Page 23 of Dragon Slayer

6

SYMPTOM

She woke to the gentle beeping of hospital machines: a sound she knew well. For a moment, she squeezed her eyes shut, willing the noise away. Praying it was just a nightmare. But her back was sore from her fall; a bruise throbbed on her hip. And her throat was scratchy, and she had to pee, and yes, she was definitely here.

With a deep sigh, she opened her eyes.

All hospital rooms looked more or less the same. This was a private one, small, but blessedly only boasting one bed, a TV, and a door that led into a bathroom. There was a window, the sky beyond dark and star-studded; lamps had been left on low settings, the overhead lights off.

Her mother sat in the chair beside the bed.

“Mom?” Her voice came out a startled croak.

Kate threw her magazine aside on the table and leaned forward, almost falling off her chair, to touch Mia’s face, tears filling her eyes that she hastily blinked away. “Hey, sweetie, there you are. How’re you feeling?”

Sluggish, Mia thought, eyelids heavy and mind lagging. “How,” she started, and her throat was too dry to continue; she coughed, arm too heavy to lift in time, just coughing into the air like a mannerless heathen.

“Here.” Kate plucked a water cup from the bedside table and brought the straw to Mia’s lips. The water tasted metallic – maybe that was just her tongue – but she sipped it down greedily until her mom pulled it back. “Not too much, or it’ll make you sick.”

Mia blinked against the sudden sting in her eyes. Kate had said the same thing when she was a teenager, the last time her life had become nothing but a whirlwind of hospitals. “What happened?” she asked, voice an embarrassing chirp. “You’re supposed to be in New York.”

“Well, Iwas,” Kate said gently, easing back into her chair, hand finding Mia’s among the bedclothes. “But Donna called, and I hopped onto the first available flight.”

Flight? Oh…

“Donna said you blacked out and fell off of Brando in the warm-up arena,” she continued. “He was standing still, and Donna managed to catch your head.” Her sandy brows pinched together and she let out an unsteady breath; her voice remained calm, though. She had lots of practice being the parent of a sick child. “Someone ran to get the paramedics who were there for the show. By the time they got there, you – you had started seizing.”

“I had aseizure?” Mia gasped. That explained the full-body soreness and weakness.

“A bad one, so I hear.” She attempted a weak smile, and squeezed Mia’s hand.

Mia swallowed, dry throat sticking. “Mom, how long was your flight?” That wasn’t her real question, and Kate knew it.

“You’ve been asleep for nine hours, baby.”

“Shit.” She let go of the tension she’d been holding, the attempt to hold her head up off the pillow, and sank down into the mattress. Nine hours. Plenty of time. The show was over; Donna would have taken Brando back to the farm and put him away; would have had to deal with her other three students, the ones who didn’t fall off and seize in the middle of the warm-up ring.

“What’d the doctor say?”

Kate winced, fractionally; if Mia had blinked, she would have missed it.

“Mom.” Mia hated the way her voice shook. “It’s been nine hours. I had to have had a CT scan.”

“You did,” Kate said with a deep, unsteady exhale. She reached to smooth Mia’s hair back, touch tender. “But…” She sighed again, face falling. “Baby. They…they found something.”

Mia held her mother’s watery gaze a moment, searching for a lie that wasn’t there; Kate would never lie about this sort of thing. It was just a fruitless wish.

Mia rolled her head away, gaze flying up to the ceiling, the silver sprinkler heads there.

“Oh, honey,” Kate said brokenly. “I’m so sorry.”

Mia waited for the pain to hit. The tears, the crushing pressure in her chest. The outrage and the fear. But instead, it seemed like a black hole opened up in her chest, sucking up all of her emotion so that she felt…nothing. Nothing at all.

Kate slowly released her hand. “I’m gonna go tell them you’re awake. Be right back.”

Mia saw her mother dabbing tears as she slipped from the room. There was a call button they could have used; getting the doctor was a chance for Kate to get her emotions under control in the hallway; she’d never liked falling apart in front of her daughter.

Mia wouldn’t have minded right now, though. She had no tears of her own to contribute. She had nothing.

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