Chapter 32: It means
Ziad was standing in the bathroom's doorframe with his back to Vlad when the nurse's voice shifted into an unsettled – almost strangled – tone:
"...Vlad. Did you..."
Vlad's heart rate picked up as the older man trailed off, still looking into the bathroom – and therefore with his face hidden.
Had Ziad perhaps seen... There was no way he could know what had happened during the night and the nights before the training the cycling the only way to heal back right and normal, but maybe... Vlad had rinsed away the blood this night had been his upper left canine and that meant but some might have gotten out of the sink, maybe he hadn't seen all the drops of blood in the dimmed pink of his own power only, not once he'd turned his eyes back to normal.
How would Vlad even explain it away? He didn't have a wound to go with the blood, nothing that could end up with droplets on the floor – and he was all too aware that blood that had been thrown up was distinctive in its appearance, in the way it fell on the floor, in the mixes of saliva and other fluids.
he'd vomited enough blood with his food without any with spit and bile and pink tendrils of death
Ziad turned around, started looking him over.
Vlad didn't have an excuse had to buy some time didn't want to lie to the nurse but what else could he backed away, as if uncomfortable.
Ziad stopped short of actually touching him, eyes worried and lips pursed. He still looked Vlad over, but he couldn't actually check everything without touching him or his clothes, and that gave Vlad options. Places on his skin that Ziad hadn't seen yet, that could be bleeding for all the nurse knew.
"Vlad... There's blood over half the tiles. I need to make sure you didn't injure yourself during the night. Did you... Maybe you went to the toilet and bumped into the sink?"
maybe you did it on purpose
Vlad closed his eyes for a moment Ziad hadn't said that had no idea didn't think he would even though he technically had, biting back the truth.
"I... don't remember anything like that."
It wasn't even a lie. Vlad hadn't cut himself on the corner of the sink or anything, so he couldn't remember that happening. He did, however, remember what had truly happened – and he certainly wasn't going to tell the nurse that he'd pried out his own tooth with the medical equivalent of pliers because it had been stuck in its ghost form, and then had had to live through his canine growing back from nothing in less than a minute.
That it wasn't the first time, either – only the first time he'd made the mistake of leaving evidence of what had happened.
Ziad only looked more worried.
"You don't know what happened at all? Does anything hurt?"
"I..."
Vlad swallowed his tongue – he still didn't like lying to the nurse, just like he hadn't liked lying to June, like he didn't want to keep lying to Bianco whenever the director dropped by, but what else could he do? – and didn't say more.
Ziad looked conflicted for a long moment – but of course, there was no dismissing the blood in the bathroom.
How Vlad had missed it at three in the morning tired and spent from switching back and forth and practicing with the energy pooling in his fingers still unsure of what to do with it and maybe with his eyes closing every other second in the first place?
"...Alright. Vlad, don't worry, I'll go and get a doctor, and then we'll look you over. Take that time to calm down, maybe try to remember what happened?"
The corner of Vlad's mouth twitched slightly as he tried to nod in assent – because, in the end, he didn't have any other choice.
Ziad and the other staff members would be poor nurses and doctors if they let a patient with a potential wound just because that patient wasn't being cooperative. Placating him was a given.
The moment the older man left the room, Vlad turned his hand into its ghostly form – the scissors would be better and hurt less, but the scissors were phased in the bathroom's wall with the dental forceps and Ziad would be back in less than three minutes if he could get ahold of a doctor fast – and barely hesitated: he didn't have a wound right now, but he could make one, and yes he would heal right away but maybe, if he focused, he'd be able to keep the wound visible long enough for the doctor to conclude it had, indeed, happened during the night. It'd be healed enough to make it believable, and as long as it didn't completely disappear...
The claw-like nails of his ghost form looked painful, but...
he didn't have an explanation for the blood
Vlad's health had been almost good lately, and nothing "weird" had happened, nothing ghostly that the clinic's staff could try and attribute to him – or to a ghost trying to use his body for its own gain.
As far as they were concerned, Vlad was getting "better".
he wasn't quite normal anymore but they thought he was passing enough
if he ever left this place
it would be thanks to that
His nails would be a better alternative than the scissors, actually. If the doctor found him with a perfectly clean line of blood, they'd have to wonder what did it, how it happened. On the other hand, if the wound looked like something that could come from scratching – worse and exaggerated but all jagged edges of skin and blood peeking unequally through the pallor – then they might think he'd had an episode during the night, maybe a nightmare, something that would have led to him scratching his skin raw and then blocking it out.
They'd probably end up doing something to make sure it wouldn't happen again – maybe a sling during the night? – but Vlad could phase through any kind of restriction. It certainly wouldn't be a problem, as long as he was careful not to let something like this happen again.
The tips of his fingers rested against the side of his neck for half a second before he started digging with sharp and quick pressure. Under his hair wasn't a bad idea – it would explain why Ziad hadn't seen the wound without getting closer.
Vlad needed to be injured enough to justify the blood, but the point wasn't to hurt himself more than necessary.
the fact that it was necessary at all was bad enough
Vlad gritted his teeth.
Pain was something known, something he'd become deeply acquainted with. This was nothing.
hurts
please
Vlad only had to stay focused, to make it clear to his body and powers that he didn't want the wound to heal all the way – not yet. He'd let it heal up completely, after. Once they wouldn't suspect anything. This was his body, his life, his powers, his death, his to control and his to spread. He just had to...
Footsteps in the corridor startled him.
Vlad turned his hand back as fast as possible, drawing it away from the wound – from his neck, from where he'd been clawing at. He wasn't supposed to know, to remember how this happened, and therefore he shouldn't be touching the...
His fingers – human, and yet – were dripping blood.
As the door opened once again, Vlad had no other choice than to go and pretend to be touching the wound, to at least justify where that blood had come from. Right, he'd felt something, a twinge, something wet and just a bit warm – no, wrong, tepid and not warm, they'd noticed his body temperature, blood included, had gotten lower over the last months and when he wasn't burning with a fever. So, he'd felt that a lie and he'd tried touching it, and...
The blood would be a bit too humid yet, for a half-closed wound, but.
It could work.
Ziad appeared right behind Doctor... Hogan? Yes, that was him, one of the three doctors who dealt with Vlad's bad case of death, the one in whose office he'd fallen through the floor some time ago. Older, with thick glasses. Doctor Hogan.
Vlad mustered a colorless smile to give them as he brought his hand to their sight:
"I... I think I found the wound, doctor."
He had to make sure the gash didn't close on its own too fast, not while this lie was going on, he had to play the part, if he wanted the blood in the bathroom to go – not unnoticed, but dismissed, a mere consequence of a particular problem they could deal with and not the proof that he had taken to prying his own teeth out with stolen dental forceps.
Acting uncomfortable.
Wincing when the doctor carefully lifted Vlad's hair sticky with barely-drying blood behind his right ear.
Making it clear without a doubt no reason to think there might be more to it that he hadn't of course not who would why would he done this and the rest of it on purpose.