Chapter 50: I live my life in Babylon
"I'm sorry I couldn't come sooner, Vlad."
The patient stared into his plate, all too aware of the bandages on his face, right on the edges of his sight, pressing lightly against his broken skin.
some mummy-bandaged approximation of a man's face
and underneath
"Not your fault."
The ecto-acne was worse than ever before. Pimples had appeared everywhere on his face, going down his neck and reaching the top of his back. In less than a week, half of them had ruptured, letting out a glowing ooze of pus and pink ectoplasm – and where several open pimples lined up, gaping skin showed too-pale flesh and muscles and veins.
They'd had no choice but to bandage him up, and even then the doctors weren't certain it was actually helping anything: the ectoplasm in the pus dissolved half the curative treatments they could apply on the bandages themselves.
It was much worse than the first time around, rashes included.
At least his hands were still normal hadn't fallen into necrosis again reaching against his will into death itself or was it death reaching back holding his hands securely like a child you feared would wander and get lost and the fevers, while they'd come back, weren't quite as potent as they used to be. His powers weren't going haywire either, much more controlled than before.
Vlad had no other choice than to go back to using them regularly, if only to try and get rid of the excess ecto-energy too late. The pimples might have come back, but maybe...
Maybe he could go back to normal as normal as any of this was as normal as a freak like him dead and alive and unable to be one or the other could ever pretend to be if he did use his powers regularly. He wouldn't be able to live as if nothing had happened, but he might...
might be able to go on if nothing else
Vlad wasn't hungry.
At all.
He tried to eat something, still, but after the first two swallows tasting like ashes and something being forced down his throat – he gave up.
Ziad's hand hovered over Vlad's plate, as if the nurse knew exactly what was going through his patient's mind – on the matter of food at least, certainly not for the rest of it – but couldn't quite bring himself to take the food away without trying one last time.
"Won't you eat more?"
Vlad didn't answer – didn't look up, didn't do anything.
A sigh, and the plate was taken away.
"Alright, but I will bring you more this evening and you will eat at least some of it. The goal is for you to heal, not starve to death."
Something similar to chuckling – dry, hurting, and not amused at all – escaped Vlad's mouth for a moment, and wetness welled up in the corner of his eyes.
could he even starve?
you had to be alive for that to happen you had to be eligible for death
and Vlad
Vlad could pierce his own eyeballs and cut off the tips of his ears and dig into his own flesh with scissors and go into cardiac arrest again and again and again and again and again and again
but he was still here to suffer through the consequences
"Vlad?"
He bit at his lips – not too pointed, not about to break the skin, and yet – and shook his head.
"'T's okay."
Vlad wasn't even sure of what he was talking about here – but it wasn't Ziad's fault.
if anything
his own friend's negligence "banzai!" a flash of green can't breathe burns
not a single visit
Jack's fault
Ziad hadn't been here, the first time. He hadn't seen, didn't know how bad it had gotten – couldn't tell that this was both worse and better, that his skin had never been as bad as this except of course for his fingers hands lower arms wrists dead and grey and black and red hard senseless still moving a corpse's attempt at touch and life but that at least he wasn't dying, this time.
June had been there.
and June June June wasn't anymore
because of Vlad because of his powers because of his death of his abnormality because
Vlad's fault
Of course, Vlad guessed Ziad had seen his medical file at some point, but it still wasn't the same as having lived through it – or at least witnessed it.
the only witnesses left the doctors the other nurses didn't care
and Bianco of course but Bianco wasn't there all the time not then and not now just like Vlad's parents busy with their own lives unable to help in person
Jack and Maddie had never come
Vlad repressed a sob and went back to lie on his bed, back turned against the door.
What was even the point, here? Apart from not making it worse?
The truth seemed to be that this would never get better than the days he could almost be called healthy – stuck in a clinic where he knew next to no one, only able to work on a master thesis that wouldn't be put to use if he never got out a manuscript he had left untouched on the table for days now a future that didn't exist and perhaps see the translators in the library from time to time.
But if he didn't try, if he let it get worse – then he'd just suffer more.
He wasn't even sure there was a way to end it, to properly give up.