Chapter Fifteen
Emma screamed as the tree next to her seemed to explode with light and sound, and reflexively jerking backward, she began to fall. As she plummeted toward the ground she screamed again -- and then felt herself enfolded by her father's strong arms, and carefully -- and tenderly -- lowered back to the ground.
"I'm sorry, Pumpkin; I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to frighten you."
She in turn placed her arms tightly around her father's neck. "Daddy, please don't leave us! I couldn't stand it if..."
"I know, honey; I won't. I won't," he repeated. "I promise."
They floated down to where the others stood. Gracie was continuing to stare at her mother's still form. Clark knelt beside her. "Would you like to say goodbye to Mommy? Before we all take her back to the city?"
Gracie slowly nodded, her eyes never leaving her mother.
Clark took her by the hand and slowly led her over to the recumbent form on the grassy ground. "Would you like to hold Mommy's hand, and say goodbye?"
Gracie slowly reached for Lois's right hand. "G'bye, Mommy. I love you." She looked up at her father. "Why is Mommy's hand so cold?" Clark realized his mistake, and turned helplessly to Karen.
"I'll tell her. Bring her over here."
"Come on, Sweetie. Let's go back with the others." He began to stand.
"Mommy won't let go of my hand."
At Clark's look of anguish, Karen stepped forward and knelt beside Gracie. "That's not your mommy making the hand squeeze." Taking Lois's hand, she carefully opened the fingers; it seemed to take a surprising amount of force. "You see, honey," she explained, "sometimes parts of our body just move all by themselves. It's called a reflex. Maybe a part of your body will give a little jerk, without you meaning for it to happen..." She demonstrated with a jerk of her shoulder.
Surprisingly, the child was nodding as though she understood. "Like Mommy jerked when the lightning hit her?"
Clark froze. Then he slowly said, "Cupcake, the lightning didn't hit Mommy..."
"Yes it did. An' she jerked when it hit her. I was watchin'," she added.
"The...the same lightning that hit me?" he asked slowly.
"Uh-huh."
He turned to Karen. "Take the children over to Walter. Please," he added as she hesitated. As Karen led them away he began a slow, but thorough visual examination of his wife's body. The massive pooling of blood which had collected in the abdominal cavity...it was slowly, but surely, being absorbed -- being re-integrated back into Lois's system. As he watched, the internal ruptures and tissue tears were beginning to heal themselves.
And then he heard it. Thump-a. Thump-a. It was a sound which he had never expected to hear again. He quickly spun around. "Karen, come here, quickly. And quietly," he added, looking at the children.
"Be right back," she said, smiling down at the children. She hastened to Clark's side.
"Karen, I have to tell you something -- something which you and Walter must promise to take to your graves."
Immediately, Karen responded, "You have our word; neither of us will ever breathe a word of it. What's going on?"
"Karen, she's alive." At Karen's in-drawn breath, he quietly hastened on. "No, don't say anything. Don't examine her. Just let me explain." She nodded. "Karen, if I'm hit by lightning, and then the lightning passes into another person, they receive a copy of my superpowers...including my invulnerability. Just now, Lois was struck by the same bolt as me." His eyes widened. "Karen, she's alive," he repeated.
Karen stood frozen, stunned by this news. Then her medical training took over, and she began thinking furiously. "Clark, don't tell the children yet. Don't get their hopes up."
"But her body's healing itself! Her heart's beating again."
"Just listen a minute. I'm afraid you may have been handed an enormous ethical dilemma. Clark, much of the body's tissue can survive for a long time after death -- nearly an hour, mostly. That's why she's responding to the invulnerability.
"But, Clark, not the brain. It begins to die if it goes only four minutes without oxygen." She took a deep breath, and went on. "Clark, it's been half an hour. She's brain-dead. She has to be. If she heals, if her body rejuvenates itself, it won't be Lois. You may find yourself having to care for years for a healthy, invulnerable, super-powered vegetable." She regretted the blunt words; but this was critical, she had to make him face the problem.
He stood silently. She went on, "Is there any choice? Once this starts, could it be stopped?"
He exhaled, and then nodded. "I receive my powers from Earth's yellow sun. If she's kept out of the light long enough, she would lose the invulnerability. Her injuries are still serious enough that she would succumb -- again." He drew a ragged breath.
She was silent for a moment. Then she asked, "What are you going to do?"
He glanced at Walter, and at the children. "I can't ask anyone else to make this decision for me. The kids aren't wise enough yet, or mature enough, to handle something like this." He ran trembling fingers through his hair. "What do I do, Karen?"
"Clark, I've already given you my best counsel. But this is one I can't decide for you. Have you felt the...the 'connection' Walter told me about? Is it back?"
He bowed his head. "No. It's not. But that might just mean that the healing process hasn't gone far enough to restore her mind." He glanced again at the children. "Can you watch them for a minute? I need to get away." As her alarmed glance fell on the girls, he added, "It really will be just for a minute. Keep everyone well-back from the tree, in case of another lightning strike," he added.
She nodded. "Leave when you need to. We'll be fine."
As he launched himself up past the tree, up into and through the clouds, he could hear Karen making innocuous explanations to the girls and to Walter. As he came to a stop with the light of the full moon shining down on him and the starry heavens silently blazing in the background, he began running through his mind all the things which he had just heard.
He knew that he would have to give up being Superman if his wife were a total invalid -- no one else would be able to handle her. But if she died, he would probably have to retire anyway, to give a super-powered daughter -- or maybe two, should Gracie develop any superpowers -- the upbringing and training which they would need; to teach them to be the kind of people his parents, and Lois, would want them to be. Either road was a no-win situation. The only possible solution which seemed to offer any hope for him -- and for Superman -- was the extremely unlikely chance that Lois would recover in mind as well as body, either with or without superpowers.
Then he realized that her body was making the decision for him. Short of keeping her quarantined from sunlight, she would continue to recover. Did he have the right to take that process away from her, no matter where it might lead?
Finally, with many misgivings but with a renewed determination, he turned in the air and headed back down -- down to his family.
* * *
Chapter Sixteen
As Clark came in sight of the little group, which had by now moved several feet further from the tree, he heard Karen attempting to explain to two very worried girls that their father would be back in just a minute. He landed in front of them, and spent a moment stooping before them and calming their fears. Then he stood, and turned to look at Lois. After a moment spent further ascertaining her condition, he turned back to face them all.
"Kids -- and Walter, and Karen -- I have to tell you something. When the lightning hit Mommy a few minutes ago, it started her heart beating again. She's alive -- wait, *wait*!" he went on, trying to stem their exuberance. "She's only *barely* alive. She might die again, in a little while. Or she might live a long time, but be so sick that she won't even know who we are." He paused to let that sink in, especially for Gracie. "There's only a small chance --" At a look from Karen, he amended his words, "-- a *tiny* chance that she'll get all the way better. But I've thought about it, and I think that, however tiny the chance, we need to let her try. Are you willing to take that chance, and hope that she gets better?"
Of course there was no doubt of the outcome of his poll; both girls -- even Gracie, when the issue was explained to her again -- agreed that they should try to save Mommy.
"Then I need to take Mommy's cell phone, and fly into the clouds again so I can get better reception. I'm going to call a doctor that I know of, and see if we can take Mommy to him. All right?"
"You mean Dr. Klein?" asked Emma.
"Yes. If anyone can help your mother recover, it's him." He didn't add that Dr. Klein was the only medical person (besides Karen, now) who was privy to the family's special secret. "I'll be back just as soon as I can reach him. In the meantime, I'm going to cut down this tree, so that burning pieces don't fall on Mommy. By the way, I'm assuming that Emma must have gotten heat-vision, to set it on fire. Congratulations, Pumpkin."
"Daddy, I wish I could say it was me, but it wasn't." She pointed to her little sister.
Clark stared at Gracie. She was practically bursting her buttons with pride. "You?!" he said in astonishment.
"Yeah. I did it all myself. Ya wanna see?"
So they all watched as Gracie set a small portion of the tree alight near the ground. "An' I can see through things, too, just like Emma!"
As Clark gazed at his younger daughter he felt his eyes mist up. His babies were growing up, and Lois might not be around to see it. Then he shifted back to business. "Everyone stand back." He gave a puff of super-cold breath, and Gracie's small demonstration fire was extinguished. Then with a couple of well-directed bursts of heat-vision, he sliced the tree off a foot or two above the base of the original fire. As the top began to fall, he caught it under the bottom and guided it out to the middle of the barren field. Quickly flying around it, he dowsed the fire with super-breath, and then let it topple. He returned to the group. "I'll leave the little fire that's left up there to give you light until I get back. In the meantime, how about emptying out the front and back seats of the car. We'll use the back seat for Mommy, and everyone else can crowd into the front."
He quickly located Lois's cell phone and headed up into the clouds. Finding that the phone was in working order and receiving the ground station, he hurriedly dialed Bernard Klein's home number, and then waited impatiently for an answer.
"Bernie? It's Clark...Yes, I know what time it is; but this is literally a matter of life and death." He quickly supplied an abbreviated explanation of the situation, and arranged for Dr. Klein to meet them at the lab in fifteen minutes. He returned to the car to find the crew just finishing with the cleanup -- except Karen, who had just finished applying a makeshift splint to Lois's upper arm.
"Okay, I'm going to take the steering column out, to leave you all more room." A little heat-vision and super-strength accomplished this task. "Now I need to move Mommy in." He scanned Lois's unconscious form. "Karen, she has a broken spine. The spinal cord hasn't severed yet, but it's under stress. I'm afraid that lifting her, no matter how I do it, will damage it more. I wish there were a way to carry her to the car perfectly horizontally..."
"Strapping her to a gurney is the only sure way to guarantee that. But I think that Emma may be able to help you there." She quickly explained, with Clark's eyes glancing in wonder at his elder daughter.
"You mean you learned that all by yourself?" he asked Emma, amazed.
"No, Karen figured it out...and it worked. Now I can do it all the time." This time Clark directed his amazed gaze at Karen -- and found it copied by Walter's. Karen simply blushed.
"I just took what I learned about flying from Lois, and extrapolated it a little..."
Clark muttered something under his breath, which sounded like "...legions of angels...". Then he went to the car and carefully removed the other rear door. He and Emma took their positions, Clark lying prone on the ground beyond Lois's head and carefully placing his hands under her shoulders, and Emma doing the same thing and taking hold of her feet.
"Are you sure you can do this, Pumpkin?" he asked worriedly.
"Dad, this is *Mama*. I promise, I won't let anything happen to her."
"Okay, then. One, two, three..." The two super beings floated silently up from the ground, Lois floating up weightlessly between them. Clark verbally guided their progress, his eyes focused on Lois's spine, as Emma backed through the car, floating above the rear seat and out the far doorway, Lois trailing feet-first behind her. They lowered Lois carefully onto the seat.
"Now, let her legs down slowly. Her knees will bend, but her lower legs can just extend out of the car." Once Lois was optimally situated, Clark went around the car and put an arm around his daughter. "That was pretty impressive, Pumpkin."
"Thanks, Dad." Emma was smiling up at him.
"So, when did you start calling me 'Dad?'"
"Just now. I'm getting too old to call you 'Daddy,' don't you think?"
He gazed at his seven-year-old daughter -- and shook his head, amazed at the new-found wisdom and maturity he saw there.
The car was loaded, with Karen sitting next to the intact passenger door, Gracie on her lap. Walter was next; then Emma sat next to the open door. Walter worried about this. "Listen, Kiddo, why not let me sit there, and you sit in the middle?"
"Dad had to cut the seatbelt off when he took Mama out of the car. So somebody who can fly needs to sit on the outside." Then she ventured a sly grin. "I'm an angel, remember?"
Walter burst out laughing. "A little devil, more likely!"
Then Superman extinguished the remainder of the fire, burrowed beneath the Jeep, and shortly they were airborne.
* * *
