[CHAPTER 23]
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Love is, above all, the gift of oneself. --Jean Anouilh
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Tuesday, evening
Lois lowered her foot on the brakes, bringing the car to a stop as they approached a red light. The ride from the hospital had been silent and tense, each of them angry at the way they’d been summarily kicked out of the one place they wanted to be.
Here they were, grown adults who were still being told what do to by their parents… It didn’t matter that they’d had it coming.
Clark’s voice quietly broke into the frigid atmosphere. “I didn’t say yes, you know.”
Lois turned her head to look at him. In the darkness of the evening, the street lights left parts of his face highlighted and others shadowed. Ultimately, she wasn’t able to read his expression, and the fact that he wasn’t looking at her made it worse.
“Every time I have had any contact with that rock, I come close to dying… and usually, it turns out that someone else does. I imagine that it feels something like your skin being peeled off. It’s really hot, really fast, and you can only pray that you lose consciousness before it gets worse. I’m a grown man and I can’t take that pain.”
He finally turned to look at her. “So, I told them no.”
Lois remained quiet – more from not being able to respond than for anything else. His descriptions of the pain were horrible.
“I told them I wouldn’t consider putting my little boy through that – sedated or not – and that they needed to find another way.”
Behind them, a car horn beeped, and Lois returned her focus to driving now that the light had turned green.
“Anyway, I thought you should know,” Clark finished.
Lois blinked and released a slow breath. “Why didn’t you say that earlier?” she asked quietly.
He gave a wry chuckle. “I really didn’t have a chance… and I was angry. I wanted to vent and you seemed obliging enough.”
Lois frowned. It seemed that they were always in the wrong when it came to the other. “I’m sorry,” she offered. After a pause she felt like she couldn’t let it go that easily. “But you have to admit you’ve been acting like a jerk.”
The moment now lost, they slipped back into silence, the tension still icy.
“Stop the car.”
Lois looked at him incredulously. “What?”
“Lois, could you just for once…” Clark seemed to catch himself and sucked in a presumably calming breath. “Please. Could you please stop the car?”
With and exaggerated shrug, Lois glanced in her rearview mirror and signaled her intention to merge in the right lane. When she found an appropriate spot, she pulled over and brought the vehicle to a halt.
She watched in confusion as Clark pulled out his phone and tapped in some numbers.
“Yes, Hi – I need to find a place that sells children’s clothing that would be open right now,” he said into the phone.
“What are you doing?” Lois asked.
He shook his head curtly. “Anything near Main and 4th?” he asked, addressing the person on the line again. “Okay, thank you.”
Exasperated, Lois threw her hands up as he ended the call. “What the hell?”
Annoyed, Clark shifted so he was facing her. “Mom wanted me to get Jory some clothes. I figure the sooner we do that, the sooner we can get back to the hospital. Okay?”
Annoyed that he was annoyed, Lois rolled her eyes. “Well, if we continued on to your apartment as planned instead of making crazy dashes through traffic – we *could* get the clothes.”
“I’m just trying to find the fastest way…”
“Fine. We’ll just go to my place. I’ve got some of his clothes.” She started to reach for the gear shift and stopped. “Is that okay with you? Can I put it in drive now?”
Clark ran a hand over his jaw. “It’s your car.”
Negotiating her way back into the street, Lois laughed. “Well thank you for finally realizing that.”
~.~
Lois exited her bedroom while stuffing some of her own clothing items into a small messenger bag. Taking advantage of being home, she had taken the time to change out of her work attire while Clark retrieved Jory’s pajamas and a change of clothes from the guest room.
“Okay, are you ready to go?” she asked as she walked into the living room.
Clark was standing at the window staring out at the city skyline. When he didn’t reply or turn around, she sighed and walked over to him.
“You said you were in a hurry, so…” Her words trailed off when she saw the expression on his face. He looked ready to punch a hole in her glass. “Clark?”
His hands were wrapped so tightly around the little pajamas he was holding that she feared the material would rip apart at any moment. Hesitantly chewing on her bottom lip, Lois lowered her bag to the floor and moved so she was standing in between him and the window.
His eyes flicked to hers, finally coming into focus, and she gently pulled Jory’s clothes from his grip.
“You okay?” she asked, softly. The anger and annoyance she had been feeling only moments before had given way to the sudden surge of concern that had assaulted her upon seeing his apparent distraught.
Her heart felt tight and she acknowledged to herself that she was weary of wearing her hurt like a badge. As the saying went, there was a thin line between love and hate, but Lois was pretty sure she had never even come close to crossing it.
“Talk to me,” she goaded.
His expression didn’t change. “I don’t want to fight. I’m tired of fighting. I’m tired of losing.”
“Not fight,” Lois agreed. “Talk. We were good at that once...”
He turned from her and began pacing. Knowing that it was a sign of a breakthrough, Lois moved to sit on the couch, pulling her legs underneath her and settling Jory’s clothes in her lap. She fiddled with the material as she waited for Clark to begin. Ironically, the pajamas he’d chosen were Superman pajamas; ones she’d bought for him.
“It was after breakfast,” Clark confessed after a few minutes of pacing. “Oatmeal. I sent him to go brush his teeth. Sometimes he’s slow. I wasn’t worried.”
Lois stilled as she realized what Clark was getting ready to describe.
“They thought that his hearing might be fixed once the Kryptonite had been removed. He would have to learn how to interpret sounds, but his hearing would come back.” He looked at her as if pleading with her to understand why he’d allowed the original surgery. “He would hear. He would hear me calling him.”
Lois nodded. She understood.
Somewhat pacified, Clark returned to his path. “For a minute I hoped…” He sighed and gave a slight chuckle. “I actually called him, as if he would even know what his name sounded like… and then I went looking. He wasn’t moving. He wasn’t even breathing.”
“You got to him in time,” Lois countered, purposely stopping the retelling of the story. It was just too painful to hear… to watch him relive.
“Earlier… with the car…” He stopped in front of the window again. “I promised I wouldn’t go back into my apartment unless he was coming with me.”
Lois put the clothes aside and stood up. As she walked back to stand beside him, she pushed her own doubts and fears aside. It wasn’t the time for those. It was the time for hope. “You’ll get the chance to bring him home. I believe that.”
He turned to face her, searching her eyes for something – and she silently prayed that whatever he was looking for would be there.
“I believe that,” she said again, with force. She lifted her hands and bracketed his face with them, refusing to let him look away. “You have to believe that too.”
Clark’s eyes fluttered closed and he turned his face into her right palm, reaching up with his own hand to keep hers there. Trembling with the need to ease his pain, Lois stepped closer and wrapped her arms around his torso.
He responded by sighing deeply and tightly returning her embrace. It was as if he was a man about to drift out to sea and she was the anchor that would keep him grounded.
The reality was that Lois was feeling as baseless as he seemed to be, and she was holding onto him to draw as much comfort as – if not more than – what she was giving.
It seemed almost natural, then, that when his chin lifted, her lips were already parted and waiting in answer to his silent question.
It also was not awkward or strange that their movements carried with them a sense of anger and desperation instead of the fluidity and harmony one would normally expect to accompany the beginning steps of this primeval dance.
The conversation they began did not use words or sign language, but it spoke of life, it spoke of unfairness of it, and it spoke of the pain that always tangled with joy.
Lois gasped for breath as they finally broke the passionate kiss for air. Her back was pressed against the wall next to the hallway, and she couldn’t truly remember having gotten there – although the table lamp that was now on the floor next to the couch and the haphazardly discarded shoes seemed to outline the trail.
Clark lowered his head to kiss her neck and the sensation made her realize that in that moment, both thinking and breathing were overrated.
~.~
Wednesday, early morning
Clark remained as still as possible, not wanting to break the spell that had descended upon the room.
In the midst of all the swirling debris that was going on in his life, this moment - this space that they had carved out – was the calm in the eye of the storm. As he gazed down upon the woman lying next to him, he relished in the feel of her skin against his… in the way their legs naturally tangled together, the way she had one arm tossed carelessly above her head, and in the way her lips were slightly parted while she breathed deeply and calmly in slumber.
It was amazing how in their nakedness, no words had to be spoken, and yet in their nakedness, he was as honest with her as he had ever been with anyone in his whole life. He was exposed, vulnerable, stripped bare before her… and yet unafraid.
If he could wake up with that feeling every morning, his world would no longer be titled on its axis. He could almost imagine the dazed look she would give him as her sleep-ridden eyelids fluttered open. He could almost hear the soft sound of little feet as they padded down the hallway into the master bedroom carrying a little boy demanding breakfast.
He was no stranger to mornings after. He was not proud of it, but there was a time during his travels when he’d been detached enough to experiment – safely. He’d learned that intimacy was not fulfilling without emotion, so that phase had ended rather quickly.
No, he was no stranger to mornings after – but *this* was a morning like no other. *This* was a woman like no other. He was grateful that she wasn’t awake yet because he didn’t have his words together. In truth, he had a hard time remembering when he’d last had his words together. If anyone had been able to see the workings of his brain, they would have been shocked to learn that he earned a living as a reporter.
It was ironic that Jory was the one who spoke a different language, because Clark was the one who was frustrated with his inability to express himself.
A pang of guilt pricked his psyche. He should have told her how he felt before they ended up in this position… but had he tried, it probably would have come out all wrong.
He’d wanted to tell her that he loved her. That he’d loved her when she’d asked. That he’d loved her when she’d tried to keep him conscious in the midst of the Kryptonite attack. That maybe he’d started loving her a bit the moment she’d thrown all of his accusations back in his face the day after she’d hunted him down in Smallville. She had been all fire and passion then – such a contrast to how she looked right now. So different from how she looked curled around Jory in that hospital bed.
That was another time when his words hadn’t come out right. He was going to call her. He had planned on calling her, but the right moment just hadn’t come. It had been a naïve thought, but he’d needed to show her that he was doing everything in his power… that maybe he *was* worthy of her love after all… even after he’d acted the way he had. So, he’d asked the parents not to call her, intending to take the moment for himself… but the best laid plans of even super men often went astray.
He had a lot to make up for, there was no doubt about that, but first he wanted to make sure that he was still in the running. Was there a saint dedicated to second, third, forth, and fifth chances? If not, Clark hoped that Lois would be his stand in.
Now, he only needed to figure out a way to explain all of that without letting his vulnerabilities sneak in and screw it up… He just needed a little more time.
Clark frowned as the sound of a ringing phone broke into his thoughts. Time didn’t seem to be on his side.
As he was considering disregarding the sound and working on his impending speech, another ringing phone joined the first, refusing to be ignored.
“Is that the phone?” Lois asked sleepily.
Clark didn’t blame her for being groggy. Even though she’d been asleep thirty minutes longer than he had, she’d only been asleep for a total of three hours. “Yeah. It sounds like our cells.”
“Both of them?” she asked, her eyes suddenly becoming more awake. She began sliding toward the side of the bed to get up.
Clark opened his mouth to say something but realized that the spell had broken. Sleeping Beauty had woken up, and the right moment had once again slipped through his fingers. Their paradise was lost.
Seeing her back appear as she sat up facing away from him, he released a slow quiet breath. Then turning to the other side of the bed, he slid from under the sheets, stood up and began sifting through the strewn clothing in search for his underwear.
He averted his eyes when Lois stood and walked into the bathroom – probably looking for a robe, and hurriedly pulled his jeans on over his briefs before walking out of the room.
It took him a few minutes to locate the two phones in the midst of the chaos in the living room, and during that time the phones had stopped ringing and started again. Someone really wanted to get in contact with them.
Clark tossed Lois her phone as she exited the hallway, noticing that she was giving him her patented analytical look. He had a feeling what she was looking for, but with the return of the chaos, he’d lost the ability to provide it. Thumbing his phone on, he turned and walked toward the window.
“Hello?”
~.~
Sam Lane was waiting for them at the entrance to the hospital when they arrived at the large sliding glass doors. They matched his brisk pace as he led them to an authorized access elevator.
“A treatment room is being prepped right now for the procedure,” Sam informed them as they waited for the doors to open. “I understand both of your objections to it, but at this time we really don’t have another option.”
“What happened, Daddy?” Lois asked.
“We don’t know for sure, but it looks like the regenerative cells got a surge in power and sent the cell division into overdrive. When we called you, Jory’s organs had begun to show signs of shutting down. If we don’t do something aggressive in the next hour, its possible that they will suffer full failure and he will go into septic shock.”
Clark leaned heavily against the wall of the elevator. “Where is he now? Is he stable?” he asked.
“For the time being,” the doctor responded. “We’re getting him ready for the procedure.”
The sound of a ding alerted them that they had arrived at the desired floor and Clark pushed himself away from the wall to get ready to disembark. As they walked down the hall, the sound of crying became apparent.
“That’s Jory,” Lois said worriedly.
Clark felt his jaw tighten. “Is he in pain?” he asked, quickening his step.
“No,” Sam answered, attempting to reassure them both. “We’ve already given him something for the pain. Dr. Klein tells us that Jory’s not terribly fond of getting shots and he’s just a little anxious from all of the activity.”
Having reached the room, Clark followed as Lois rushed inside. Even though he had spent 95 percent of the last 50 hours seeing Jory attached to hospital machinery, it was a sight that continued to rock his core. The sight of that helpless little boy fighting for his life only served to make Clark more and more aware of his own inability to do anything to help.
Moving to join Lois at the bed where she had already succeeded in getting Jory to calm down, Clark watched as Sam joined Dr. Klein, who was standing by the desk going through charts. Seeing that Lois’s mom was the one administering Jory’s meds made him realize that she was acting as their nurse.
Ellen flashed a small smile to Clark as he joined them. “Normally the patient doesn’t feel anything during radiation therapy, but given your descriptions of past Kryptonite encounters, we’re going to sedate him for the procedure,” she explained as she removed a spent hypodermic syringe from the tube connected to the back of Jory’s palm. She tossed the used syringe into the biohazard disposal bin and brushed the top of Jory’s head affectionately. The top of his head was the only place the bandage didn’t cover and his hair spiked freely.
Jory’s other hand was tightly clutching Lois’s, and his eyes were wide and watery as they suspiciously followed Ellen’s movements. The child was obviously wary about any further shots Ellen might give him, but the fact that he didn’t flinch away from her showed that he still trusted her.
“He’ll start to drift off in a few minutes,” Ellen said, stepping away from the bed. She moved to join the deliberations of the two doctors, pausing only to squeeze Clark’s arm gently as she stepped past.
“Don’t worry, Buddy,” Clark said softly. “You’re going to be okay.” <Big boy. You doing good.>
Jory released a shuddered breath and looked up at Lois as if for confirmation. When she nodded, he looked back at Clark and nodded too. Since the arm with the IV attached was strapped down, he pulled his other hand from Lois’s so he could sign. <Feel sleepy.>
Clark chuckled grimly. The medication was starting to kick in.
“We’re getting ready to move him,” Ellen announced, returning to the bed. “But first, we need to put him on a special bed. We need him to be completely still during the therapy, so the table we use has a plastic wrap that will cover him. We then use a vacuum to suck out all of the air to create a form fitting mold. It might be a little scary for him, so I’d like the two of you to stay near.”
An orderly appeared with the strange looking gurney. The mattress looked like a blue sleeping mat, and at the foot of it was a mass of plastic and a long tube. The orderly stepped toward the bed but Clark raised a hand to stop him.
“Can I?” he asked, addressing Ellen. At her nod, he moved to the bed and lifted the little boy into his arms. Lois reached out and took hold of the line so it wouldn’t get tangled. After taking a brief moment to clutch the child to his chest and kiss his brow, Clark turned and carefully laid him on the blue mat before stepping back to allow the Ellen and the other nurse to finish.
Ellen fit the plastic over Jory’s chest and then tucked it against the table. “Okay, go ahead and grab his hands,” she instructed Lois and Clark. “We’re going to start the vacuum now.”
By the time the whole ordeal was finished, Jory had fallen asleep.
~.~
Lois walked beside Clark as they followed Jory’s gurney into the treatment room. It was strange seeing the little body wrapped up like a cocoon in the midst of all the big scary looking machines.
Sam stepped from the glassed-in booth and walked over to them, stopping them from coming all the way through the doors. “You will be able to watch from the overhead gallery,” he explained. “It’s lead crystal so the radiation from the Kryptonite shouldn’t bother you there, Clark. With your already weakened state, we can’t risk you getting any more exposure.”
Lois turned to Clark with a silent question. When he nodded, she turned to her father. “I want to stay with him.”
“Lois, I…”
“Daddy, please.”
Sam glanced around hesitantly and then refocused on the two of them. “Okay, you can stay until we need to turn the machines on.”
“Okay.” Sighing in relief, she moved to join the rest of the group crowded around Jory’s bed, accepting the heavy lead apron her mother handed her.
After she put it on, she noticed that Clark was now in the gallery above watching all of the action intently, and her father had returned to the booth with the technician.
Her mother hooked a spiraled plastic tube into Jory’s IV needle. The other end of the tube was attached to a computerized medicine dispenser.
“What’s that?”
“Iodine,” Ellen replied. She pointed to the large metal arm that hung over Jory’s bed. “It will help us see the organs through the imaging device.” She pressed a button on the machine and clear liquid began moving through the tube. A beep sounded a few moments later, and Ellen pulled the tube free.
“Okay, it’s time to inject the seeds,” Dr. Klein said once she had finished.
“Seeds?” Lois asked, watching as he rolled a small table over to the station. When he opened the lead covered box, it dawned on her what he meant. The large syringe that he pulled out of the box was filled with a clear liquid that held a slightly greenish tint – the coloring a result of the numerous tiny green particles floating in the fluid.
“Very small slivers taken from refined Kryptonite,” Klein explained. “When I first started working with Clark, I was able to locate some of the meteor rock for study. I found out that the exposure incites extreme levels of cell division and eventually cell death to Jory’s and Clark’s tissues. Normally we would avoid that type of thing, but in this case, that’s exactly what we want.”
He gestured to the big machine that they were in front of. “You see those flaps on the side? They slide out to bracket the bed, and then when we turn the machine on, they will create a radiation field, and that, together with the seeds, should stop the current metastasis.”
Dr. Klein handed the syringe to Ellen, who glanced at Lois with a grim expression before inserting it into the IV. Sucking in a breath, Lois stroked Jory’s face and watched with mixed dread and resignation as the liquid went in.
Ellen removed the syringe and Dr. Klein put it back into the lead case. “We’re ready.”
Lois dropped a kiss onto Jory’s cheek and turned to look up at Clark. His jaw was tight and she knew that he was just as on edge as she was. Following her mother and Dr. Klein into the booth, she silently prayed that this worked… for all their sakes.
Inside the booth, numerous monitors flashed all kinds of readings, and Lois wasn’t sure which ones to look at or what all they were indicating. As Dr. Klein had said earlier, the machine’s two side flaps came down into place when the technician pressed the buttons to turn it on. It startled her a bit when the entire thing began to tilt.
“It’s supposed to do that,” her mother said softly, moving to wrap an arm around her shoulders in comfort. “It’s going to spin all the way around.”
Lois watched as it did just that for a total of six slow and unremarkable revolutions. On the seventh, a panicked beeping sound sent everyone into a flurry of motion.
“Shit,” Sam mumbled.
Ellen released Lois’s shoulders and rushed to a monitor, not even bothering to scold Sam for his language.
“What is it?” Lois asked. “What’s happened?”
The technician hurriedly hit a button and the machine reversed its turn, moving back to the start position and shutting down.
“Dad?” Lois asked worriedly as Sam dashed past her and out of the booth. She followed him out and over to the bed with her mother right at her heels. “Mom?”
“Hold on, Honey,” Ellen replied tightly, quickly and efficiently helping her husband slide the bed away from the machine and attach the vacuum machine to the tube. She flicked the switch and air started pumping back into the plastic covering, releasing Jory from its hold.
Just when Lois thought she was going to explode from not being told what was going on, Ellen turned toward her. “Okay, the radiation did what it was supposed to do; it just did it a little too well. Jory has suffered from what we call a TBI – total body irradiation. There are times when we try to do that purposely, but we were hoping to avoid that here.”
“So what does that mean?” Lois asked, dangerously close to hysterics.
“Not only did we kill the overactive cells, we stripped him of all the good ones too.”
“Ellie,” Sam called gruffly, calling her back to the table where he was working to unhook everything as fast as possible while remaining controlled.
Ellen refocused her attention but continued to speak in a calm tone. “We have to get him into a germ-controlled environment right now or he could contract an infection – and seeing as he has no immune system right now… that could immediately be fatal.”
Lois didn’t have time to react before her parents were brushing past her pushing the table. She looked up to the gallery to see that Dr. Klein was already up there engaged in a conversation with Clark. From the way the doctor’s hands were moving rapidly as he talked, Lois could tell that he was imparting the same information that she had just learned. She watched as Clark’s expression darkened and then the two men left through a side door, disappearing from her view.
Feeling at a loss, Lois shrugged out of the apron, tossed it on a chair, and rushed out of the room in the direction her parents had taken.
~.~
tbc
