Gran's hand reached to empty air. She was still alive. I sat up, tried to get up, and no one stopped me. That was bad in and of itself. It meant that there was more. Sitting up, I caught a glimpse of that more.
Doyle lay on the ground, eyes blinking up at the ceiling. The front of his borrowed surgical scrubs was blackened, and part was peeled away to show the raw burned flesh underneath.
Rhys knelt beside him, holding his hand. Why wasn't he shouting for a doctor? We needed a doctor. I hit the call button beside the bed.
I half fell and half crawled out of bed. When the IV pulled, I tore it out. A trickle of blood oozed down my arm, but if there was pain, I didn't feel it.
I knelt on the floor between the two of them, and only then could I see Sholto on the far side of Doyle. He was collapsed on his side, his hair spilled across his face so that I could not see if he were awake and watching me, or beyond that. The remnants of the t-shirt that had framed the perfection of his chest now showed a black-and-red ruin. But whereas Doyle's injury was on his stomach, the bolt of power had taken Sholto over the heart.
So much had gone wrong in so short a space of time that I couldn't take it all in. I knelt on the ground, frozen in my indecision. A sound made me look at the woman who had raised me. If ever I had truly had a mother, it was she. She stared at me with those brown eyes that had shown me all the kindness I had ever known from a mother. She and my father had raised me together. Now I stared up at her from my knees, the only way she would be taller than me as she had been when I was small.
The nightflyer unfurled its fleshy wings enough that I could see that the spine had taken her just under the heart. Maybe even gone through the bottom part of it. Brownies are a tough lot, but it was a terrible wound.
She stared at me, still alive, still trying to breathe past the daggerlike spine. I took her hand, and felt her grip, which had always been so strong, now frail, as if she could not hold my hand, but she tried.
I turned to Doyle, and took his hand in mine. He whispered, "I have failed you."
I shook my head. "Not yet," I said. "It's failure only if you die. Don't die."
Rhys went to Sholto and searched for a pulse, while I held the hands of my grandmother and the man I loved and waited for them to die.
It
was one of those moments when strange things come into your mind. All I could think of was what Quasimodo says as he gazes down at the Archdeacon who raised him dead on the pavement below, and the woman he loved hung and dead. "Oh! All that I have ever loved."
I threw my head back and screamed. In that moment no baby, no crown, nothing was worth the price in both my hands.
Doctors came, and nurses. They fell upon the wounded, and they tried to pry my hands out of Gran and Doyle's hands, but I couldn't seem to let go. I was afraid to let go, as if the worst would happen if I did. I knew it was stupid, but the feel of Doyle's fingers wrapped around mine was everything to me. And Gran's fragile grip was still warm, still alive. I was afraid to let go.
Then her hand spasmed against mine. I looked into her face, and the eyes were too wide, the breath not right. They eased her off the spine, and forced the nightflyer back, and as the spine came out, her life spilled with it.
She collapsed toward me, but other arms caught her, tried to save her, pulled her hand away from mine. But I knew she was gone. There might be moments of breath, and pulse, but it was not life. It was what the body does at the end sometimes, when the mind and soul are gone, but the body doesn't understand yet that death has come, and there is no more.
I turned to the other hand still in mine. Doyle gave a shuddering breath. The doctors were pulling him away from me, sticking needles in him, putting him on a gurney. I stood, trying to hold on to his hand, his fingers, but my doctor was there, pulling me backward. She was talking, something about me needing to not upset myself. Why do doctors say such impossible things? Don't get upset; stay off your leg for six weeks; lower your stress; cut back on your work hours. Don't get upset.
They pulled Doyle's fingers out of mine, and the fact that they could pull him away from me said just how hurt he was. If he hadn't been hurt, nothing short of death would have moved him from me.
Nothing short of death.
I looked at Sholto on the floor. They had a crash cart. They were trying to restart his heart. Goddess, help me. Goddess, help us all.
The doctors were clustered around Gran. They were trying, but they had triaged the wounded. Doyle first, then Sholto, then Gran. It should have been comforting, and it was, that they took Doyle first. They thought they could save him.
Sholto's body jerked with the jolt of power they put through his body. I heard their words in snatches, but I saw a head shake. Not yet. They hit him again, with more, because his body jerked harder. His body convulsed on the floor.