Chapter 28: And I had no strength
Morning came with little rest – and plenty of sickly dreams featuring lungs expanding slowly under see-through flesh – and Vlad wasn't quite sure of where to draw the line between sleep and awareness. He had slept, that much he knew – but he couldn't say which thoughts had happened before or after the shift.
His eyelids felt heavy, difficult to pry – and keep – open.
Still. Vlad had spent too much time in bed feverish covered in rashes and even now cold hot vomiting blood as it was. He should...
A voice called out to him – not gentle, but not all business either, and June wasn't there and it wasn't Bianco and no one else talked to him like that anymore, as if he was an acquaintance like you'd speak to a human being you'd seen before and you acknowledged that, someone with a personality and not just a patient who'd been here too long with pity like the doctors with wariness like the nurses with, who should have left already.
the clinic's patients didn't stay that long
how long had it been
since the accident
since Vlad woke up to an unfamiliar white ceiling undistinguishable from his room in the hospital and yet clearly different and other
patients here only stayed a few weeks sometimes a couple of months
June had told him that
people who were injured worse than that due to ectoplasm and ghosts didn't make it to the clinic
Vlad had been there for
for
His eyes barely kept open, Vlad stared at the window through shadowed lashes. The one year and three months and almost one year and a half sky was a dull grey outside since the director had brought him here since the accident, shining with painful light.
"Mister Masters."
Right.
The voice.
...The nurse from the other night, actually. He hadn't been assigned to Vlad's case before, a new face. He wasn't a friend wasn't June or Bianco but he didn't look at Vlad as if there was no hope for him, as if he was wasting his time treating this patient, as if he feared everything would just get worse.
Vlad of course agreed with those who thought so
but he also dreaded the moment they'd act on it
the moment he'd be left to deal with his own demise and abnormality
alone
This nurse looked him in the eyes, for one thing.
Vlad made the effort to focus and return the favor.
The older man – brown hair, olive complexion, maybe of Middle Eastern ancestry – nodded to himself, as if satisfied with that show of attention.
"Did you sleep well, Mister Masters? You don't seem quite here."
Vlad blinked heavily red eyes staring back at him through the mirror dark maggots wandering under his skin too thin lungs visible inflating too slow for someone alive too much for a corpse and opened his mouth to answer – paused.
He couldn't feel...
He didn't want to bring attention to it, though. Not now, not when he could hardly think at all. He didn't... He didn't know if it was a good thing or not, how it would be when the nurses and doctors would notice.
...What he needed to do was make sure of it first.
"I..."
Was it really absent?
"...Just, bad dreams. Not... Not nightmares. Unpleasant and full of unease but not filled with fear. I didn't... I slept. Not very well, but I slept."
His tongue swept over his teeth, and no.
The solitary fang had disappeared – it was only normal teeth everywhere, human canines.
Vlad had forced the transformation during the night, and then he'd shifted back and the fang was gone. Maybe he could... Maybe...
would he still look human once again even if
The nurse nodded and put Vlad's breakfast on his bed.
"Try to eat something, and maybe..."
The older man paused, looked around the room and made a face.
"Ah. Do you want me to ask for a small table to go with that chair? The rooms don't typically have one, but our patients don't usually stay so long that they need such furniture. Besides, I think it would do you good to get out of that bed for more than going to the bathroom."
Vlad didn't know what to say – he'd spent so long laying powerless on that bed, bleeding and vomiting and shivering in cold in heat and in fever – but that didn't stop the nurse, who smiled slightly:
"A table it is. You'll be able to eat out of bed, and you could even line up those books against the wall instead of stacking them up by your bedside. I'm sorry we didn't think of it earlier, you know. We're just not used to long-term patients."
Something wet and cold and not laced with ectoplasm or blood for a change gathered at the corners of Vlad's eyes – it took him a moment to realize he was about to cry.
Vlad angrily wiped the tears off with his palms – and faltered when his right hand brushed against his ear, pointed and much too long under the curtain of greyed hair.
the fang was gone
but the ear hadn't been there before
His other appearance was still bleeding through, if not in the same way there is no keeping the tale under wraps isn't that right Vladislav. Forcing the transformation had changed something, yes, but it wasn't yet enough – he needed to learn his way around it, to understand, to make it work.
To train.
Perhaps, if Vlad managed to master the transformation, he could keep his ghost and human bodies separate. If the change... If he could make it a normal occurrence, something usual, instinctive, then...
He didn't know if it was possible, but maybe.
the ear hadn't been there before
but the fang was gone
Maybe he could learn his way around his body's issues. He wasn't, after all, normal human. Not anymore. He was dead a ghost in some ways at least. This was his ectoplasm, his powers, not anyone else's – and he might be able to control them.