Hope & Fury (Heroes & Demons Book 2)

An hour behind, when Angel and Ben touched down on the Maltese runway it was only five-thirty back in the UK. A little early, maybe, but Ruth was feeling pretty shit all things considered and so wasn’t too inclined to question her drinking habits. Though they’d slowed somewhat since her time at the top of the Biogenesis tower, or more accurately since being beneath it; she still took her whiskey like a five-star general; a fact she had come to hate.

At least if she were a lightweight, it’d be far easy to anaesthetise and sleep away the early morning dreams.

Things held the same quality for her now as they had two years ago – events were happening beyond her reach or measure to control. She had prided herself, built a career off of the idea that she could command the entirety of the situation – even the pawns on the other side of the board. The first blow to that sense of control was John, her husband. The slow progression of cancer which eventually killed him was the first battle she lost, a situation which made her feel small, insignificant in the face of true natural evil.

She remembered the day she lost him, especially when she was allowed to be alone with her thoughts and found things once more of her control. She remembered it most clearly because it had also been the day she’d lost her daughter – to the ravages of emotion rather than the physical.

She remembered thinking that the bland whitewashed halls of a hospital are no comfort to the dying, nor to their families who find them bleak places not of healing but death. They remind us of our fragility and our mortality, both things we take for granted until we take one step into their doors.

On that day, even as she walked past the open wards and the open rooms, the men in open robes walking with an IV attached, the wheelchair-bound patients who were drooling over their fuzzy nightwear…she felt sorry for none of them. They were still alive, in whatever state they were but John had been about to die.

The call had been from Dr Curtis, her personal physician, who had explained to her that the nurse had brought her husband into the hospital fifteen minutes ago. His vitals had begun to plunge and he had taken a turn to the very worst. He had perhaps hours before he would finally depart this earthly life (he had been rather flowery, which was why she had preferred when Louise had been on call). She had rushed down to the hospital in fifteen minutes and explained her situation to the disinterested nurse who had simply waved her down those all too familiar corridors.

She had hesitated as she turned down the corridor into the oncology ward where already Dr Curtis stood outside of the room she had come to think of almost as their own. They had used it so many times it had almost become John’s private hotel suite in that place of death. Next to him stood Mary, her eyes welled with tears which soon turned into pools of hate when she saw her mother briskly walking up to them.

“Here now are you?” Mary had asked, stuffing her sleeve under her mouth, holding back tears but not bile. “Come to see him off?”

“Dr Curtis, I take it he’s comfortable?” Ruth had asked, intentionally ignoring Mary’s outbursts.

“As much as we can make him,” he had explained, “As I said to you on the phone it shouldn’t be long now. You’re free to sit with him as long as you need. If you need anything please buzz one of the nurses and they will bring it to you.”

With another curt nod, he had headed off down the corridor, while Ruth stood outside the room with her daughter. She had hesitated to enter the room where her husband lay, fearing what she would see. Would he still remember her? Would he open his eyes and be able to say her name one last time? Or would he remain in the comatose state Dr Curtis had described to her, never waking up?

“Are you going to go in there or just wait outside for him to die?” Mary asked her. Ruth turned to her, feeling her anger bubble to the surface,

“Mary, will you stop attacking me?” Ruth snapped at her, “Let’s just get through this as a family.”

“Oh because we have been so far?”

She didn’t know whether it was finally snapping or whether it was her perception of the situation…perhaps the guilt inside of her made her suddenly lash out. She had slapped her daughter for the first time in her life, leaving red marks on the side of her face.

She saw the look on her daughter’s face, the hurt, the hate, all mingled into the look of a tormented teenager who was too disgusted by the world to feel a part of it. She remembered that face, it haunted her in her dreams. Because as Mary turned and fled from her, running with speed, the sound of sobs escaping her throat; it was the last time she would see the face of the daughter she knew.

The very next day she would report her daughter missing, once the events of that day had passed.

* * *

The world was all before them, where to choose

Her voice sounded unnaturally quiet in the stillness of the hospital room. She hated the sound but read to him as she had done so before; sitting by his bedside in more familiar surroundings invaded by the medical equipment; rather than being the invaders themselves into a place that was all too willing to accept them.

Their place of rest and providence their guide

When they were young, when they’d first met they were free; in a paradise of their own making. They chose their way through this life, making decisions, doing as they wished with a kind of whimsy. Like a pair of kids in a park, running around and trying all the rides they could in the time they had.

They hand in hand with wand’ring steps and slow

But like all children when it was time to leave they held on. They grabbed whatever they could…begging, pleading and crying to their parents not to take them home yet. To allow them to go on one more ride, have one more piece of candy floss. But the simple truth of paradise comes from the loss of it – that eventually, we all do have to walk out of the amusement park that is life or get dragged from it, to whatever lays beyond.

Through Eden made their solitary way

Her voice finished; the only sound coming from the creaking of the spine as she closed the book and set it once more upon the sterile tray beside his bed. Cold, grey, like the surroundings. It must have been the fiftieth read through of that book but somehow the words rang out with new meaning, seeming to echo yet around the walls despite such a thing being impossible.

The door opened but a crack and before she could help herself she called out,

“Mary?”

But it was only the soft creak of a door, nudged by the wind of swift passers-by. She could hear the commotion.

“Ruth?”

His eyes flutter open, his mouth forming words once more. He is alive and vibrant and looking up at her. His fingers suddenly clench around her hand and his warmth spreads into her once more.

“Oh God, John,” she cries, her voice barely above a whisper as their faces grow closer. The room seems to brighten around them. No, that’s not exactly right – the room seems to brighten around him as if the light of life is returning to him in all its glory. “John, I missed you…I wanted to say goodbye but…”

“Then say it, Ruth,” he asks her, “Just say your goodbyes and let me go.”

(Beep…Beep…Beep…)

“I can’t do it, John, I can’t,” she cries, now with tears flowing from her eyes. She wants to hold onto him, hold onto this moment.

“This isn’t right, Ruth, you have to let me go,” he asks of her again, “We’ll see each other again…”

(Beep…Beep…)

“I love you…” she whispers.

“And that will never change…”

(Beep…)

The sirens blare as she is nudged delicately but urgently out of the way. She doesn’t mind, she doesn’t notice. She backs away, her eyes never taken off of her husband. He never woke up, it was but a dream. She drops the book in her hands and lets it fall somewhere, elsewhere.

(Time of Death…)

They work quickly and with a dramatic inevitably. They know they will fail but with her standing there, worlds of emotion flying through her at high speed, they must try. They must try because it can’t be over, they can’t let go.

(Time of Death…)

“…9: 03 pm,” Dr Curtis finishes, sound returning to the world once more. But it is the sound of silence. The doctors and nurses, all of them so caught up in that emergency, find themselves numb from the experience, giving her only cursory apologetic glances. Dr Curtis glances at his colleagues, “Perhaps we should give Mrs Sellers a minute.”

They file out of the door but she doesn’t notice. She simply continues to stare at her husband. He is without movement; without light or life. But the shell is still him in some way she can’t describe.

Moving forward through what seems like an eternity, she comes to his already cooling body. She leans in close, her lips softly brushing his skin as she whispers into his ear as she has whispered a thousand times,

“Goodnight.”

* * *

The memory bright and strong remained vivid in her mind. She brushed an errant tear from the corner of her eye as she heard the turning of the door handle. By the time DCI Mercer entered into the room she was as composed as she ever was, even the slight tremble of her hand had subsided. She had regained control.

“Detective,” she greeted, taking another sip of her whiskey.

“As I’ve said before, calling me Detective is like me calling you Miss Sellers,” he responded, with his usual grin.

“And as I’ve said before, you calling me Miss Sellers makes it sound like I’m trying to seduce a teenager,” she retorted. It was amazing how quickly you could settle into a rhythm with a person, no matter the context of it. He set about fixing himself a drink, again another rhythm or informality which they had developed between them. When he had finished, he joined her on the plush red sofa, though remained on the other side.

That night was not like other nights, he must have sensed in some unspoken way. So he remained silent, sipped slowly on his whiskey – the only sound in the room the soft clink of ice cubes. She found herself liking him even more.

“Are you going to ask why I called you?” she eventually spoke, though she hated to speak first. It felt like a compromise.

“The possibilities are growing,” he admitted, “Could it be the reasons why your communal living space looks like a Hulk attack? Or the mysterious triple homicide wherein one of your employees-stroke-housemates is the only connection? Or the six different trips your private jet has taken over the past few days – all without you on it?”

“I don’t appreciate being spied on,” she told him coolly.

“Well, forgive me but when there appears to be a whole load of collective shit going down, it puts me in mind of a state to worry,” he threw back, though his tone without malice, “I will settle for – are we looking at another Blackout-level event?”

“I’ll tell you when the others get back from Atlantis,” she responded. She heard him scoff and allowed herself the moment for another sip. “I’m sorry, detective, but what I have to ask of you tonight is of a far more personal and far more delicate nature.”

“Then I will pull back on the sarcasm,” he agreed, for which she was grateful.

“When one senses the passage of time, one begins to think,” she explained, “You’re right, something is going on and I don’t know how serious it is yet. Perhaps it will be nothing, a storm in a teacup. Or perhaps it will make the Blackout look like a blip. But either way there is nothing you or I can do about it from here – that’s for others who we may guide but for whom we can’t fight the battles. But as I said, it makes you think…”

“I told you two years ago my husband died of cancer. And undoubtedly you know from running a background check on me that I also have a grown-up daughter.” He didn’t say anything but there was no denial, there didn’t need to be – she’d done the same thing and presumably far more thoroughly. “When John was dying I committed the cardinal sin – I ignored her. Selfishly, I refused to wallow in pain and so distracted myself with the task of work. She grew angrier and angrier – but in my quest to avoid all the pain I simply ignored it. I allowed her to hate me. Perhaps I figured in some way that would give her something to focus on, a distraction. Then again, perhaps that is only a justification.”

“I haven’t seen her since that day at the hospital. I know she stayed with John’s sister for a short time but beyond that, I don’t know. It used to be enough for me to know she survived the Blackout, but lately and with what’s happening…”

“You want me to do a search,” he finished for her. “Given your connections, surely you don’t need me to do that?”

“Those connections are business,” she countered, before admitting, “This is personal and so I would like you to be the one.”

He nodded, all the confirmation she needed. Both of them knew what she was asking and even more so, what it meant for her to ask it.