Now I was chained to the bed. My right side was swollen and black. There were not many enzymes coming out anymore. But yes, I was medicated. I started to sleep quite a lot. I couldn't really stay awake anymore. Somebody woke me up very hard and I managed to open my eyes, Adam. He scooped me up in his arms inside the blanket and we ran hard somewhere. Adam held me tight against him and I felt the cold outside air on my face. They put me in the car and Colin was there. I fell asleep.

Adam was furious when Damon called him and gave him a message from Mimi. Traitor salvatore. Adam told Magnum and Constantine, Dresden. Reddington. They tracked down where Damon had been and it was the same facility that Mimi was supposed to blow up 7 weeks ago. Mimi had just disappeared and now Adam got confirmation Mimi was at the facility and Damon had talked to her. And did nothing about it. On the contrary.

Tried to get Mimi's power of attorney back for himself and failed. Got mad and talked to Colin about something so Colin was furious for three days and didn't say anything to anyone. Colin wanted in on the plan. It took a painful three weeks to get everything done. They had been tailing Damon and had seen him go into the facility to see Mimi and he had come out with his woman and Adam had heard Damon tell him he hated Mimi.

Now they had got into the facility and destroyed everything, recovered Mimi's enzymes and Adam had then gone to find Mimi. She was in bed in thick spiked handcuffs, thin as a rail, very unconscious, and very difficult to wake up. Mimi's right side was horribly swollen from the armpit up, black and hot. Mimi smelled of drugs, pain, and dirt. Adam tried to control himself as he got Mimi a little more awake and ran to the car. Colin was there to meet him and started putting cannulas on Mimi, Mimi again fell asleep or passed out. Colin acted quickly and Dresden and Constantine started to pull the platinum out of Mimi's liver. Eventually, it was all gone. Colin got Mimi on an IV and they started driving towards the house and the medbay.

For the next few weeks I was conscious on and off, Colin and Samuel kept me pretty much asleep and in the incubator. My whole right side had been cut out and I had been sleeping off meds, trauma, fatigue, malnutrition. And nightmares. That was one of the reasons I was kept pretty well-medicated while I recovered. I told Adam everything, that murder, I described as accurately as I could remember because I wanted to remember, I told him about Damon, Petra, and the amoebas. everything.

Adam listened as Mimi mumbled the names of the hit squad and he couldn't make anything out but because Mimi was so distressed Samuel and Colin kept Mimi asleep until the physical recovery was well underway. My recovery took a month before I could even get out of bed. Adam and the other fleas had arranged for the relatives of the victims to be compensated but there were those who had no one. Everyone had a name on a plaque with a code.

It would be another gig for me at Lake Lanier. Now I would take Adam with me. We went for a drive and Adam was the only one who knew about this. The flea people knew there was a plaque but I'd never shown it to anyone. I'd been ready to show it to Damon, but he never showed up. Adam was silent as I sat on the rock and carved. He sat next to me and said "Mimi, you're amazing. I know this isn't a good place, but will you marry me? Or even engaged?"

I finished carving the plaque and said "Yes Adam, I'll marry you and we'll be engaged." Adam and I agreed that the plaques would stay in storage. Safe. Of course, no one in their right mind would be able to read them. Those plaques are still there, there's just so many more of them now. Every time I had to get a new plaque, I wondered if it was always worth it. I don't know if Adam has been there since that incident. I have and many times. I've sometimes considered telling someone how many died in our fight against the drug companies but I've never wanted to. I, we, were and will always be in the shadows. Never in the spotlight.

I managed to get my weight up to 44 kg when Mimosa announced that we were going to do a Europe gig. I would go alone or I mean with Mimosa and Mirella, Adam and Colin would go to South America to burn the aconitum fields and other herbs that were grown there. Samuel and Charles and Bran would go to North America to track down a list of guys to get control of. It would be up to them to decide what that control would end up being. We'd have a long and brutal job, mostly fight clubs, killings, and sabotage. A tight schedule and jungles at the end. Oh that my life could be a little too hectic at times.

The good thing about gigs in Europe is that you don't have time to think about anything but the work you're doing. Whether it's a kill or a fight club, you have to concentrate. My rage got to be on display at fight clubs because every single one was a kill or be killed, and I couldn't afford to lose. Fuckers were dying for the same money, easy. I ate when I remembered, and again when two-thirds of the gig was gone, didn't Bran have to have another poisoning to make me act like a Marrok again on top of everything else?

I thought when I left for the jungle that, God, I'm not up to it. I weighed 35 kilos. I got several snakebites in the jungle, some more poisonous than others. A couple of poisonous plants hit my skin and I got lovely rotten wounds on my leg. I always covered them up and waited for them to heal. The Amazon was the last one, my feet were healed, the poisons gone in a relatively short time. At the end of the show, I weighed 28 kilos when I delivered the plants to Dresden. The gig had taken another year. The mafias were under control and the fight clubs were done. Once again I had saved the world.

I went to sleep in my Oklahoma house and woke up 12 hours later with a headache and feeling sick, and cold. Coughing, nose full, breathless. Oh great, I'd caught the flu after all, when my body simply couldn't fight it off any longer. I put a message in my pack email "Europe gig over. A bit under the weather. I caught the flu, which I will now catch some time. I'm in Oklahoma. Cheers Mimi." We kind of had a rule to let them know when the gig was over so that if they needed help, the nurses would know to come.

Adam put up a message that he, Samuel, and Colin are in Bulgaria fighting with the pharmaceutical company, they may take a while, hope you are ok. Bran had recovered and was putting Marrok's things in order with Charles Dresden and Constantine chasing Nicodemus and coins, Magnum was in Australia blasting away.

Fine, I'll be fine. Mimosa was in my head too. We slept on the couch because I couldn't go any further. I had everything I needed. A throw-up bag, a phone, a blanket. Nothing tasted good, and I couldn't even think about going to medbay. I knew my body would eventually overcome this.

Someone tried to wake me up "Mimi, come on. Come on, baby. Come on. Come on, Mimi. Come on, wake up." What the fuck is Judas doing here, was my first thought. I felt him pick me up in his arms and curse me softly, I guess I was a little light and bony. He carried me to the medbay and started looking for a vein to cannulate. He tapped my elbow and felt my neck. No luck.

Damon said " Mimi, hey I need to put a cannula directly into your heart, you're in such bloody bad shape. I'll explain everything but I can already tell you that Petra is dead and so is her father. " There was a cutting edge in Damon's voice when he mentioned the word Petra. Has there been a wrinkle in the love at some point? Damon took the blanket off me and I fought back the whole time as I wasn't really conscious properly and I was cold and someone was trying to tease me.

Damon said "Fine, Mimi I'm going to put you on a sedative first, you're probably already asleep on the strength of it, but I'll try to keep it relatively light. " I felt a moment later someone stabbed me in the heart, no, in the lungs, the flank, really? That was the last thought I had for a while again.

I woke up again when Damon woke me up, I opened my eyes. Damon sat on the edge of the bed and stroked my hair away from my forehead " Baby, now I gotta go take care of you a little more efficiently, you know? Now you can't just sit back and wait for your body to get rid of the bug. First, those lungs that are full and sore are your fourth. I've already cut three of them out, so we'll start respiratory therapy. The teeth made the stuff you get in your lungs as a fine mist that you breathe in. I know it's panic-inducing, but I'm gonna keep you really calm. First, I have to give you a muscle stimulant in your diaphragm and rib cage so that you breathe and don't hold your breath instinctively. Now this is really unpleasant at first because your lungs are so sick and this stimulant really forces you to breathe, but really afterward you're sedated, and you may not remember much of this. That's a CPAP machine and that helps, my tooth stuff does help. You do this every 12 hours or every 24 hours. Depending on the response."

I felt pricks in my ribs and diaphragm and then a fair amount of flank rubbing. I felt Damon lift me into a sitting position and walk behind me himself and put my head in a face mask like this and tie it on the back of my neck. Every now and then a flank rub. He supported me and put the device on. The device was forcing air into my lungs and I felt like I couldn't breathe and I had to breathe anyway.

It was exhausting. The panic was trying to force its way through the flank and apparently, then I was given a stronger drug somewhere in between because the next thing I knew I was in bed. By now I had a central line. I remembered that quite a few times I'd had respiratory therapy and I started to think about how bloody long I'd been here. This was supposed to be just the flu. I looked next to me and Damon was asleep in the chair.

Oh, I must have been pretty demanding because exhausting Salvatore is not easy. I put the side of the bed down and disconnected all the tubes as I was already fine and went for a walk. I ended up in a heap on the floor, which woke Damon, who at first cursed where I'd gone and then came and lifted me back to the bed and put the tubes in place, re-cannulated me, and said "Don't start this again, Mimi this has been hard enough without this. I don't mind keeping you asleep all the time, but if this goes on, baby, I can't take it. I'm going to put you under very deep anesthesia until you are well and able to walk. "

I tried to look all innocent and said 'Thanks for fixing me up. Really. I just don't like being this weak and fragile. You know me. " Damon sighed and lifted his legs up and said "Someday, baby, someday I'm going to make a bed that you won't escape from. " I looked innocent again and said, "Are you going to put a lid on it or shackles?" Damon looked at me for a moment and walked away. I sighed and I was still really tired and now I was getting cold so I had a fever. Great. Damon came back and put me in restraints, and smiled happily. He felt my forehead and got a ready-made drip bag from one of the tables and filled it up. The fever started to go down, but at the same time, I started to get tired and eventually fell asleep.

When I woke up I was in my own bed and on the bedside table was a phone and a wallet and a jewelry box. It had a message on it "Will you marry me again darling? Let's have as lovely a wedding as last time. Damon." I was in no hurry to marry him, and I didn't need a new wedding, not one bit. Besides, I was engaged to Adam and I had the ring on my finger to prove it, I knew Damon was aware of it because I remember him touching the ring while he was holding me in the respirator. He was in doctor mode and now he just wanted a flank wedding. I wasn't about to agree to any proposal now, I could be engaged to Adam but I wasn't going to do anything about it yet, I was trying to think of what I actually wanted to do now.

I went to Pennsylvania and the very first thing I did was get myself a vet's license. Because I'd been helping out at the zoo with a couple of animals and there was another career I could focus on somewhere in between. But now I had been thinking about the idea that my fae contact had given me, that we could get the medicine companies caught up. And properly.

It would take time and focus, but forever is a long time, I was a free woman so I didn't have to split my time between my married life and work. The European gigs were hopefully gone again for a while, and I vowed that when I went for breakfast if even one doorbell rang, I would at least not answer it. My studies took three months because I knew the men were having a party. I didn't want to go anywhere else now that I'd got myself a vet's license and at the same time I was already getting fleas looking into how we could get this thing out in the open.

I was ready to get back to work after that three months, but I wouldn't concentrate on gigs now unless I absolutely had to, we even had a few fae doing gigs now and there were some good witches and wizards as well. The fleas were growing by the day and I always had my trusties with me. Penn and Ruby had now left the active stuff and had moved on to civilian life or so were no longer involved. I wished them both a good life.

I had a new credit flea, this particular gentleman was the one who delivered a sofa to me once and then we did a little more. He was now married and his wife was pregnant. His name was Jake. I hadn't told Adam and Damon about Jake yet, and I probably wouldn't because they could kill him. At least Damon would probably make him go to Australia somewhere. The other confidant I had was Rob.

Rob looked just like Thor's actor, another one of those doppelgangers. But he was another reliable man. And then there were a couple of women. Amanda, Melissa, and Heidi. They were my powerhouse for getting information, whenever I needed it. All three were fucking good hackers. They were now looking for some information or something to get this thing out in the open. There was a new task for us.

I hadn't even realized when the men had finished partying and had actually come here to Pennsylvania. I was so focused on my work. I actually enjoyed being able to concentrate, to think about doing something that didn't require physical effort or struggle and I wasn't always so out of shape. Always. Sometimes my sugars dipped a bit, but that was nothing. The men would bring me food every now and then and try to get me to do a little bit of something else but I was in the middle of something and I didn't always appreciate the distractions.

A Pennsylvania mansion is a good place to organize your own resistance movement. I wasn't actively doing gigs now because I was trying to start getting this whole thing out there in some way. So far, whenever there was a rescue from the medical establishment it had to be done so secretly that there was no way to get the press involved.

Amazingly, Bran had done himself proud and spent a considerable amount of time in Washington DC talking to congressmen and judges. Our friend Fae had made this happen. He tried to make it up or get this issue raised there, but until there was even a decent victim who would agree to testify and they had medical evidence, there was not much they could do yet. So I tried to organize some kind of rescue mission, some kind of thing to start bringing these horrors out into the open because as much as I loved fleas and fleas jobs, they took up time and a lot of time, time that I could spend with Adam or Damon.

We weren't remarried yet, and even though Damon swore the third time was the charm, I wasn't quite ready yet. We had been separated for over a year now and both of us had said and done things we probably shouldn't have. Well, I fucked 21 strange men on a cruise. Damon hadn't taken any position on it yet but I knew that one day that would come up too.

Damon and Adam and even Samuel helped out where they could but I had learned over the years to pretty much do my own thing and didn't delegate much, although I was advised to do so by many people. I just couldn't, because I feel that if I let go of any control something goes wrong that it really shouldn't and it results in more unnecessary deaths. Adam had tried to ask me how they died because he hadn't really understood me.

I'd managed to mumble something up. I told Adam that I knew that every member of my strike team was definitely dead and let's leave it at that. I had taken Adam to Lake Lanier and let him see the plaques as I carved 22 new names on them.

Bran tried to talk me into sharing and he is an excellent listener. I just didn't want to tell anyone, especially Damon because I didn't even want to think about the whole event. The bodies of the fleas were never found and I did make sure that those who had relatives were taken care of. Damon tried many times. He even threatened to drug me and use a truth serum to get me to talk. Or stab me.

He said " One day, darling, you'll tell me and you'll tell me everything. Do you understand, darling?" That side came out when Damon was determined enough and focused enough to get what he wanted. Except I didn't. I would never tell. Because it's not really anyone else's business. They were my strike team, my gigs, my plans. My mistakes.