The Heart of It All (HeartSick Series Book 1)

by Weston Mitchel

  Brian’s voice was a deep baritone, one that had always traveled distances with ease in even the most hushed tones. At a yell, his voice was down right deafening, leaving bystanders caught in the echo a hundred yards away covering small children’s ears.

  Now everyone in the room was wide awake and staring either at Mia, who was now blushing, or at Austin who was hopping on one foot toward the blushing girl while rubbing the other shin, hissing in pain through clenched teeth.

  “You okay?” Mia asked sincerely, wanting the attention off of her, and quick.

  “Forget about me, Mia, are you okay? It’s like East Berlin in there, they wouldn’t let any of us in or give us any info whatsoever. Here sit down, let’s-”

  “No, I’m fine, really. I just want to get outta here,” Mia said.

  The quartet was whole again as Ashley and Brian regained consciousness and slowly hobbled to Mia’s side.

  “Of course, hun, let’s go. I’ll run and get the car,” said Ashley, stroking Mia’s back in a soothing gesture then taking the vest and glasses from her hands, shoving them in her purse as she walked down the hall.

  “Yeah, fuck this place,” Brian said in a half buried yawn, simultaneously stretching his back, giving off small bursts of cracks that sounded like the last few seconds of a bag of popcorn being cooked. “I’m right behind ya babe,” he called out to Ashley as he ran off to catch up with her.

  “We’ll meet y’all out front,” Austin shouted at the already fading back of Brian.

  To Mia he said “Parking is nuts here, so I’m sure they’ll be a bit. But we should go ahead and start making our way out there, that way you can take it easy, no rush.” Austin held onto her at the elbow as if it was a Sunday morning and he was escorting his grandmother down the aisle at church to the front pew.

  “Seriously though, are you okay? What happened? What did they say?” Austin probably had another thousand questions ready to bubble up to the surface as soon as one was answered. He had been left in the dark the whole time with nothing but Brian, Ashley, and his imagination to get him through it, so mostly just his imagination.

  Mia had been worried about this laying in her bed throughout the night, and morning, at least the parts she was awake for. She had kept the nurses mum from telling them what was actually going on, and hopefully they didn’t betray her confidence, which meant she could come up with whatever reason for what happened last night and her admittance to the hospital. As long as it was believable but not too real, she should be able to calm their worries and keep them from asking too many more questions about it.

  If not, she would just tell them she didn’t want to talk about it. Mia knew, however, that would only get her so far. Even now as her mouth was opening Mia wasn’t sure exactly what she was going to say.

  “I’m ok Austin, you’re sweet to worry like that,” she said stalling for time, eyes wandering around her environment hoping for a Keyser Sose type clarity to help her come up with a story but came up short.

  “Walking Pneumonia,” she blurted out, still not sure where she was going.

  “Walking pneumonia? What’s that?” Austin said looking perplexed at Mia.

  “Just ya know, pneumonia that’s not as severe. I wasn’t able to get enough oxygen or something to the brain so it kinda shut off. Added with the fact that I was a teensy bit dehydrated, it caused more problems that it really should have. Anyway, good as new.”

  “Really? Well what did they do, I mean what did they give you? Anything I can do?”

  “Oh ya know, got an iv and some fluids, some antibiotics and really, Austin, I’m fine,” Mia said patting his hand that still held her elbow, “Now come on, slowpoke. Let’s go get a coffee before they pull up.”

  Mia saw a chance to further take the attention off her and continued “Speaking of them, what happened with that? Did I see her sleeping on his shoulder when I came out?”

  Austin rolled his eyes and chortled.

  “Those two,” shaking his head in disbelief, “I dunno… they’re something aren’t they? I think they were just as worried about you as I was, but they got to use each other to get through it.”

  “Awwww, was my little Austin left to his own devices while I was sleeping? Let’s go see if we can take care of that shall we?”

  “As much as I would love to, you need your rest, why don’t we just go Netflix and chill, but like, really chill.”

  “Now that’s a great idea, Mister.”

  Good Doctor Running Out of Time

  It had been three weeks since Ashley came in and told the Good Doctor about Mia’s worsening health. Mia was explicit in her orders for not letting anyone in and also keeping mum about her condition, but Dr. Greer had developed close relationships at the hospital across the street from her lab for this very reason. Doctor/Patient confidentiality was taken very seriously at State Hospital, but Doctor’s also relished in talking about the cases they were working on.

  All Catherine needed to do was drop a few lines about what she was working on, and which ever doctor she was talking to at the time would start in on any case they had seen that week that was related to it, showing that they knew exactly what she was talking about. Very few people in the world are willing to let others pretend to be smarter than they are, even more so for a group of people that spent nearly a decade in college.

  With Ashley telling her which doctor had been treating Mia on Halloween night, all Dr. Greer had to do was strike up the right conversation with that Doctor and learn as much as she could.

  If that didn’t prove fruitful then she always had a back door into the system, her administrative login into the Hospital’s computer system. She earned this by dropping an enormous endowment on the hospital’s board of directors. This was the same way she was able to get all the information she needed on Austin Kyle.

  Dr. Greer was in the clean room again testing another dropper full of Austin’s blood on cancer cells. She had been trying to find a way to synthesize what the blood had been doing to everything she put in front of it. In order to do that, however, she needed to know what exactly was causing the blood to be so miraculous.

  So far she wasn’t able to replicate a single experiment with any of the concoctions she had come up with. Not only was she not able to replicate it, but she really wasn’t anywhere close to gathering the same results.

  Using anything other than Austin’s blood, combining whichever formula she was currently working up with the virus or bacteria or cancer cells she was testing on at the time, it always ended the same, negatively. Most of the cells she tested on acted as if nothing was even trying to kill it. Dr. Greer grew more and more frustrated with every test, she felt like she could see the cells staring up at here smirking and laughing out loud right in her face, goading her on.

  One night last week she even yelled out at the microscopic orbs sitting on the petri dish in front of her, just before she slung it across the room where it shattered against the wall.

  Izzy came in to check on her asking if everything was alright, and the Doctor had to tell her that she stubbed her toe and dropped the dish by accident. Izzy stood there nodding in agreement, all the while glaring in her snotty, little disbelieving way that she has, staring at the wet spot on the wall beside the door.

  It was getting harder and harder to come up with busy work for Izzy while Dr. Greer worked with the dwindling supply of Austin’s blood. This week, though, she didn’t have to come up with anything, because Izzy took the whole week off for Thanksgiving to travel back to California or Arizona or wherever the hell it was she was from. The Doctor would finally have the much needed solitary working time on the cure without Izzy’s questioning gaze hovering over everything the Doctor touched.

  She still needed to be careful though, the sample obtained from Austin’s last donation on October 31st was nearly gone and she still had another 35 days until his next appointment. After that first evening with his newest sample, the night Mia was admitted, she knew she would h
ave to ration what she had to make it last. Catherine wasn’t about to use it all up the first week like the last time, leaving her waiting almost another month and a half before she could test anymore of her theories on it.

  Since then the Doctor allowed herself to obtain only a dropper full every other day to use it for what needed to be done. It wasn’t much, but it was enough to serve it’s purpose for the tests at hand. She knew if she was ever going to find a way to process and synthesize a viable cure, turning his blood into a usable medicine, she needed to be making progress every single day. She couldn’t very well do that working only a handful of days out of every two months.

  Dr. Greer once thought she had all the time in the world to find a workable cure, but pouring through Mia’s new records she wasn’t sure how much time she had. Leukemia was a sneaky mistress. It would let some slip through it’s grasp scarred and shaken but still living, while others it would squeeze every ounce of life out, leaving nothing but a husk of a former human in it’s place.

  Since Mia seemed to be dealing with this longer than we knew, hiding it from even her best friend, then it doesn’t seem to be the aggressive type.

  The doctor thought that by using Ashley as somewhat of a spy, regularly reporting back to her about all of Mia’s moves, it would keep her in the loop if anything arose she would need to know about. She had been wrong about that, hence her need to dive into the records to find anything she could, instead of relying solely on Ashley like she’d done the past seven years or so.

  That still doesn’t mean it won’t turn into one nasty mother though, so stop dillydallying and get back to work Cat.

  Now that Catherine Greer just used up the the dropper she filled yesterday, the only work she could focus on today was either pouring over the results of previous tests, or doing more research on Austin’s background. She knew that by going over more tests that she didn’t have any answers for, it would stoke the fire of rage burning in her chest right now, so she opted for research.

  To Dr. Greer, Austin’s life had become second only to Mia’s in the past three weeks. When she wasn’t working with the blood in one from or another, she was committing herself to learning every possible thing she could about Austin’s past and present.

  This entailed all files and records she had on him being read thrice over by now, but it also included upping the intervals of meeting with her other “spy” she recruited a while back. At first, weekly visits with that crude and vulgar friend of Mr. Kyle’s was enough to make sure he wasn’t doing anything harmful to taint his precious blood supply.

  She knew from experience that even the clean cut, good ole boys had their dirty vices tucked back deep in their closets. This mostly meant drugs, but it could also mean a number of other things as well, one of them being unsafe sex practices. Brian had been a little more forthcoming in the information he was willing to give about his friend’s life, infinitely more so than Ashley, saying she didn’t have much to worry about on that front.

  His actual words in one of their meetings last week were “I’m not sure, but I think I’ve seen one or two wrappers in the trash from time to time that weren’t from me and Ashley.”

  Yeah, thanks ass, could have done without that in my head. It’s bad enough to have to hear about Austin having sex with my grand-daughter, you can skip the details about just how much you boff my daughter. That’s what she wanted to say to the little fucker, but she bit her tongue and moved on to the next question, the one she now asked every other day at their meet ups, “What else have you been able to find out?”

  Some days were more profitable in information than others, listening to him retell stories that Austin had confided in him about his past. Anything she could use to help her figure out this enigma. All she had been able to weasel out of this weasel up until now was “no, I don’t think he’s been sick since high school, but how the hell should I know, you’re the doc, doc.”

  The summer between sophomore and junior year had been the time of his accident and miraculous recovery without the years of physical therapy and countless future operations that the injuries he sustained from the wreck would have caused any one else to suffer through.

  Brian was smarter than he looked, and Dr. Greer was beginning to get worried that he might catch on to the reason she was having him recall every tiny thing that Austin revealed to him. She had to play up the overbearing mother act in front of him, lest he get suspicious about the real reason.

  Not only did she have to raise his fee for backstabbing his roommate from a hundred a week which he was eager to jump at, at first, but now she was having to shell out two thousand a month to both Brian and Austin, each. It’s worth it, however, if the lug kept his damn mouth shut to everyone else but lets it flap in my presence.

  This arrangement had been useful, but it was getting Catherine Greer no closer to the solution. It did seem, however, like she was making some headway in the research department of her work. Arriving at dead ends after taking every other avenue she could think of, on a hunch, she focused on the blood transfusions themselves in the first couple days after the accident.

  Out of the numerous pints he received in those first critical hours, two of them had the same three digit code at the end of the identifying number from the scan code sticker slapped on to the bag itself. This meant that the two bags had likely originated from the same region.

  Everything these days in modern hospitals was made to be scanned or with a digital record attached to it in some form or another. Dr. Greer was astonished that the backwoods quack, that Austin had no doubt been given care from, had modern technology backing up it’s system. It’s a good thing it did too, or else she might not have ever found the missing link to the origin of her wonder boy’s magic blood.

  If everything she heard and found out about Mia were true, then she would need to not only have this connection become more clear in her mind, and in her lab, but she would need to reproduce it quickly enough to help Mia before the Leukemia took it’s hold of her. She knew this would mean forgoing any sort of trials and tests once she was able to synthesize a product.

  Which in itself was no big deal really, Catherine could help save Mia, and then worry about getting the cure ready for mass production. She’d have all the time in the world to devote to it once she had the perfect formula. Mia was the important part, curing the world wasn’t even a close second on her list of goals. Owning the world, however, now that was a goal.

  Thanksgiving Road-trip

  Austin’s hometown of Luckwell, Texas was roughly a six hour drive from school. A fact that Austin’s mom made just about every time they chatted on the phone, driving home the point that driving home could easily be done any weekend he chose. Austin promised his mom over the summer that he would make the trip as much as possible. It was a promise he fully intended to keep, but here it was, the Wednesday morning before Thanksgiving and he hadn’t made it home once, yet.

  His crippling fear of being in a vehicle going anything over 15 miles an hour was a major hurdle, no doubt, and gave him a built in excuse. Life, however was the biggest hurdle to overcome. Life always seemed to make some choices for you, not giving you any choice at all really. Some things keep getting pushed to the back burner over and over again, and before you know it, three months have passed since he left home in order to start his adult life and his family was left waiting in the wings.

  He was about to make up for these months of no shows by bringing his new girlfriend home with him for thanksgiving to meet the family. The person that had sapped all of his extra time for almost the entirety of his college experience so far, who was only known to his mom by the pictures he posted on Facebook, and of course a little light Facebook stalking on his moms part as well.

  When Austin told his mom the news the squeal that came crackling out of the phone’s speaker was loud enough to make him tear it away from his head trying to save his ear drum. Not only was he bringing his girlfriend, but he was dragging along his whol
e new group of friends.

  At first, Mia was happy to just stay in her dorm, enjoying the peace and quiet that the relatively empty campus would bring. That was until Austin laid a thick layer of guilt over each conversation they had about the holiday, twisting her arm until she finally caved in, wanting the issue to be over and done with it.

  Now that Mia was going, Austin knew that it wouldn’t be long before Ashley ended up inviting herself, which took all of three hours. Basically the time it took for Ashley to hear about the trip.

  Brian who seemingly never had anywhere to be since he got fired from his second job at the restaurant for “accidentally” spilling a cup of salsa on a customer, twice in one evening, on the same customer. Once Ashley was for sure going, Austin knew there was no point in waiting on Brian to ask.

  Before Austin was able to get the full formal invite out, Brian asked “When are we leaving?”

  Austin originally intended on taking a Greyhound all the way home. He knew buses had accidents as well, but something just made him feel safer being on a bus, maybe it had something to do with being higher off the ground so it makes you feel like you are going slower than you actually are.

  Whatever the reason, he knew he wasn’t going to be able to convince the whole squad to ride the Greyhound, not the girls anyway. Ashley offered up her car, like she usually did when they went anywhere as a group, considering she was the only one that actually had a vehicle. Austin gladly accepted on one condition, that she not be allowed to drive as long as he was in the car.