Chapter 46: Kill the flame
"Vlad?"
Ziad sat down on the bed with his patient, but Vlad still failed to acknowledge the nurse past a slow glance. He'd said "hello" and then had found himself unable to add anything.
What was he even supposed to say? Was there anything new here? Something that wasn't the clinic, the unending days, the hopeless waiting?
the inability to be human despite all pretending
Vlad didn't know what to tell the older man, because there wasn't anything worth saying he could think of.
...Well.
That wasn't true.
There was something new, something he could inquire about, but.
Asking about the power outage yesterday when he'd been the one to cause it it didn't matter that he hadn't done it on purpose felt too much like deception. Like he didn't know, like it wasn't his fault. Like whatever had happened after that wasn't on him.
It was better not to ask, not to know.
he didn't think he could bear it if someone had died
It didn't matter that he hadn't done it on purpose.
"Vlad, I just want to know how you are feeling. You... After the power incidents yesterday, Nurse Gutierrez found you exhausted with a large nosebleed. If you are about to go on a steep slump, I'd rather know right away and try to do everything possible to help you get through it."
Ziad's concern almost made Vlad laugh – something bitter and clawing, acidic like the ectoplasm in his blood – except he didn't even have the energy or any interest in doing that.
Of course the nurse was kind and caring, and of course the first assumption was that Vlad was relapsing – again. That was all that ever happened to him since the proto-portal since the accident since Jack since Jack Jack since Jack, after all.
Getting almost better, and then relapsing.
"It's just a nosebleed."
"It's blood loss and fatigue, it could be something more worrying than a simple nosebleed. Especially as you aren't in the best of states, there's no way to say what could trigger a chain reaction or if this is only the first symptom of something worse."
Vlad felt the truth was the other way around, that because he had been the picture book for "unhealthy" for more than two years – closer to three, now – a nosebleed was, ultimately, nothing.
It certainly didn't compare with necrosis.
Besides, he knew why he'd ended up like that, he knew exactly what had gone wrong that he'd almost stolen all the electricity in the building that he was to blame for whoever might have suffered from it and it didn't matter it didn't change anything that he hadn't wanted hadn't meant hadn't. Vlad couldn't tell Ziad – not without explaining everything else and not without the consequences and the risks behind such an explanation – but he knew.
He didn't really know how to make Ziad stop worrying – barely felt it important enough to try, but this was Ziad and the nurse didn't need to worry for nothing – though.
"It's not the first time."
It probably wouldn't be the last one either.
On the table, Jack and Maddie's theses both bore witness to his words, their white pages stained with ectoplasm-laced blood even if the nurse from yesterday had put them away after she'd found Vlad crumbled on the bed, face full of dried blood.