[I just want to apologise for the lack of response to your wonderful feedback. Life has been hectic over the last week or so and it's all I can do to keep up with the darned EOD posting schedule!]
**********
“Jesus Christ.” Someone shook his shoulder. “Clark, can you hear me?”
He opened his eyes. George’s face loomed before him at a really weird angle. “Hi, George,” he mumbled.
“What did you take, Clark?”
Huh? Take? He hadn’t taken anything. He wasn’t a thief. “What d’you mean?”
“There’s vomit, Clark. You’ve been sick.”
He wrinkled his nose, registered the acrid smell for the first time. Oh, yeah, he remembered feeling a little queasy. Funny, he thought he’d made it to the bathroom in time. “Sorry,” he mumbled.
“So what did you take, buddy?”
“’s only the red stuff, George. Made me happy. Happy for ever.”
George’s face disappeared again. Where did he go?
“510 Clinton,” said George’s invisible voice. “And get Frank out of bed. He treated him last time so he’s the best medic for the job...no, I want him at the clinic. Met General would just send him home as soon as they’d cleaned him up.”
There was a slap of hard plastic on hard plastic, and then George’s face wavered back into view.
“Hi,” said Clark. No sense in not being polite, even if George was behaving very strangely.
“Okay, buddy, the ambulance should be here any minute. Can you remember when you took this stuff?”
Clark frowned. Why did George want to know that? “After Mayson left me,” he said. Obviously, he took it after she left – when else would he have taken it? And why did George want an ambulance? Was he ill?
“When did Mayson leave, Clark?”
He frowned again. George was getting awfully personal. “After we made love...didn’t make love.”
“When, Clark? What time?”
“Um...didn’t have my watch on.” He chuckled. “Didn’t have anything on, actually.”
“Oh, Jesus – we’re not going to get any sense out of you, are we?”
“Sorry,” he said. George seemed terribly agitated about something. “Is everything okay, George?”
George patted his shoulder. Good old George. “Everything’s going to be just fine, buddy. Just fine.”
Okay. George was on the case and in control. Everything was fine.
****************
The first thing he became aware of was his aching throat. Then he worked out that he was lying on his side in a bed. Finally he noticed how tender his stomach felt.
But where was he?
He opened his eyes, took in the stiff cotton pillowcase and the waffle-weave light-blue blanket. Caught a whiff of antiseptic.
Somewhere medical. The clinic?
Yeah. Hazy memories began to filter back, of a hellish room somewhere with tubes and gagging and gentle, encouraging voices telling him he was doing fine, just a little more and then it would be over. ‘Just a little more’ had seemed to last a very long time, he remembered.
Before that, there had been a bumpy, lurching ride in the back of some kind of vehicle. George had been there, reassuring him that everything was going to be all right.
But it wasn’t, was it? He’d swallowed the red kryptonite and plunged back into hell. He doubted even George could rescue him this time.
There was only one person who could save him.
*************
“Would you like a flower?”
The question dragged him up from semi-consciousness. He’d been drifting through random memories of happier days – a joke he and Lois had shared, or the wonderful time they’d flown together, or that shocking, electrifying first kiss. And the kiss they nearly shared.
Would he like a flower? It seemed a strange thing to ask a guy in a hospital bed. Especially coming from such an innocent-sounding, rather high-pitched voice. He realised his eyes had closed and opened them again. An expanse of blue hospital gown filled his vision.
The blue material shifted. “I said, would you like a flower?”
“Mmmm,” he mumbled. Words would probably have been more effective, but he didn’t feel capable of coherent speech just yet. Besides, his throat hurt too much.
“I made them myself,” said the voice, now sounding a little proud of itself. A square of paper was shoved under his cheek. “There, you can have one anyway.”
This was weird enough to warrant further investigation. With a gargantuan effort, he rolled himself onto his back, his stomach protesting at the sudden movement. Looking up, he found her face.
“Lois!”
The name burst from his lips, the word tearing painfully at his tender throat. He couldn’t believe it. She was standing right next to him, the woman he’d dreamt of, had longed for during the longest, bleakest year of his entire life. She looked just the same – the short, dark hair cut in a simple bob, the high cheekbones, the big, round eyes and the cute nose. She was his Lois.
His Lois.
His Lois!
“Who’s Lois?” she asked
“You are,” he said in wonderment.
He reached up to her with a trembling hand, but she ducked shyly away from him. “My name’s not Lois,” she said with a frown.
He couldn’t understand it. She definitely was Lois. His Lois.
“Now, Linda,” said a kindly-sounding woman’s voice. “You know you’re not supposed to be in here.”
Lois turned just as a middle-aged woman dressed in a cardigan and skirt came up to her and placed a guiding arm around her shoulders. “Come on, honey, let’s go back to your room.” The woman glanced apologetically down at Clark. “I’m sorry about that. She’s a bit of a free spirit.”
“’s okay,” he murmured, trying to protect his throat. Lois was already allowing herself to be led docilely from the room, out of his reach far too soon. “Wait,” he rasped, but neither woman seemed to hear his feeble protest, and he heard the door click behind them.
Terrified that he was going to lose her again, he scrambled out of bed, ignoring the pain in his stomach and his sore throat. He lurched to the door, yanked it open and spilled out into the corridor. They’d disappeared. He looked frantically in both directions. No-one. Just blank, clinical corridor and windows overlooking the clinic’s garden. No-one in the garden. He ran on rubbery legs along the corridor to his left, found empty rooms and then a dead-end. He turned and ran back in the opposite direction, past his door and down towards the other end of the corridor. More empty rooms and windows.
Where could they have gone?
He whirled around and started down the corridor yet again. His body didn’t seem to be working as well as it ought, though. His legs were unsteady and his head was beginning to swim. His throat felt as if someone had shoved a red-hot poker down it. But he had to find her.
Suddenly he was stumbling into a large, solid body. “Whoa, son! Where’s the fire?”
“Perry, I saw her!” he rasped, fumbling against his friend’s large frame to try and regain his balance.
“Who, Clark?” Perry had his arms around Clark now, helping to hold him up.
“Lois! I saw her – she’s here!”
“Awww, son, you know that’s not possible,” said Perry. “Come on, let’s get you back to bed.”
Perry began to steer him back to his room, but he struggled and managed to break free. “I’m not crazy, Perry – I really saw her,” he panted, his throat really protesting at the rough treatment it was receiving. “Just a few minutes ago.”
“Where is she now, then?” asked Perry.
“I don’t know,” he said. “She was in my room.” He staggered and had to be caught by Perry.
“Clark, I would have seen her if she was just here. There’s only one elevator to this floor.”
He hadn’t even noticed the elevator during his frantic search. What else had he missed? Had he lost her for good?
“But I saw her,” he protested.
He felt Perry sigh heavily. “Clark, let’s just get you back into bed. Then we’ll talk about this some more, okay? Or I can call George and you can talk to him.”
Clark sagged against Perry in defeat, all his frantic energy suddenly flowing away from him. “Okay,” he whispered.
*****************
Perry really didn’t believe him. Even once he was settled back in bed and trying to describe what had happened rationally and calmly, his old friend looked by turns worried and sympathetic. Not shocked or excited or elated that his long-lost reporter might actually be on the clinic’s premises, just concerned that his ex-employee might be totally losing his mind.
However, he promised to find out if there was indeed a female patient called Linda at the clinic, who drew pictures of flowers on pieces of paper and had a tendency to wander.
He also filled in a little of the detail as to what had happened to Clark over the past twenty-four hours or so. Apparently George had come looking for him at home when he hadn’t turned up for his appointment on Friday morning. Acting on a hunch, he’d asked the building supervisor to open Clark’s front door, and had found Clark lying on his side looking very much as if he’d swallowed something poisonous.
Clark himself had almost no recollection of how he’d got from Smallville to his apartment, other than a hazy memory of a rather loopy flight over some darkened fields. Presumably he’d flown home and then spent the evening there, becoming increasingly disorientated and ill.
George had rushed him to the clinic and had his stomach pumped. He’d had little idea if the treatment would be enough, or in time, but he and his medical doctor, Frank, had concurred that it was the best course of action, given Clark’s condition. Their theory was that Clark’s fragment of red kryptonite may have included a tiny amount of green kryptonite, although it was equally possible that red kryptonite was poisonous when ingested.
Whatever the explanation, Clark was now suffering the somewhat miserable effects of having swallowed something which disagreed quite nastily with him, plus the uncomfortable effects of the treatment used to remove the substance, whatever it was, from his body.
*******************
“So, buddy, this was spectacular. I’m impressed.”
Clark rolled his head around on his pillows to give George a baleful look. “I didn’t do it to impress you,” he croaked.
He still couldn’t find the best way of talking without hurting his throat, so he was switching around from one method to another every other sentence. Whispering seemed to work best, but even that got tiring after a while, so he was currently going for the croak.
“Why did you do it, Clark?”
Hadn’t they been here before? He closed his eyes. “Not now, George. Give me a break.”
“What happened? Things were going so well.”
“Were they?” he croaked. “I hadn’t noticed.”
“Of course they were. You’ve been clean for months. So what happened, Clark?”
Mayson happened. “Go away, George,” he said, rolling onto his side with his back to the therapist.
“Sorry, can’t do that, buddy – it’s my job to be obnoxious. So was it another of those dreams?”
Clark bit his bottom lip and remained silent. He simply wasn’t in the mood to respond to George’s interrogation, no matter how well-meant it was. All he wanted to know was where Lois was, and if he had the strength, he’d be out of bed and searching the entire clinic for her right this minute. As it was, he was stuck here, relying on other people who just thought he was crazy and delusional.
“Come on, Clark, give me something to write in my notes. I hear you had a visitor.”
Oh, here it came. Poor Clark – now he’s seeing visions as well as dreaming about her. “Yeah,” he said. “You found her yet?”
“Clark, you know-“
“George, are you hassling my patients again?” Clark recognised the brisk, strident voice of Carolyn, the head nurse. At last, a ray of hope – she’d get rid of George, with any luck.
“Carolyn, you know this is important-“
“Look, he’s not going anywhere, is he? You can come back later when he’s feeling better,” she told him. “Right now, he needs rest and recuperation, not interrogation by the therapist from hell. Besides, I need to do his vitals and you’re in my way.”
Clark heard George stand up. “Carolyn, you can be a real pain in the butt sometimes, you know that?”
“It’s my job, dear George. Now get out before I have to kick you out.”
He heard the door close and immediately felt less on edge. At times, George was like the worst guilty conscience you could ever imagine – never letting up and always there.
“I’m just going to take your temperature,” said Carolyn, just before her thermometer crackled momentarily in his ear.
When she was done, he rolled onto his back. “Thanks,” he croaked. “For chasing him away.”
She pulled out her watch. “He really does care about you, you know,” she said, picking up his wrist. “That’s why he pushes so hard.”
“I know.”
“He’s the best we’ve got,” she added. “But sometimes he can be a bit too much to take, can’t he?” She smiled sympathetically down at him.
“Yeah.”
She fell silent for a few moments while she counted his pulse. He wondered if she might know anything about Lois. She only dealt with patients who needed medical attention, so Lois might not be her responsibility, but she may have heard something about a patient who tended to wander around the clinic.
“Carolyn, do you know a patient named Linda?” he whispered hoarsely. His throat had tired of the croak, so he was trying another tactic. “Short brown hair, brown eyes? Has a tendency to wander around.”
Carolyn smiled. “That describes quite a few of our patients, I’m afraid. No, I haven’t come across a Linda, but that doesn’t mean she’s not here. I don’t see everyone, as you know.”
He nodded. “Could you look? Check the list of patients, or something?”
She jotted some notes on a clipboard then began straightening his bedclothes and plumping up his pillows. “Patient confidentiality, Clark,” she said. “I can’t.”
“Please,” he whispered. “It’s important.”
She straightened, placed her hands on her hips, and gazed down at him with her head cocked on one side. “I guess I might find myself in the wrong screen when I’m updating your notes,” she mused. “Everyone knows I’m useless at computers.”
He smiled gratefully up at her. “Thanks, Carolyn.”
“Hey, you can rescue my cat the next time he disappears up our cherry tree,” she said, back to her brisk mode. “Now - what are we going to do about your throat? How about some nice soothing ice to suck?”
“Sounds good to me.”
**************
He began to wonder if he had dreamt the whole thing after all. Perry hadn’t seen her and didn’t seem to believe him, George clearly thought he’d imagined the meeting, and even Carolyn hadn’t heard of a patient named Linda.
He’d been pretty woozy when she’d entered his room. The encounter seemed hazy, the memory of it hard to grasp and even a little surreal. Compared to the dream he kept having about her at night, there wasn’t a lot to distinguish one from the other. The main difference was that in the dream she was in danger and alone, whereas when she’d visited him in his room, she’d been with that nurse in the skirt and cardigan and hadn’t been at all under threat – so far as he was aware, at any rate.
The flower picture.
She’d shoved it under his cheek. It must still be around someplace, under his bed or amongst the sheets. He began feverishly scrambling around, shaking all his bedclothes and pillows. Nothing. He slid out of bed, got on his hands and knees and searched under the bed. Nothing. Maybe a cleaner had picked it up while he’d been dozing. He got up and found the wastepaper basket. Nothing.
So maybe the whole thing had indeed been a dream.
He glanced at his watch. Early evening. Not too late to begin a search of the clinic. Tough if he was still a little shaky, he couldn’t wait any longer for Carolyn to check the patient records. He needed to know if he’d imagined Lois or not.
There was a knock at his door and then it swung open a crack. “Clark? You decent in there?”
Perry. Damn. “Uh, sure,” he called, flopping down onto the side of the bed. “Come in.”
The door swung open, to reveal Perry pushing a wheelchair in front of him. “Hop in, son,” he said. “We’re going for a ride.”
Right now? Perry’s timing couldn’t have been worse. “A wheelchair?” he said. “Perry, is this something you and George have cooked up together? I’m really not in the mood for games.”
Perry shook his head gravely. “No game, son. I’m deadly serious. Get in the wheelchair.”
“Why, Perry?” he protested. “Tell me why I should get in a wheelchair.”
“Because we’re going to visit your Linda.”
Clark’s heart leapt into his throat. Perry had found her. He’d found his Lois.
******************
