I was furious. My captor had no effect even when I bit him, he carried me to a car and shoved me in a cage. I tried desperately to get out of the cage. I jerked and pulled, climbed up and down the cage until suddenly, as if pressing a button, my strength disappeared again somewhere and I collapsed to the bottom of the cage, unconscious.
Damon listened as Mimi struggled with her cage and screamed and cursed and then suddenly there was silence. Magnum said. "We're almost there" After 20 minutes they turned at the gate of the Chicago house and Damon knew Mimi had to be taken straight downstairs. Magnum stopped the car and Damon went to the back door and opened it. Mimi was slumped unconscious on the ground, lying pale and silent at the bottom of the cage. Damon cursed softly. He opened the cage door and touched Mimi. She was ice cold. Damon quickly got some blankets and wrapped the unconscious woman in them. He ordered the Magnum to bring the enzyme tanks. Damon didn't know if this was shock or what had come over Mimi.
He hurried down the steps and strode down the white corridor through the double doors. Samuel was there to meet him. Damon said "Mimi was screaming and thrashing and yelling for probably 2 hours on the drive and now she's been quiet for the last half hour and I just found her like this. "
Samuel cursed. He carried Mimi to one of the hospital beds and took the blankets off, Mimi. He put Mimi in restraints just in case. Damon watched for a moment and pointed to the shackles and said "Really?" Samuel nodded. Safety first. "You take the heat and blood sugar, I'll try to get a vein connection," Samuel remarked. Damon didn't put up a fight. He took the infrared thermometer and pointed it at Mimi, the reading was low, 34 Celsius. Damon said " Core temperature 34." He took some blood from Mimi's fingertip and pressed the strip against the drop of blood. It said low. The lowest reading on the machine was 0.8, so Mimi's blood sugar was at the bottom. Damon said tensely " Low, no result." Samuel, meanwhile, had made a vein connection. He went in search of sugar and warm fluids. "Get the incubator warmed up, as hot as you can get it." Damon again did as he was told.
The incubator would heat up for half an hour. Damon covered Mimi with several blankets while Samuel put the saline into the microwave to warm it up. Damon was already hanging three liters of strong sugar solution and opened the drip on full. By the time the incubator was warm, they had dripped three bags of sugar and two bags of warm liquid into Mimi. Damon gently lifted Mimi into the incubator. Mimi's blood sugar had not risen until one time just shy of the magic 0.8. They continued to drip the sugar. They covered the incubator so it would be dim and safe and familiar if Mimi happened to wake up. It was three days before they could stabilize Mimi's condition enough to dig the bullets out. After that, they put Mimi back in the incubator to recover.
When I woke up, I realized I was in the incubator, but I felt very unsafe for some reason. I wanted to go into hiding, to escape. I knew I was out of the facility but I felt unsafe. The incubator felt oppressive, I wanted to be in an even darker place. I wasn't at all sure if I was actually even home if there was an incubator in the institution. None of my senses were working so that I could understand where I actually was.
Damon went to see Mimi again, it had been three weeks since they'd brought her in. Finally, an unknown level of narcotics began to drop in Mimi's blood. He opened the incubator's cover and discovered that Mimi was awake. Again, in some sort of panic. He called out to Samuel, "Mimi's awake, but she's panicking." Samuel said " Try and get her out of there and get in that bed. Keep Mimi close. Samuel had been talking to some of his doctor colleagues and they had had some patients rescued from a medical facility in the same condition. Whose body temperature wouldn't stay up, whose sugars were dropping, who was having a hard time waking up. There were rumors of an experimental hypnotic called blue sleep. if Mimi had been given that stuff and lots of it. Then there were all the other drugs that Mimi had taken in the past, they had been found in Mimi's blood too.
Damon remembered the drugs that he'd broken down using his teeth, and there was also a sense of insecurity, panic, and flight reactions. Mimi was not the only one who had had this reaction to the experimental drugs. The doctors had found that familiar and safe people close to her and physical contact helped with the symptoms, i.e. holding her. Samuel warned. "Mimi can then be very clingy that you may not always get away immediately. But Adam can help too." Damon got one of the hospital beds ready. He went to the incubator.
I watched Damon as he reached over and lifted me out of the incubator. I sniffed "Don't breed me, please don't do that, it hurts so bad when they come out." Damon shushed " Shh baby, it's alright. See, now let's get in this bed like this and now I'm going to take you all by myself." Damon tried to contain his self-loathing. He had read all about the perverted breeding experiments of the scientists. He'd gone along with it, traumatizing Mimi, which had been the end result. How could he have done such a thing?
For some reason, I slowly began to calm down as Damon held me against his bare upper body, stroking my hair and soothing me. I didn't listen to what he was saying but slowly a feeling of safety started to creep in from somewhere and I began to relax.
Damon thought he couldn't calm Mimi at all, but after an hour or two he noticed how Mimi's muscles loosened and she settled a little tighter against him. After ten minutes, steady calm breathing against his neck told him that Mimi had fallen asleep. Mimi squeezed him in her sleep like a drowning life preserver. Good thing there is no toilet need Damon thought. After five hours he broke away from Mimi and let Adam take his place next to Mimi.
He was hungry and a shower would do him good but he found it surprisingly difficult to leave the room and leave Mimi with Adam for the night. Damon just couldn't understand why his teeth didn't react at all as if they had been turned off. He was wondering about the vials in one of his jacket pockets. He couldn't remember at all what drug it might have been. He found the ampoule in his hand and sniffed. Somehow he got the feeling that this was putting his teeth temporarily out of commission. Strange.
I finally woke up in Damon's arms in the upstairs bedroom. I was home, safe. Damon was asleep. He looked so incredibly innocent and young. I pressed my head back against his chest and listened to the steady soothing rhythm and smelled the scent of passionfruit, I fell asleep again when I woke up Damon was already awake and watching me sleep .he took a tissue and wiped the drool from my mouth. He stroked and touched. I wasn't quite ready to resume those activities yet, he went to shower first and got dressed, and casually picked out some clothes for me. He said "Baby, go take a shower, get dressed, and come downstairs and I'll do your hair downstairs then. I'm going to make breakfast." I did as he said.
I went downstairs to eat and Adam said " Next we're going to New York I've got some security work to do and it would be good for you two to spend some time alone without any gigs. "Fine, we'll go to New York and spend some time as a couple. It could be a lot of fun. I was trying to think of a couple of 1-0s I could do for Damon. I didn't want to talk about the whole medical experiment or the whole experience. That would be in the past and now we'd move on.