupid. I hated them. I tried, yeah, but not really. Really I hung out with my friend Samantha. I liked her. She was my very best friend and had been the one to show me how to operate in the different high school situations; we were in most of the same classes together, which was pretty awesome.

Though one day gym sucked worse than normal.

The girls and guys were in different classes for swimming, so I was stuck with all the athletic jock guys and Samantha had to tough it out with all the annoying popular girls. (We were in the worst gym class ever. Ever.)

It was going fine at first. Boring, definitely, but fine. Not dangerous. I decided I liked to swim (yay) but was still bored. Then it happened.

It started with me being dizzy. Like, I-had-to-get-out-of-the-pool-or-I-would-crash dizzy. So I stumbled out of the pool and sat down, clutching at my head.

The gym teacher strutted over and demanded of me, "What the hell are you doing?"

"I'm... I'm really dizzy" was all I could muster out of my spinning system.

"Dizzy? Get the hell back in the pool!" he yelled, his face reddening to the very flattering shade of a tomato. "You wimp!"

I stood up slowly, but when I took a step I missed the edge and plummeted into the pool; as I fell I threw my hands down and just barely stopped my head from hitting the ground. Pain from the shock rocked my body, and a moan escaped with all the air from my body. The world started spinning faster, and I couldn't move. I watched the water above me- it was so pretty. So blue, calm, happy. Undisturbed.

I frowned as the surface shattered and another kid jumped in, swimming towards me with a worried expression on my face and the red-and-white swim shorts of a lifeguard. He grabbed my underarms and swam up, then shoved me onto the deck.

"Breathe!" he gasped, and pressed down on the chest with the force of the big, muscular guy he was.

This, of course, struck life into me and suddenly my body realized that it was oxygen deprived and started coughing and choking on the air racing in and out of my system.

"Can I go to the nurse?" I choked out after a moment, looking at my teacher. He had been standing there, red as a tomato, the entire time.

"No! I can tell you did that on purpose!" the teacher screamed at me. "Now, get back into the pool!"

I stared at him, disbelieving. I tried to get up but found I couldn't, my world spinning too fast. I simply collapsed back onto the ground, dazed. The lifeguard came over (even though my teacher was yelling for him to go back to his post), and I felt him take my pulse on my neck.

"His heart is slowing down," he whispered, his eyes as wide as dinner plates.

My heart was slowing down. "Like cardiac arrest?" I whispered, remembering something about Will's disease.

The lifeguard nodded. "It will be. We need to call 9-1-1. Now."

"No," I gasped. "Call the PIPA medical base and Samantha. Trust me. Please."

"But-" my teacher began.

"Just do it!" the lifeguard demanded, and ran towards the phone. "What's PIPA's number? And somebody get the girl he's talking about!"

Quite a few minutes must have passed because I was suddenly in an ambulance with Will to my right, charging an AED, and Samantha and Lightning to my left.

"I was right," Will whispered gravely to Lightning. "Ashley IS the third case. And Lucifer is the second. He, unfortunately, is also the prove that the condition's genetic." A single tear slipped down his cheek as he whispered almost inaudibly (and obviously not meant for anyone's ears) and sarcastically, "Congratulations on helping science by pretty much being killed."

I screamed as I was shocked, then, thankfully, I fainted.

WILL

I sighed as I explained to Jaeson, Lightning, and Blueaura that Lucifer (who was dead asleep) had my heart condition, my cardiac arrest. That it meant it was definitely genetic.

Jaeson took up the responsibility of calling the school and telling them what happened and that Lucifer now officially had a heart condition.

Meanwhile, I did Ashley's labs (someone had gotten her blood) and went back into her room. Two hours had passed, but Kate and Ashley's mother were both still there, playing some card game.

"Hello," I greeted, a bit sadly, as I entered again, slowly closing the door behind me.

"What took you so long? And why is she still asleep?" Ashley's mother demanded, immediately tensing up and dropping the cards all over the floor.

I sighed and walked over, swooping down to help her pick them all up. "With this kind of cardiac arrest, it's normal that she'll sleep for at least eleven hours. The condition tires the body out a lot," I explained. After we had picked all the cards up and I had stood back up, I cleared my throat. "I apologize for taking so long. I just confirmed that there are three documented cases of what Ashley and I have."

"You have this condition?" the mother asked, paling a tad bit. She was back in her chair, but her spine was rigid still. Meanwhile, Kate looked on with sad eyes.

I nodded. "Yes. And it's confirmed by the karyotype that your daughter has it as well. I'm..." I looked away for an instant, the clutch of sorrow at my heart momentarily overwhelming. She was another soul doomed to living near a hospital forever. "I'm so sorry."

"Is... is this a death sentence for her? Is she going to die?" Kate asked, biting her lip and beginning to tear up.

I shook my head and gave a tiny, bittersweet smile. "Miss, my first cardiac arrest was when I was seven years old. I'm nineteen now and am perfectly healthy besides the attacks. We may not now know how to cure it all in all and only have vague ideas as to why it occurs, but we know how to take her out of the arrests when they happen."

"This'll happen again?" Ashely's mom demanded, also beginning to tear up. "For certain?"

I nodded, biting my lip. "Unfortunately, yes."

"How many cardiac arrests have you been in?" Kate asked. Her voice was only a sliver of sound.

"A lot," I said, shrugging. "Though I'm not sure if it will be the same for her. How many she'll have, I mean." I glanced away again, not wanting to meet the poor mother's eyes.

"Okay," she whispered, accepting this with a nod. I turned back, and she met my gaze, her eyes worried. "So what happens now?"

"Now we wait until she wakes up. I'll run a few tests to make sure it isn't caused by anything in addition and then we'll release her," I explained simply. I noticed how tired my voice was then; I hoped they did not.

Kate as well as Ashley's mother frowned. "Just like that?" Kate demanded. "What else can you do for her? Is that really it?"

I shook my head sadly and stared at the ground. "I'm afraid so. If we knew more... then, well, we could do more, but we don't know anything else." I looked up at her at that moment, and I let her see my sadness. "I'm so sorry about this."

Seeing my sorrow, she nodded. "It's none of your fault. You saved her life, you know. And the fact that we know why this happened is a fact, isn't it?"

I smiled sadly. "I guess so."

Suddenly Ashley's mother looked at me, fear in her eyes. "What if it happens again and she's asleep?"

I said reassuringly, "It's never happened to me in my sleep, Ma'am. But..." I rolled my shoulders, a tad bit uncomfortable under her intensely fearful gaze. "I will keep a special eye on her for you."

She smiled, though it had a tint of sadness to it. "Thank you, Doctor Riverside."

I nodded. It was all I could do.

I WOKE UP around two that fateful morning, the sky still a deep black with tiny pinpricks of starlight gleaming dimly through. I was in my office chair with Ashley's barely finished labs on my desk. I drew a tired hand through my messy hair and wondered if she'd be waking up any time soon. It'd been twelve hours, after all. More than enough.

The nurses knew me by now; this late at night I was either on call and had been sleeping in the on-call room or had fallen asleep at my desk. They smiled at me as I walked past. One, Naeila, stopped me and ask what had happened this time.

I smiled sadly, tiredly. "There's a girl, eighteen tomorrow, or well, today." I glanced down at the papers in my hands. "She's got my condition. These papers confirm it."

Naeila frowned, sorrow in her expression. "That's... I'm sorry, Will."

I shrugged. "There's not much I can do. I'm off to check on her now."

"Okay. Go home and sleep afterwards, all right? Remember that you're going to lecture at that college in two days. You'll need that sleep," Naeila reminded me.

"Huh! I forgot about that. Thanks, Naeila," I smiled at her, and then walked on towards Ashley's room.

She wasn't awake when I got there, so I dragged in a chair from the next room and sat down, planning to wait a few moments just in case.

"HELLO? DOCTOR RIVERSIDE?"

I blinked open my eyes and glanced at the clock on the wall opposite me. It read four in the morning.

"Doctor Riverside?"

I turned to Ashley, who looked small and helpless and frightened against the white hospital bed and walls. "Hi. Sorry, I guess I fell asleep."

She smiled a little. "How long have you been here?"

I glanced at the clock again. "I came around two but fell asleep about ten minutes after I'd gotten here, to be honest. I was doing your labs in my office before, but I fell asleep there as well."

"You must be tired," she gathered.

I shrugged. "I am a bit."

"Do you do this a lot?" she wondered.

"Do what?" I wondered, frowning and mashing my eyebrows together.

She grinned. "Fall asleep in your patients' rooms."

I blushed. "Oh, no. Sorry, I know it's unprofessional, I should-"

"It lets me know you care," Ashley interrupted, her grin turned to a simple smile. "You're obviously exhausted, but you've stayed here all night to make sure I was all right."

I blushed again and nodded. "I should still probably sleep at home."

"Have you tried the on-call room?" she asked.

I blinked up at her. "Most patients don't know that exists."

She beamed a little. "It's kinda funny. I have one more final, the one next week, to take and then I'll be an intern. Here, actually."

I smiled, too. "Patient today, doctor tomorrow. You'll be only eighteen tomorrow?"

She glanced at the clock. "Today, actually. And yeah, I kinda skipped a couple of grades." She beamed again.

"Good for you! That's wonderful!" I told her happily. I softened my gaze as I said softly, "Happy birthday. Though spending it here probably isn't the most fun."

"No, well," she said, shrugging. A sly smile crawled across her face and she told me, "But you know what would be fun?"

I really hoped she wasn't thinking what I thought she was thinking. "What?" I asked, a little frightened.

"If you could show me all the secret passageways and dungeons hidden in this maze of a hospital," she said hopefully, her eyes bright.

"A tour?"

"Please?"

I smiled broadly, relieved. "I'd be happy to. When?"

She stood up, excitement making her features brighten and broaden even more. "Now?"

"Okay! I have to get you in a wheelchair, though," I told her, smiling. "You're not an intern yet."

"Right," she agreed, still grinning.

A few minutes later, I was walking her through the whole hospital and letting her meet some of the nurses and a few doctors. I showed her where the CAT scans and the MRI's were, where the actual on-call room was, where the hospital morphed into the PIPA center, and finally where my office was.

There we took a break. Or, I did, at least. I sat down in my desk chair and she got up and walked over to the window. It was raining again, and you could hear the small pitter-patter of the rain and the muffled, far-off roll of thunder.

"I didn't know it was raining," she whispered, staring out. Ashley looked enchanted.

"Yeah," I agreed quietly. "This window feels like the only actual window in the whole hospital."

"What do you mean?" she wondered, turning to look back at me for a moment.

"Windows are supposed to give you a glance outside, right?" She nodded. "Well, I feel like all the other windows only let light in, and that this is the only window that lets you see the outside world, like it's supposed to." I silently stood up and walked up to stand beside her so I could point things out. "There is Flower Street. There's a woman and her husband who walk out there around eight every Monday morning, and sometimes a little girl bikes past to school during the week, and then at night there's a man who has to walk his poor houndour at like eleven at night. I don't know what happens during the day; I'm only really in my office here really late at night or really early in the morning. But when I am here I like to look at all the people who pass, because sometimes there's different people, and I wonder where they're going and where they came from and who they are."

"Wow," Ashley whispered, her intense gaze rooted even further past the glass window. "I think I get what you mean now. The window that's in my room is so high up I can't see out of it, could never notice all those wonderful, beautiful things you do, but I can see the light that shines through sometimes."

"Yeah. If I built this hospital I would have lowered all the windows."

"Me, too. I like light but I also like people."

"Same here."

For a while we stayed there and just watched the rain. We listened to it, too, because taking in both of them made for a calming effect. I noticed the rain gently landing on the window and snaking down in tiny rivulets; I watched as the smaller ones collided with other ones and grew. After a while of this, she peeled herself from the window and sat back down in her wheelchair. "I'm tired."

I snorted. "I figured you might be. I'll take you back to your room, okay?"

She nodded and yawned.

Ashley was already asleep by the time we were back in her room.

I WOKE UP face-down on my desk a few hours later, light spilling into my room. According to my clock, it was eleven the next morning.

I sighed, wondering why no one had woken me.

Getting up from my desk and combing my messy hair with my fingers, I started looking around my office, trying to remember what I had been doing. It appeared I'd just fallen asleep, and eventually I remembered that I'd been up quite late, which explained it all.

"Will, you're up," Jaeson called from the doorway. He was leaning on the left part of it.

"Why did no one wake me?" I asked sleepily, struggling to turn my head to face him.

"The nurses saw you running around at four in the morning," Jaeson reported, snorting and crossing his arms. "No one's going to wake you if you're up that late attending to patients. Or, a patient, I should say." Jaeson stood up straight to move his hands to his hips. "What's with her? You didn't visit with Lucifer this much."

I shrugged. "It was her birthday. She's going to be an intern here and she wanted me to show her around."

Jaeson smiled softly. "It's still her birthday, you know. And she just woke up."

I smiled back. He knew how I felt about her. I thanked him and went to the gift shop.

Sorry for the delay, all! NaNoWriMo and stuff. I was also in Washington DC for a while with no internet, so therefore no posting abilities. Sorry! Here is half of this chapter, since the total one was about fifteen pages and 3500 words. Too many to edit at nine thirty at night xD Hope you enjoyed!