It took her some time to figure out the bracing points for her hands and then judge the distance to the floor. Fortunately, she was unplugged from all the tubing that had been running into her arm, but a catheter remained ... so mayhap trying to do this herself was a bad idea.
Yet she could not bear the indignity of just lying here. No soldier was she; now she was a child incapable of caring for herself.
It was no longer supportable.
Snapping out squares of "Kleenex," as people called them, she lowered the railing on the bed, gripped the top of it, and curled herself over onto her side. The torsion caused her legs to flop around like those of a puppet, all motion without grace, but at least she could reach downward to the smooth floor with the white fluff on her palm.
As she stretched whilst trying to maintain a precarious balance on the ledge of the bed, she was tired of being done for, tended to, washed and wrapped like a young newly born unto the world -
Her body went the way of the glass.
Without warning, her grip slipped off the smooth rail, and with her hips so far off the mattress, she fell headfirst toward the floor, the grab of gravity too strong for her to overcome. Throwing out her hands, she caught herself on the wet flooring, but both palms shot from under her and she took the force of impact on the side of the face, breath exploding out of her lungs.
And then there was no movement.
She was trapped, the bed buttressing her useless limbs so that they remained directly over her head and torso, cramming her into the floor.
Dragging air down her throat, she called out, "Help ... hellllp ..."
With her face squeezed, her arms starting to go numb, and her lungs burning from suffocation, rage lit up within her until her body trembled -
It started as a squeak. Then the noise turned into movement as her cheek began to skid on the tile, the skin stretching so thin, she felt like it was being peeled off her skull. And then pressure grew on the nape of her neck, her thick braid pulling her head in one direction at the same time her strange position drove her forward.
Summoning all her strength, she focused her rage and maneuvered her arms so that her palms were back flat to the floor. After a tremendous inhale, she shoved hard, pushing herself up and flipping herself on her back -
Her rope of hair fell in and among the railing's supports and locked in tight, the thick length keeping her in place, whilst wrenching her neck to her shoulder. Trapped and going nowhere, she could see only her legs from her vantage point, her long, slender legs that she had never before given any particular thought to.
As the blood gradually pooled into her torso, she watched the skin on her calves get paper white.
Fists curling, she willed her toes to move.
"Damn you ... move...." She would have closed her eyes to concentrate, but she didn't want to miss the miracle if it happened.
It did not.
It had not.
And she was coming to realize ... it would not.
As the pads of her toenails went from pink to gray, she knew she had to come to terms with where she was. And was not there a fine analogy to her current physical position.
Broken. Useless. Deadweight.
The breakdown that finally ensued carried with it no tears or sobs. Instead, the snap was demarcated by a grim resolve.
"Payne!"
At the sound of Jane's voice, she closed her eyes. This was not the savior she wanted. Her twin ... she needed her twin to do right by her.
"Please get Vishous," she said hoarsely. "Please."
Jane's voice got very close. "Let's get you up off the floor."
"Vishous."
There was a click and she knew that the alarm she had not been able to reach had been sounded.
"Please," she groaned. "Get Vishous."
"Let's get you - "
"Vishous."
Silence. Until the door was thrown open.
"Help me, Ehlena," she heard Jane say.
Payne was aware that her own mouth was moving, but she went deaf as the two females hefted her back upon the bed and resettled her legs, lining them up parallel to each other before covering them with white sheeting.
Whilst various and sundry cleaning endeavors occurred both upon the bed and the floor, she focused across the room at the white wall she had stared at for the eternity since she had been moved into this space.
"Payne?"
When she didn't reply, Jane repeated, "Payne. Look at me."
She shifted her eyes over and felt nothing as she stared into the worried face of her twin's shellan. "I need my brother."
"Of course I'll get him. He's in a meeting right now, but I'll have him come down before he leaves for the night." Long pause. "Can I ask you why you want him?"
The even, level words told her clearly that the good healer was no imbecile.
"Payne?"
Payne shut her eyes and heard herself say, "He made me a promise when this all started. And I need him to keep it."
* * *
In spite of the fact that she was a ghost, Jane's heart was still capable of stopping in her chest.
And as she eased down onto the edge of the hospital bed, there was nothing moving behind her sternum. "What promise was that," she said to her patient.
"It is a matter betwixt the pair of us."
The hell it was, Jane thought. Assuming that she was guessing right.
"Payne, there might be something else we can do."
Although what that was, she hadn't a clue. The X-rays were showing that the bones had been aligned properly, Manny's skills having fixed them perfectly. That spinal cord, though - that was the wild card. She'd had a hope that some regeneration of nerves might be possible - she was still learning about the vampire body's capabilities, many of which seemed like pure magic compared to what humans could do in terms of healing.
But no luck. Not in this case.
And it didn't take an Einstein extrapolation to figure out what Payne was looking for.
"Be honest with me, shellan of my twin." Payne's crystal eyes locked on hers. "Be honest with yourself."
If there was one thing that Jane hated about being a doctor, it was the judgment call. There were a lot of incidents when decisions were clear: Some guy presented at the ER with his hand in an ice cooler and a tourniquet around his arm? Reattach the appendage and run those nerves back where they needed to be. Woman in labor with a preemergent cord? C-section her. Compound fracture? Open it up and set it.
But not everything was that "simple." On a regular basis, the gray fog of maybe-this, maybe-that rolled in, and she had to stare into the cloudy and the murky -
Oh, who was she kidding.
The clinical side of this equation had reached its correct sum. She just didn't want to believe the answer.
"Payne, let me go get Mary - "
"I did not wish to speak with the counseling female two nights ago, and I shan't speak unto her now. This is over for me, healer. And as much as it pains me to call upon my twin, please go and get him. You are a good female and you should not be the one."
Jane looked at her hands. She had never once used them to kill. Ever. It was antithetical not just to her calling and her commitment to her profession, but her as a person.
And yet as she thought about her hellren and the time they'd spent together when she'd woken up with him, she knew she couldn't let him come here and do what Payne wanted him to: He'd taken a small step back from the precipice he'd been about to jump off of, and there was nothing Jane wouldn't do to keep him from that ledge.
"I can't go get him," she said. "I'm sorry. I just won't put him in that position."
The moan that rose from Payne's throat was despair from the heart given wings and released. "Healer, this is my choice. My life. Not yours. You wish to be a true savior, then make it look accidental, or get me a weapon and I'll do it. But leave me not in this state. I cannot bear it, and you have done no good for your patient if I continue thus."
On some level, Jane had known this was coming. She had seen it clear as the pale shadows in the dark X-rays, the ones that told her everything should be working right - and if it wasn't, the spinal cord had been irreparably injured.
She stared at those legs that lay under the sheet so still and thought of the Hippocratic oath she had taken years ago: "Do no harm" was the first commandment.
It was hard not to see Payne as having been harmed if she were left like this - especially because she hadn't wanted the procedure in the first place. Jane had been the one urging the salvation, pushing it on the female for her own reasons - and V had been the same.