Encounters with Evil Pt. 07

"Yes, of course," he said. He extended his hand toward the door, bidding them to enter.

Mel went into the room slowly and with great trepidation. The lights were dim and Guy was lying on his back on the hospital bed, hooked up to various tubes and machines. His face was very pale, almost seeming to have a greenish tint. He looked smaller than usual, his body just a large lump under the sheet.

His face was still and expressionless. If it hadn't been for the soft, steady beeping of the machine which monitored his heart rate, Mel might have thought he was already dead.

"I'll leave you," Ed said quietly, closing the door. She hadn't even entered the room.

Mel approached the bed as if he were walking to his doom. His heart felt like a lead weight in his chest. Numbly, he pulled a chair up next to the bed and sank into it. He grabbed Guy's hand in both of his. It felt cold and stiff. Guy was completely unresponsive.

Something inside Mel broke. He laid his face against Guy's stomach and started to sob as if his world were ending. Chapter Twenty

"Doctor!" the nurse called. Her voice was excited. "Come and look at this!"

Doctor Conner swept behind the counter to peer over the nurse's shoulder at the computer screen. Ed followed, trying to making heads and tails of the data she could see.

"That's astounding," the doctor said. "I've never seen anything like it." He took the mouse away from the nurse and clicked through a few pages of data. "Huh!"

"What is it?" Ed asked.

"Salucci's vitals are suddenly stronger. Much stronger! They're almost in the normal range. I've never seen it happen instantly like that." He turned to the nurse. "Get Dwayne and join me. I'm going in there to run some more tests."

The doctor hurried into Salt's room and the nurse scurried away. Ed hung back, watching the computer screen with fascination. She could see that most of the squiggly lines had suddenly made a rapid climb and then steadied to a slower but still perceptible climb.

While she was watching, the lines all started going back down rapidly. She was just about to go alert the doctor of the new negative data when she saw Mel standing outside Salt's room, looking bereft.

When she approached him, he glanced up at her. He had obviously been crying.

"They kicked me out," he said in a voice that was so woebegone even Ed was affected. She grabbed Mel's hand and barged into Salt's hospital room with him in tow.

The doctor, a nurse, and the orderly were all crowded around Salt's bed, fussing with the equipment.

"He needs to stay in here," she said.

"We're busy. He'll just be in the way," the doctor replied absently. He was focused on his equipment. "I don't understand this. His vitals are all over the place."

Ed approached the bed, pulling Mel with her. She took the hand she was holding and laid it on Salt's.

"What the hell?" the doctor said, peering closely at the readout.

"He just improved, didn't he?" Ed said in triumph.

"Yes, but ... I don't understand."

"It's Mel," she said simply. "He is what is causing this. As soon as you kicked him out, he began going downhill again, didn't he? Now he's fine again, right?"

"Well, yes, but that's impossible."

"Impossible?" Ed raised an eyebrow. "If I had a nickel for every time you told me that, especially when it comes to Salucci..."

"You're right. He's different. And I've certainly seen all the data that says patients recover more quickly when they have sympathetic company, but this is unbelievable. How could his presence make so much difference?"

"They are ... linked," Ed said.

Mel's head snapped up toward her, his eyes wide. "What do you mean, linked?"

"I suppose Salt hasn't told you anything?" she said. It was more of a statement than a question, and she answered it herself. "Of course not. For being off-the-charts brilliant, the man is dumber than a post. Unfortunately, I don't think it's my place to fill you in. You'll just have to wait until he wakes up. At least he'll be immobile for a while, so maybe you can pin him down and get some answers from him.

"You understand what is going on here on a basic level, right?" she continued. "Your presence is causing Guy to get better. I'd appreciate if you stay by his side at least until he's out of danger."

"I don't understand. Why would I make a difference?"

"Well, we obviously don't understand either." Ed glanced at the doctor who was looking through the data and scratching his head. "But you'll stay?"

"Of course."

****

Mel's eyeballs felt like someone had rubbed them with sandpaper and every bone in his body ached. He had slept in the chair next to Guy's bed for two nights and it was wearing on him. Ed had offered to bring a bed in for him, and now he was thinking that maybe he should have accepted that offer. She had also suggested it was okay for him to climb in with Guy.

As tempting as that was, Mel wasn't about to presume to get onto the narrow hospital bed with Guy. The big man took up almost the whole bed. Mel would have had to sleep practically on top of him, and he knew Guy wouldn't like that. Guy was disgusted with him already for being a wide-eyed virgin who was chasing after him like a love-struck thirteen-year-old.

Guy's condition had improved considerably, according to the doctor. He was still in a coma, so Mel couldn't really tell. His color looked better; he didn't have a greenish cast to his skin anymore, he was just a little paler than usual.

Mel had had plenty of time to think over the past couple of days. Ed had brought him a laptop—a sleek, top-of-the-line machine that had Mel practically drooling—and had pointed him to a Website with all the data he needed to make a decision about working for EERIE.

He was excited by the opportunity. It looked like they were doing some groundbreaking work in his chosen field, bioengineering, and, judging from the pictures and information on the site, their lab was unbelievable. If he worked for them he'd have access to every high tech gadget he could envision and then some. He was salivating while he looked over the information, his mind racing with possibilities of what he could accomplish with so much support.

The money, of course, was not a minor factor either. His starting salary alone was a third more than anyone else would offer for someone as green as he was. Add to that his five-plus-million signing bonus, and he'd be an idiot to walk away from this opportunity.

Ed was even willing to work with him on his continued education. She said they needed him to start full time right away, but he still had another semester to go to complete his undergraduate studies, and he'd planned to continue school fulltime until he got his PhD. She said she fully supported his further education, but suggested that instead of going to school fulltime and working part time, he flip and go to school part time while he worked fulltime for her. She made a strong case for the hands-on experience he'd be able to get while working for EERIE.

The only reason Mel hadn't signed yet, the only thing holding him back, was Guy. His whole experience with the man had been so painful he just wanted to go somewhere far away and lick his wounds. He didn't want to work for the same company as Guy. He was pretty sure, since Guy was a field agent and he himself would be working behind the scenes in the lab, that he wouldn't run into him too often at work. But surely it would happen on occasion. He wondered if EERIE held a company holiday party, and if so, would he be able to skip it.

Jon, of course, had accepted Ed's offer right away. He would be helping man the central dispatch desk and would be trained for field work. Mel couldn't imagine Jon fighting vampires like Guy did—he was just so tiny. But Ed had been very impressed with his level-headedness while naked, chained to the wall, and being tortured by a vampire. She seemed to think he had what it took.

Every time Mel thought about what had happened, he felt overwhelmed with gratitude for his best friend. If it hadn't been for Jon's quick thinking and decisive action, they would have all been killed, or worse, enthralled to the vampire. He shuddered.

In addition to being grateful to Jon for saving his life, he was also deluged with guilt. He knew it was his fault, and his fault alone, that Jon had been captured and Guy almost killed. His own selfish motivations had put them all in mortal danger. He wasn't sure he'd ever be able to forgive himself, and he was pretty sure that when Guy woke up, he wouldn't be able to forgive him either. He'd overheard the doctor telling Ed that Guy would not get back full use of his arm—that he might be better off with a robotic arm.

That information alone had put Mel into such a self-flagellating spin that if he'd had any inclination toward suicide, he might have succumbed to it. Even though Guy was getting better, Mel was miserable.

Ed had been very patient with him, and he got the feeling that patience was not in her nature. She had come and sat with him several times, telling him a bit about the history of EERIE—she had founded the company after surviving a vampire attack herself twenty years earlier. The company had steadily grown and was extremely well-funded because they took over the holdings of any paranormal creatures they destroyed. She was vague on what else was out there besides vampires. Vampires, in particular, were lucrative because they lived so long and integrated well into human society. They tended to amass vast fortunes, they didn't have next of kin who would complain about the missing estate, and indeed they tended to have their holdings well-hidden, so that it was relatively easy for EERIE to take them over without anyone being the wiser.

She poured all of the money back into EERIE. She seemed to have a single-minded obsession with eradicating vampires. Mel understood that—they were pure evil and he felt absolutely no guilt about his hand in destroying Valjevo. Luckily, they apparently weren't all that common. Ed said that they usually only had three or four confirmed vampire sightings a year, but that it typically took months to bring one down after they were located.

Mel had signed a non-disclosure agreement right off the bat of course, and Ed didn't lose any opportunity to remind him of the confidentiality of the information she was sharing.

He shifted in his chair; his butt was getting numb. Standing up, he let his hand slip away from Guy's so he could pace back and forth in the little hospital room and get some circulation going to his limbs again. There were no windows in the room, and he hadn't seen sunlight in days. There was a clock on the wall, and he wondered how long it would be before he would glance at the clock and wonder whether it was six o'clock in the morning or the evening. The hours were blending together into an interminable twilight.

After several minutes of pacing he returned to Guy's bedside. He never seemed to tire of looking at the big man. They had left his eyepatch on and Mel had been sorely tempted to peek under it, but he'd refrained. Guy's face looked peaceful and he appeared to just be sleeping. His coma wasn't as deep as it had been; the last six hours or so he had been shifting around a bit, as if he were just asleep.

Now as Mel watched him, he felt a deep longing in his chest. He wanted this man so badly it was painful. He picked up Guy's hand, which was warm now, and squeezed it gently.

Guy's eye fluttered open and Mel's heart stopped beating. Confusion was clear on Guy's face and his eye was unfocused for a few moments, then it lit on Mel and recognition shown in it.

"Mel," he whispered, his voice a low rasp. Then he closed his eye again and appeared to fall immediately back to sleep.

Mel was shaken. What he felt inside was almost terror. He didn't stop to examine his feelings, but went immediately to the door and called for the nurse, telling her that Guy had woken up briefly.

A few moments later the room was crowded again with the doctor and his helpers, all clucking over Guy who stayed sound asleep. After examining the readouts on the equipment, and getting Guy's vitals, the doctor proclaimed that he was no longer in a coma, just a heavy sleep.

"Is ... he's out of danger now, isn't he?" Mel asked, his heart in his throat.

"Yes, definitely. He's no longer dying. His recovery has been miraculous. I expect he'll continue to improve at a rapid rate."

"Okay, good," Mel said. "If it's all right with you then, I'm going to get back to my life." He gathered up the few things he'd had brought to him while he'd been keeping vigil at Guy's bedside and stuffed them into a plastic bag.

The doctor looked at him in surprise. "Yes, of course. I'll have someone escort you back to your room. You'll need to talk to Ed before you go, but I'll let her know you're ready."

Relief filled Mel as he slipped out the door to wait in the hallway for his escort. He realized what had frightened him so much: he couldn't stand the thought of the disgust that would show on Guy's face when he woke up and saw Mel holding his hand. It hadn't happened the first time, but Guy had been clearly out of it. As soon as he was fully cognizant, he would want him gone. Mel was going to preempt that and leave on his own before Guy got a chance to send him away.