Chapter 16: Passenger - Let Her Go
The next moment Theo was shoving down through the stairwell, running with Thall in his arms.
Not many people recognized the landlady. She had only just moved into the rooftop house and wasn’t everyone’s landlady yet. But the neighbors who walked past and saw Theo carrying a woman in a wedding gown down the steps at a dead run found themselves wondering.
"Since when was Theo married?"
"We didn’t even get invited to the wedding."
Theo ignored all the comments, that was if he even heard them properly to begin with. Carrying Thall meant carrying her fever with her, and the heat of her was burning into his skin straight through the cloth of his sleeves. He had called an ambulance the moment he came down, and the siren was already blasting somewhere ahead of him, closing in street by street. He ran with his hands burning and met it at the mouth of the building.
The medic team were fast and efficient. They pulled on thick gloves before they laid a finger on her, and had her on the stretcher in a single practiced movement. Theo climbed into the ambulance after her and sat down at her side, his white shirt filthy with the fluid that had been excreted from her body by the circulation heart. There were some blood stains on it too, gone brown at the cuffs.
But Theo’s gaze was on the unconscious Thall. He kept staring at her and wondering whether he had made the right decision the night before.
’Should I have just allowed her stay at the rooftop and stayed there with them... damnit, how could I not see this coming.’
The ambulance ate up the distance, taking corners hard enough to swing the equipment on its hooks, while Theo folded his hands and unfolded them and folded them again, until they reached the Meteor City Memorial Hospital.
The medic team pulled the stretcher out with the same swiftness and wheeled her straight for the ICU. At some point along that corridor an arm came across Theo’s chest and stopped him, and then the doors swung shut while they attended to her.
Theo sat at the waiting lounge with his face down, slightly confused on what to do. The floor between his shoes had been polished so hard he could see the ceiling lights in it, doubled and swimming.
Hospitals have evolved from what they used to be. Since after the apocalypse and the presence of the Tower, people could learn different professions and arts from the Tower, and it has elevated their standing in medicine knowledge today. Plus there were Heroes who awakened really extraordinary abilities that were related to healing, people who could close a wound with a palm and a word.
So Theo urged himself to be patient and trust in the doctors.
He stared at the burn marks that were on his hands and frowned slightly. The marks were literally a scorch while he was in the ambulance, the skin risen and shining. But now, it was fading. The redness was pulling back toward the palm like water going down a drain.
It felt more like an adaptation than a healing, like his body was adapting to that kind of wound so fast that it was erasing the traces of its presence. Which meant that perhaps, he would not be hurt by the same thing, at least not as intensely anymore. He pressed a thumb into the worst of it and felt almost nothing, and that was somehow worse than the pain.
Theo stood up and walked up to one of the attendants at the lounge.
"Please, where can I get something very hot?"
The lady gave him a strange look and opened her mouth to ask what he meant, but the look in Theo’s eyes was not one that appreciated delay.
She pointed to her left.
"If you go that way and turn to your right, it’s the kitchen, you can speak to them there."
Theo nodded.
"Thank you."
The lady kept looking at him strangely as he walked off. He entered a wide and bright hallway that smelled of disinfectant and rice, and turned to his right, which opened into the kitchen, where there were a few workers moving between the counters.
And a man with a receding hairline quickly said to Theo.
"Hello, sir, you’re not allowed to be here."
Theo bowed his head and said politely.
"I just need something very hot."
The man gave him a look, saying in his mind.
’Is he a mentally challenged patient?’
Theo walked to the gas table. On it was a boiling kettle, rattling on its base with steam coming off the spout in a thin white rope. He placed his hand flat on the bottom of the kettle and was displeased.
’It’s not hot...’
The man moved closer before Theo could touch another pot, and yelled at him.
"Hey! Out now! Patients are not allowed here!"
Theo wanted to insist, but now the eyes of everyone in the kitchen were on him, the chopping had stopped, and a woman by the sink had turned around with a wet ladle in her fist. He bowed.
"I’m sorry." Then he left.
The man hissed irritably as he watched Theo leave, mumbling. "Damn, schizophrenic poosies."
He glanced at the kettle, and casually placed his hand on the top of it just to see what the madman had wanted. The moment he did though, he shot back with a vicious yell, holding his fingers out from his body as they went red.
"Owwwww!! Owww!! Owww owww!!!"
He crumpled to his knees, crying and blowing on his fingers, while his colleagues hurried to aid him, one of them dragging the tap open for cold water.
The man glanced at the door at the last minute.
’That bastard. How was he able to touch the bottom of this?!’
***
As Theo stepped out of the kitchen and back into the lounge, a nurse was waiting for him already.
"Are you the guardian of Mrs Thalleria?"
Theo nodded kindly.
"Yes, I’m her husband."
"Please follow me."
The nurse pinched her nose slightly as she walked with Theo, and kept a half step further from his shoulder than she needed to. They reached the ICU, and the doctor in charge was already standing there. The moment the doctor saw Theo, he recognized him.
"Theolyne. Boy, what are you doing here?"
Theo greeted the man respectfully.
"Doctor Nischov, that is my wife, I am here for her."
The man glanced back at the glass and studied Theo up and down.
"Ah, I see you just got married, you didn’t invite me, why? Because your dad is not around anymore?"
Theo shook his head shyly and responded.
"My wife wanted to make it something small, so we invited no one."
He paused and looked at her through the glass, then back at the doctor.
"Please Doctor Nischov, what’s her condition?"
Doctor Nischov shook his head sadly.
"Theo, I know you know about the wave of these new diseases. The one that plagued your father, the one that ultimately led to his death, came out of that same wave, but it was a much weaker thing than what we are fighting here. This is a mana core cancer, Theo, and it’s spreading pretty fast. In a week or two, this lady is going to be no more."
Theo’s eyes trembled.
Doctor Nischov continued.
"Right now, she’s in immense pain, and it would be unfavorable for her to continue in such pain, only to die at the end of it all. Which is why I suggest you make this easy for her."
The man’s words landed with weight.
"Let her go, Theo."