Page 25 of Blue Embers
“You mean...you have a kid out there somewhere? A nineteen year old kid?”
“A kid we agreed needed to be kept secret,” she said, another tear trickling down her cheek.
“Why?”
“Because it wasn’t born right. It was...different.”
“And the Draak? Who was he?”
She hesitated, taking a few long breaths as if conflicted.
“You’ve heard of him, actually,” she said. “The whole world has and that’s why no one would have believed me if I ever came out with this. His name was…”
I leaned in, anxious to hear it, when suddenly I felt Artemis’s grip grow rigid between my hands. Her eyes rolled back and that beautiful color in her cheeks was sucked away.
“Artemis?” I said, stunned by the suddenness of her plummeting condition. She took in a strained breath that had me jumping out of my seat in a panic. I tore my hand from hers and ran to the door, screaming into the hall as the medical machines began beeping with alarms I couldn’t understand. “Help!” I shouted. “Help, someone!”
Two nurses sprinted toward the room and pushed me aside to tend to my sister. Watching them bark medical terms at each other before one of them rushed off to get the doctor made me shake with fear. Artemis fell limp, her body taking a turn that made me freeze up inside. The sounds in the room began to melt together into a muffled static as I watched blurry shapes crowd around the hospital bed. Now I was in a nightmare and I could see no way out until I knew she was ok.
An hour later, I found myself sitting on the cold floor of the hallway outside my sister’s room. The nurses had pushed me out at some point, but I was in a daze by then, listening to the sounds happening in front of me. My mind was dark with the possibility that Artemis might not make it.
Finally, I saw two white sneakers step up and raised my head to look at the white-haired doctor standing over me. I pulled myself to my feet, using the wall for balance, and tried to mentally prepare for the worst news. Truth was, I’d been trying to prepare for months and it hadn’t made a difference.
“Ms. Grant,” the doctor said, his round glasses and the shine of his partly bald head making his delivery of the news gentle, like a grandfather talking to his grandchild. I stopped breathing, waiting for him to explain what was going on. “Your sister,” he exhaled, pulling his glasses off and slipping them into the breast pocket of his doctor’s coat. “She’s fallen into a coma.”
Tears stung my raw, tired eyes as I denied the severity of that word.
“Ok,” I forced. “For how long?”
The doctor’s face drooped with regret. “Indefinitely,” he said as softly as possible, but no matter his tone, my heart turned to ashes at the news. “She’ll be on life support until you say otherwise.” He stepped in, placing a gentle hand on my shoulder. “Get some rest, Ms. Grant. The floor of this hospital is no place for you right now.”
As the doctor walked down the fluorescent hall, his gate was sad and slow. All I wanted was to find the Draak whose print was on my sister’s stomach and demand he save her, but as if the universe wanted things this way, she’d been cut off the moment she was about to tell me his name. I walked slowly back into the room and when I saw my sister’s pale form on that bed, hooked up to tubes and machines, I almost broke apart. I couldn’t look at her and instead of stepping in to touch her, I whipped around and I began a quick pace down the hall, my head spinning with anxiety.
I was breathing too fast for my own good, making me lightheaded when I charged out of the hospital and ran to my car, shaking and suddenly in pain. I couldn’t breathe. I sunk into the driver’s seat, closed the door, and clutched my chest. Every breath filled my head with dizziness. I leaned forward on the steering wheel, closing my eyes and trying desperately to get a hold of myself, but the thought of losing Artemis had never been so real. I was torn to pieces knowing I’d never speak to her again. Knowing that eventually her sickness would take her or it would have to be my hand to let her go.
11
Persephone
. . .
I sat in my car for hours, hanging on to whatever control I still had until I got past the panic that had gripped me all through the night. At some point, I’d fallen asleep and woke with a kink in my neck to the bright sun beaming through my window. I folded my visor down and sat up, stretching my stiff body before I realized I was still in front of the hospital. Inside, my sister was lying in a bed dying, her mind lost to a long sleep.
I took a few deep breaths, trying to avoid another onslaught of unpleasant emotions as I turned the key in the ignition. When the car started up, I felt my phone buzz in the center console and reached in to fish it out. On it was a message from Ben saying something needed my attention at the museum.
I was reluctant to leave the hospital, but at the same time, I was eager to get away. I needed a distraction. Something to work on to keep my emotions at bay. Forcing myself to pull out of the parking space, I headed home for a change of clothes in hopes that it would help me clean the awful experience from the previous night away. At least long enough for me to get things in order.
Once I’d put on a new suit and a pair of ankle boots, I headed back out to the museum. I had bags under my eyes. I hadn’t had caffeine. I pulled my unwashed hair into a tight ponytail and convinced myself things were fine. The last thing I wanted was for people to ask me questions about how I was feeling because I had no idea how I was feeling.
When I arrived, I didn’t exactly find the distraction I was looking for. I met Ben in the office to see him stressing over something on his desk. I knocked on the open door to get his attention and waited for him to explain what was going on.
“Ah, Ms. Grant,” he said, walking around the desk to greet me.
“Ben,” I said with suspicion. “What’s going on?”
“Well, it would seem that our shipment of plaques has been lost in transit and the last few art sculptures that were supposed to be delivered are stuck a thousand miles from here because the planes are grounded due to weather.”
“Which means,” I said heavily, crossing my arms over my chest with disappointment.
