Chapter 6: A million candles burning for the help that never came
Vlad reread the letter he'd gotten from the university clutched in fingers that had been dying just three days ago.
There was no way he could go back to class, he was still stuck in his hospital bed most of the time, and he hadn't felt well enough to get out of his hospital room unless a nurse put him in a wheelchair and led him outside for an hour or so. Sometimes he couldn't even think for hours, too taken by a raging fever and dull, constant pain stuck in his own corpse and powerless to do anything but suffer.
He didn't even know how long he would be able to pay for the hospital. He'd been here...
He wasn't sure how long he'd been here. The doctor had said it'd been three weeks, but that was yesterday – or perhaps two days ago? When he was unable to even think, his perception of time got skewed too hours and hours and hours and hours and Vlad wasn't sure of how much time passed in between two lucid thoughts.
It had been less than a month, he believed.
almost an entire month of nothing of pain of fear of death and revival and heart attacks and necrosed fingers
alone
He had enough money to pay the hospital bills for a while yet – but things weren't getting better except for the necrosis that had somehow started receding in the last few days which didn't make any sense because necrosis didn't work like that and the doctors knew it and Vlad did too but somehow somehow his skin had turned healthy again and only the last phalanges were still black and shriveled like a mummified corpse's and it wasn't supposed to happen at all and he didn't think he wasn't going to leave anytime soon.
His family wasn't poor, he hadn't needed to take a student loan and he'd had his own smallish apartment near Madison University, but that was about it.
What were they supposed to do if he had to stay here for a few more months? For a year?
for longer?
what were they supposed to do if he never walked out of this hospital room and the doctors didn't know what to do about him and the money his parents had spent on his education never became anything else?
Vlad was alive, perhaps perhaps but what if he never became anything else? What if this accident "banzai!" had ruined everything?
What would they write on his gravestone? "He was alive"?
The university had just sent him a letter saying they were considering correspondence courses because one of his professors had been convinced he shouldn't throw his good grades to the wind – and because the accident had happened on campus and they didn't want bad publicity, probably – but even then he wasn't certain he could take advantage of it because he was too sickly to use his brain every other day.
It wasn't supposed to be like this.
Vlad was supposed to graduate with his friends and start a business with them. They'd finance their research with the ecto-converters they'd worked on when they had needed something to link the proto-portal to both electrical power and something that would be recognized by the Ghost Zone. Alternate energy without obvious drawbacks as long as you didn't get blasted in the face with it would bring in enough money for them to be able to continue with exploration and inventing and theory.
He'd have confessed to Maddie right after the first attempt with the proto-portal – and maybe she'd have said yes, or maybe not, but at least he'd have had the opportunity.
Maybe Maddie "Jack these calculations aren't right" and Jack "banzai!" could bring him homework. If anything, Vlad would try to follow the lessons and take the exams from his hospital room if needed – and maybe he wouldn't be well enough to actually make it, but at least he'd have tried and if when he got out he'd have something to rely on.
He wouldn't be left behind because he hadn't tried hard enough.
He was alive he was of course he was the dead didn't breathe sometimes he couldn't and it hurt and there had to be something he could do, something he could work on. Something to make this time in the hospital more than just pain and suffering.
It had been a few weeks already, and Maddie and Jack should come to see him at some point, right? Maybe they'd already done so but he hadn't been lucid? – but no, the doctor or the nurses would have said something. Maybe...
Vlad didn't know.
His family couldn't come, not right away, so he wasn't surprised. His older sister had moved to Europe and worked there, so he didn't expect her to drop everything just because he'd been hospitalized. His parents were older than the average for his generation, and it was difficult for them to make long trips – especially his father, since the work accident a flash of green pain hurts no not that one not his accident his father's. They'd called, though, and they were trying to arrange something for next month.
Jack "banzai!" and Maddie were right there. He didn't know why he hadn't seen them yet.
They could help the doctors, too. They knew as much about the proto-portal and ectoplasm as he did – and they weren't feverish and tired and hurting all the time.
They likely had a good reason – or perhaps a few almost-good reasons, maybe Jack kept getting distracted – for their absence, but Vlad had no idea of what it could be.
It wasn't like finding the hospital was difficult, was it?
his mother's hand in his hair too light gray almost white she'd never seen him like that it wasn't right and a sad rueful smile
"this is not where you visit the dead, don't you know, Vladislav?"