from last time...
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Daring to hope, even a little, Lois looked in the direction that Martha was pointing, just as Jonathan backed through the doorway, pulling a stretcher with him. She could only see glimpses at first…
Red boots…
Black hair…
Naked chest…
Lois slowly stood, holding the wall for support, tears streaming down her shocked face. She ran forward, still thinking that maybe it wasn’t him… that it was just her imagination or… or just someone who appeared to be…
“Clark!” she cried, softly, as she approached the stretcher, realizing in a flash that it really was him. She bent over him, immediately, memorizing his beautiful face. As a million thoughts flew threw her mind and a million tears streamed down her cheeks from happy eyes, she started to kiss him. Every inch of his face. She held his face with her hands while kissing his forehead, his lips, his cheeks, his chin, his nose… just anywhere she could. She just kissed him and kissed him, repeating the words “I love you, I love you…” over and over again, so she would always at least know that she had told him, so that wherever he was, he knew.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
HAVE A LITTLE FAITH IN ME
PART 12
She was still kissing him, smiling… happy… when she felt arms pulling her off him. She didn’t even struggle, she was too happy at the moment that he was back. She turned to see Jonathan holding her arms.
“Some nurses will be here in a second to put him back on the table and connect him to the heart monitor again,” he explained.
She nodded, still smiling a little. She understood… if Lois Lane was seen fawning like that over Superman, it might arise suspicions. They had to protect this secret. Clark would want them to. If people found out how Lois felt about him, she would become a target, and with the display of affection she was giving, word would definitely get out. “I’m sorry… I just thought I wouldn’t ever see him again,” she said, meeting Jonathan’s gaze with her own teary one.
“You don’t have to apologize. You obviously feel the way Clark does, and if he could he would have matched you kiss for kiss,” Jonathan said, kindly. Lois smiled.
At that moment, three male nurses and two female nurses entered the hospital room and while three of the nurses positioned themselves to lift Clark up, two nurses found the wires that had been removed from him and untangled them, getting them ready to monitor him with again.
“Could you just give us a moment to get him situated?” one of the nurses asked, sweetly, to the three eagerly watching visitors.
“Of course,” Jonathan answered, leading the way into the hallway. Lois reluctantly followed Martha, not wanting to be separated from Clark for even a moment, but realizing she needed to give the medical team room to work. She sat down in a chair between the two Kents.
“Well, what a day this has been,” Martha finally said, breaking the silence.
“I never knew emotions could go through this much all in one day,” Jonathan agreed.
“It can’t be healthy to go through this much all in one day,” Lois said, agreeing with them, looking from one parent to another.
“My Gosh, we thought we were coming to Metropolis to deal with Clark’s breaking heart, nothing more. Not his…” Martha trailed off, not wanting to finish that train of thought.
Two hours ago, Lois thought, that statement would have sent her into a mild depression, at the pain she had caused Clark before any of this had even happened. But she had just returned from the depths of despair and a depression so severe and aching that now, even with things as impossible as they still seemed, there was that slight possibility, that hope and faith, just in his presence that wasn’t there before. And because of that, nothing could depress her at this moment.
“Oh, I’m sorry, honey,” Martha started, reading Lois’s silence as hurt feelings. “I am just talking and not really think—“
“Martha,” Lois said, stopping her and facing her. “You said to me, hours ago, not to walk on eggshells around you and Jonathan. You said I didn’t have to worry about what I said in front of you.” Martha nodded, remembering. “Well… likewise. Say what you want, what you’re thinking. I’m okay. I can handle the truth. I know you aren’t trying to hurt my feelings. And, really, you’re just stating a fact that I am well aware of. It’s fine. I’m not hurt. Not right now. Now, I’m…”
“You’re…” Martha pressed, after a moment of silence from Lois.
“I’m full of hope,” Lois said, her eyes brimming with that hope as she looked up through the sky roof at all the stars.
Not too long ago, she had been sitting outside, talking to one of those twinkling stars, imagining that Clark could hear her… before all hell broke loose and she feared he was truly gone forever. It had been such a peaceful night, too; the wind gently blowing through her hair, kissing her tear stained cheeks. Talking to that star, she had truly imagined that Clark could hear her, somewhere… hear the depths of her heart, which she was pouring out, so quietly… so honestly. And now, seeing that star among all the others was like a silent confirmation that he had heard, and that is why he returned moments ago. She smiled a small smile at that thought…
“I can’t believe it,” a nurse said quietly to another nurse, walking out of the room.
“I know!” the other enthused.
“Can’t believe what?” Lois asked, standing now, attempting to bypass them and enter the room.
“Miss, you cannot go in there yet,” one of the nurses said, holding Lois’s arm gently.
“What can’t you believe?” Lois demanded, as Martha and Jonathan stood behind her.
The nurses looked at each other, as if looking for answers in each other’s eyes.
“We can’t say,” one of them finally spit out. “Because—“
“—we’re not family,” Lois finished for them. “Yeah, I’ve heard all about it. But I will say it again, Superman doesn’t have family. Just his friends. And you are looking at his three closest friends in the world, so we ARE his family, blood related or not! Now you tell me what it is that you can’t believe and why you can’t let me in there!” Lois finished, growing angrier… and more scared… as the moments went on.
“I’ll go get the doctor,” one of the nurses said, leaving the one holding Lois’s arm to deal with her. She walked away and Lois looked back at the woman holding onto her arm.
She started growing panicked. “Why,” she asked herself. “Every time I get my hopes up and think things will be okay, someone starts punching on my heart!” She put her chin in the air and put on a brave face. She looked the woman firmly in the eye. “What is going on!?”
“We aren’t sure,” the woman replied, fearfully and, it seemed, honestly. “Really,” she added, as an afterthought. “He just…”
Lois closed her eyes, hoping that sentence wouldn’t end the way she feared it would. “Just what?” she whispered, eyes still closed.
“Are you sure?” a doctor asked, turning the corner, breaking into the scene before the nurse could answer Lois.
“Very sure; I was there,” prattled the nurse who had just fled the scene a moment ago.
“What’s going on here?” Jonathan asked, as the doctor passed.
The doctor didn’t even look at Jonathan, Martha or Lois. He just walked right by them, into the room. Lois yanked her arm from the nurse’s hold and ran after the doctor, bracing herself for anything. She entered the room and looked around. She saw Clark, and four nurses and a doctor administering to him. Something about the room seemed off, but in her panicked state, Lois couldn’t figure out what it was, and before she had a chance to figure it out, two of the male nurses were escorting her out of the room.
Suddenly she was back in the hall with Jonathan and Martha supporting her and the door had been closed in her face.
“Honey, what happened? Could you tell?” Martha asked.
“He was there. I saw him,” Lois said, quietly and relieved. “I don’t know what…”
She started trying to piece together what had happened. It was such a short amount of time in there, but something was up; she knew it. Jonathan and Martha led her to her seat again, helping her into it. She stared ahead, trying to remember everything she could about the scene.
“I walked in, and immediately found him. He was there… completely there. He didn’t appear to be… disappearing or anything,” she said, swallowing before saying those last words.
Lois shut her eyes, remembering…
“What could they have been going on about?” Jonathan wondered aloud.
Lois tried to concentrate. She walked in and saw him lying on the table. One nurse was doing something to the sunlight contraption, while the others were doing things with him. One was adjusting wires around him… Lois did not see anything unusual. With her eyes closed, she could hear Martha and Jonathan talking quietly, trying to figure out what could have been going on in there. She could only hear Martha and Jonathan, she realized. And then it struck her… what was off about the scene in the hospital room. She couldn’t see anything strange or different than expected in the room. She could HEAR something different, she realized, opening her eyes, shocked.
“What is it?” Martha asked, noticing Lois’s movement.
“I heard something that wasn’t there before… a noise… a hospital noise…” she said, the scene piecing itself back together slowly in her mind. Correcting itself. “I heard… beeps,” she finished, looking at Jonathan and Martha, whose eyes were as wide as hers, with the possibilities that existed in what Lois had just remembered.
Just then, the doctor and nurses walked out of the room. The doctor was shaking his head, an amused smile on his face as he approached Lois.
“Okay, since you do appear to be, as you say, Superman’s ‘family’, and Inspector Henderson approved your presence before, I will tell you, and I don’t know how this is possible, but he is in a coma.”
Lois was sure she would have collapsed right to the floor if the Kents weren’t behind her, holding onto her. “He’s… he’s… alive?” Lois whispered in a quivering voice, feeling as if she were glowing from the inside out. Her heart was beating faster than it had ever before, she thought, for sure, twisting butterflies in her stomach at the same time.
“He’s alive,” the doctor confirmed, and as soon as the words were out of his mouth, Lois let out a shaky and relieved breath through smiling lips. “He must have some Super life force and will power for this to even be possible. Even being Superman, the state he was in was… he was dead! It’s miraculous. We are predicting that he really was dead, and if he had been removed from that cage even one hour later, it would have been irreversible. But being away from the source of his pain and receiving this treatment must have eventually put him in an extremely deep coma. So deep that he appeared to be completely dead to us. But now… even by our standards, he is alive. He is in a very deep coma, but after what he just came back from, I don’t deny the possibility of a ‘miraculous’ full recovery.”
Lois felt Martha’s hands rubbing her arms up and down, and she realized that she was shaking again. Not like before, when she thought he was gone forever. Right now, relief was washing over her in waves, bowling her over. After the doctor had spoken those first two… wonderful… words, she had had trouble focusing on everything else he said. He was talking too much; she just wanted to be allowed to go to Clark already! Just as she had never felt what it felt like to have a broken heart and had never felt depression so strongly, she had never felt relief so strong and striking; it was causing her to just shake involuntarily… to tremble with anticipation.
And then he was no longer talking. He was gone…
She didn’t remember him leaving, but she turned and saw the doctor and nurses walking away, talking amongst themselves.
“You know, if someone had told me last week that in a week, Clark would be in a coma and I would be relieved by that, I would have told them they were nuts, that Clark being in a coma could never make me feel… happy, relieved, ready to jump off a wall,” Lois said, turning to look at the Kents.
“Honey, I know what you mean,” Martha replied.
Without hesitation Lois ran forward and opened the door, running in, Martha and Jonathan hot on her heels. They closed the door.
She ran forward until she practically ran into the table, and then she just bent over and stared at him. He was so still… so deathly still… but she stared until she could see life moving within him. “Clark,” she whispered, trying to will him to show her that he was alive. But he remained desperately still. She slowly lowered her head until her ear rested on his chest and she listened. She waited, her breathing heavy, fearing that it had just been a dream, that he was really…
Beat…
There it was.
Beat…
There it was again.
Lois closed her eyes, slowly and contently, and let out a small, happy sigh, just listening to the most beautiful sound in the world.
**************
**************
Fifteen minutes later, nurses had hooked Clark up to oxygen, making his still-so-shallow breathing more noticeable and his heart rate more steady. But he still lay in a coma. A deep coma. Lois kept realizing, with a chill, that she had never seen someone look so still before in her life. His body would move because of the oxygen it was being given, but it was obvious that it was not of its own volition. It looked like a lifeless body being tugged lightly and released. While seeing and hearing him breathe helped her, knowing from the look of him that it was not his own strong breaths at all keeping him alive would upset her. He looked devoid of life. But she would shake her head, remembering that it was not true. There was life in there.
In a seat by his bed, she held his hand, watching him ‘sleep’, as she called it. She turned in her seat to face the Kents, who were a couple of feet away, in seats of their own.
Lois shook her head, not looking away from their two kind faces. “You both saved him, you know. This,” she started, gesturing to Clark and the beeping heart monitor which proved he was alive, “would not have been possible if you hadn’t gotten him out of here.”
“Well, you ran inside and I knew that man was Lex Luthor,” Martha explained. “I knew what he wanted and I also knew you would find any way possible to detain him. So I walked past casually; he doesn’t know who I am anyway,” she reasoned. “And I came in here and told Jonathan we needed to get Clark out of here as soon as possible. I unhooked him from the monitor while Jonathan ran into the hall to get a stretcher. We moved him from the bed to the stretcher—“
“By yourselves?” Lois asked, incredulously. She had seen the stink that young, strong men had made over lifting him, both in the cellar in Lex’s building, and moments ago when it was time to put him back on the table. Martha and Jonathan could hardly be called physically fit for the task.
“They say in desperate situations, your adrenaline kicks in and you have strength you never knew you had,” Jonathan explained, obviously reading Lois’s thought process.
“You both are so strong,” Lois said softly. Genuinely. “I mean that in every way. It was very quick thinking to get him out of here. I guess a lot was going on when I was trying to distract Lex. Martha walked by to get Clark out of the room, Henderson walked by and took notice and went to wait in the hospital room so that when Lex busted in, he was greeted with a different sight than he originally thought. I mean, when you think about it, we were all like a team, working together… separately. And without knowing about the team or the other players,” she added, as a sort of afterthought.
“I think we made a great team!” Martha agreed, smiling.
“So you say this Inspector Henderson knows all about Clark now?” Jonathan asked, after a moment.
“I guess I wasn’t as good at hiding my feelings as I had wanted to be. But he really likes Clark. And me. He promised he wouldn’t say anything and I trust him. He seemed to understand… really understand… why Clark created Superman. He understood how vital it is for that creation to be kept a secret… for my safety, your own, and even for his own, I’m sure. Anyone that has ever been even a little friendly with Clark would end up a target. As a cop, he especially understands that. He’s done quite a bit of undercover work in the past, and I think it goes without saying that he understands the importance of something like this being kept a secret. He also knows Clark. The regular guy. I don’t think he’d ever be malicious and ruin Clark’s private, NORMAL, life. Henderson’s a normal guy himself. Wow I can’t believe I even just said that.”
“Well if you say so, Lois. We trust your judgment,” Martha said.
Lois smiled at them and looked back at Clark. He looked so vulnerable. She realized that he often looked that way. There was a special kind of vulnerability that was inherently Clark. And if she thought about it, she could remember seeing that in Superman too. Or, rather, see Superman try to hide it. She remembered how in some situations he looked uncomfortable, usually by the attention that was being given to him—which she had partaken in—and to hide the discomfort, he would puff out his chest and cross his arms in front of him. Superman couldn’t appear uncomfortable. He couldn’t appear vulnerable. He couldn’t appear… human. Back then, when she would see him in those situations, even she didn’t notice it. Close as she was to Superman, she always thought him invulnerable, indestructible… perfect. But knowing now that Superman was Clark Kent, she could see past events, so many past events, with a new mind’s eye. She remembered things differently. She could now remember a look in Superman’s eyes that she had often seen Clark’s. A look that showed a depth of feeling and of sensitivity that Superman was forbidden to feel, even if only by an unspoken rule. Also, Clark would express things that he felt ‘Superman must be feeling’… but really, he was venting. And she almost never really listened. Except for one time… when he was wondering what good Superman was if he couldn’t save people. She had thought that comment very cynical for the optimistic farmboy and Superman fan. But now she understood. Someone had been testing HIM at the time. Testing Clark. Whoever had tested him had risked killing him, and in the pursuit of that goal, that person had killed many people, making Superman feel as if he were to blame for those deaths. With a sinking feeling inside, she realized that it was very possible that Lex was the mastermind behind those tests. That was around the time Clark had started to openly seem to not like the most powerful man in Metropolis. Monetarily speaking. She now realized that he probably knew Lex was behind the tests, but couldn’t prove it. Looking at him now, she wished she could go back to that time and listen to him, right from the beginning, about Lex. All she knew about Clark back then was that he a nice man, a decent man, and quickly she learned he was a trustworthy man too. She, a woman that was all too aware that she trusted no one, especially not a man, admitted that she trusted him, almost right off. Why then, could she not trust him on that one subject, which had slowly, quietly escalated to cause the destruction of the Daily Planet, Lois’s own engagement to a madman, the alienation of her closest friends, and the death of…
Her thoughts trailed off, not wanting to continue down that path. She looked at Clark again. Lying there. So vulnerable. She remembered all the times that he would get openly upset and overly-sensitive, it seemed, at the magnitude of their stories and the horrors they would see. He was one of the only men she knew that admitted to being emotionally affected by something; it was always one of the things she loved about him. He never tried to act macho, or like he didn’t care, or like nothing scared him. She had seen him scared plenty. It was usually when her life was in danger. But still… he never tried to act like things did not faze him. Now she knew why. All his life, he was hiding and pretending. He was so strong; he never could be hurt. For that, he must have felt as if he should not ever show fear. Sure, he had great parents who would most likely always tell him that it was okay to show emotions and to be afraid. But strong as he was, Lois felt that Clark probably always tried to be strong for everyone. Unafraid for everyone. Lois knew that Clark had most likely felt that one role he was supposed to play was that of a fearless superhero. And when he became Superman he could be that person, while as Clark… he could vent and yell and argue and laugh and be afraid and let his guard down as often as he wanted. He could be all the things that he wanted to be, knowing that no one expected him to be anything more… or less. And for once, more importantly, he didn’t expect himself to be more or less than that man he was inside. Clark Kent. Superman was his outlet for the fearless fighter and protector. Clark was a man. Just a man. Faults and all.
Although, Lois realized, he did not have many faults. And most of the faults he had were explainable now that she knew about his secret identity. His incessant running off had always been a bit of a head-scratcher to her, but never something she would classify as a fault. It was just this thing he did, that was part of what she liked to call his ‘weird ways’. It was annoying sometimes. Especially when they were in the middle of a personal conversation. But mostly she just shrugged it off as being ‘Clark’. He was also extremely overprotective of her. Worse than a big brother. She shook her head now, remembering the time she had told him she loved him like a brother. A brother! Ha! Now, she knew, he was far worse on the protective scale than any brother could ever be. She used to roll her eyes at his overly-protective ways when it came to her safety. And while she would spout out orders for him to relax and stop fussing over her, she knew, even then, that she secretly loved it. The attention, the idea that this sweet, kind, funny, gentle and handsome man cared so much for her… everything. She loved it. Relished in it. When Sebastian Finn targeted her and Clark appointed himself her personal bodyguard, she could not wipe the smile off her face—when he wasn’t looking, of course. She was flattered and thought it was the sweetest gesture a friend had ever made for her. She quickly learned that he meant it literally. He really thought of himself as her bodyguard and spent an entire night outside her apartment building, making sure she was safe inside. When she was attacked the next morning, in her fear and pain, she remembered the overwhelming feeling that she would be okay, as long as Clark stayed there, holding her. And so he did. And she felt safe.
As long as Clark was with her…
Watching him now, breathing with the assistance of an oxygen tube, she realized that he needed to feel safe too. She reached forward and brushed the back of her fingers along the smooth skin on his forehead, moving the curl that always fell forward back a little. She looked at him closely, without that curl brushing against his skin like a whisper. She shook her head; that wasn’t Clark. She let the hair fall back into its inevitable position against his forehead. She thought about all the times she had fantasized taking him to a hairdresser, after of course lying to him and telling him that they were meeting a source, and having the hairdresser cut his hair while they talked with someone who pretended to be a source. He never had to know! And the little curl that she always felt the urge to move off of his forehead would be gone. But she now knew that Clark wasn’t Clark without it. It was something that separated him from Superman, like his glasses, and added to that sense of vulnerability she felt when she looked at Clark. The vulnerability that made her want to enclose him in her arms—as best she could—and protect him, the way he protected her and everyone else.
“You’re safe,” she whispered to him, now running the backs of her fingers along his jaw line. “I’m here.”
“Lois?”
Lois looked over to the doorway to see Henderson, peeking his head in, speaking quietly.
“Visiting hours are over,” he informed her gently.
Lois looked over her shoulder, noticing that both Jonathan and Martha had dozed off. Henderson walked in, closing the door quietly behind him.
“Can’t I stay with him?” she whispered. “You could drive Jonathan and Martha—“
“Lois, I have no control over this. You know that. I don’t run hospitals. And they have their rules. Visiting hours ended actually about an hour ago, but because of how… special… this case is, they gave me a little pull. Unless you want one of those large lady nurses to come in here—“
“No, no,” Lois said, smiling a little at Henderson.
“You should sleep,” Henderson said, looking at the sleeping elder couple, for emphasis on how Lois must feel.
“I am tired. But I don’t want to leave him,” Lois said, tears starting to form in her eyes as she realized that she would have to leave Clark for such a long period of time. “What if our presence is helping him?”
Henderson looked down at Clark and after a heartfelt moment, he looked back up at Lois. “I am sure he knows you love him. And you’re here for him. Even if for a little while you can’t be physically here, for him.” Lois smiled appreciatively at Henderson.
“How are you, by the way?” Lois asked, still trying to keep her voice low.
“Better. I talked with a friend of mine on the force. He helped me come to grips with what happened. And you were right, Lois. Kent is alive. The worst feeling I had was that I had killed a man in vain. But knowing that Superman is alive, I know that shooting Luthor today in the cellar was necessary and I no longer regret that. And I still wonder if I could have done something earlier, other than kill him. But Mitch, my friend on the force… and you, Lois… made me realize that if I had done anything differently he most likely would have killed me, and found a way to follow through with his plan to kill Superman, who it turns out wasn’t an already dead man, like I thought. So, I guess… I’m dealing with it,” Henderson finished.
“I’m glad,” Lois said softly. “Henderson, you should go home, too, and get some sleep.”
“It’s part of my plan, Lois. Now Luthor’s out and all his goons are behind bars. We can all rest soundly.”
At Henderson’s last words, Lois looked down at Clark, looking so peaceful and vulnerable and sound. And almost… alive. Sure, he was technically alive. But she could see that he was looking almost alive, the way she knew Clark Kent alive.
“All we have to do now is wait for the big guy to get better. And we’ll all be better at that if we’re well rested. Also, Lois… until he is awake, or it seems he will only get better, not worse, we want to still keep his condition completely confidential.”
“I completely agree,” Lois said.
“That means not telling anyone of his improvements… even Perry White and Jimmy Olsen.”
“I understand,” Lois said. She happened to know of Clark’s condition because she was there to witness the change. Her hopes were up and there was no changing that. But there was no need to get anyone else’s hopes up… just in case. While that ‘just in case’ was killing her, she knew it was there, the possibility of the worst happening. And she didn’t want to put anyone else through the emotional rollercoaster she was a captive passenger on.
“Okay, Lois. You have two minutes. And then I am escorting you out of here myself.”
Henderson left the room. Feeling the overwhelming silence that only the sound of beeps from a heart monitor in a quiet hospital room brought, Lois looked down at Clark. Knowing she did not have much time, she leaned forward, so that only he would hear her.
“I love you, Clark Kent. I love you more than I have ever loved anyone in my entire life. I need you… and I’ve never needed anyone. You and I, we have a lot to talk about mister. And a lot to experience. Together. And… you just have to get better so we can do that, okay? Please, come back to me,” she whispered, begging him with her eyes to listen to her plea.
Before she could lose her confidence and leave him, she shook her head, and placed a sweet, gentle kiss on his lips.
She smiled at him. “Clark, our first kiss that was not some sort of pretense for a story, or a friendly kiss because you were leaving town, was one that I initiated, and you were d-dead at the time. Our second kiss, I initiated, and you’re in a coma. Now they say three time’s a charm. And my biggest wish, right now, is that for our third kiss, you are awake and okay… and maybe even initiate the kiss yourself. I promise if you try to kiss me I won’t push you away or run away screaming or do anything other than kiss you back with all the love in the world.”
After looking at Clark’s ‘sleeping’ form for a few minutes more, and listening to the beautiful and reassuring sounds of his breathing and the beeping of the heart monitor in the quiet room, Lois stood up, gently woke the Kents, and walked arm in arm with them out of Clark’s hospital room, with the hope and the promise that the day ahead would be better than the one they were leaving behind.
