Wicked Revenge

by Gladden, DelSheree

  Before I can ask what the hell he’s talking about, he and the nurse are racing away with Ketchup. Caleb glances at me, asking what to do, and I gesture for him to follow as tremendous fear seeps into me. The first doctor and other nurse stand there for several minutes before I snap at them to take care of Van. It doesn’t take long for them to stitch up the graze and clean out the wound on her leg. The doctor says he doesn’t think she’ll need surgery, which normally I would agree with. I’ve never had to deal with one of my siblings being seriously injured and not healing within minutes. Now, I have no clue. What if she does need surgery?

  “The bullet went straight through,” the doctor says, “missed any major veins or arteries and didn’t affect the bone. She’s stable, but we’re sending her upstairs for further evaluation.”

  Shaking my head, I don’t understand. “Stable? But she’s still unconscious!”

  The doctor hesitates. “Look, I’m not even going to pretend I understand what’s going on with you people. Her wounds are fairly minor. Most likely, the shock of what happened just made her shut down. They’ll run some tests upstairs to make sure it isn’t anything more serious, but she probably just needs a little time to mentally and emotionally recover.”

  “What about Ketchup?”

  He gives me a weird look. “What?”

  “William,” I say, frustration dripping from my voice. “The kid she came in with! What was that other doctor talking about?”

  Shaking his head, he holds up his hands. “I have no idea, okay? I’ve only been here a few months and I’ve never met the kid before. You’ll have to ask Dr. Ortiz. I’ve got to get back to work, though. Someone will be down to move Vanessa soon. You can stay with her until then.”

  Washing his hands of us, he walks away. The nurse still in the room with us pulls a blanket up over Van’s still body. She looks pensive as she faces us, and I don’t think it has to do with my healing trick or Ketchup’s mystery wounds. When she leaves Van’s side and approaches us, it’s clear she’s debating something. The corner of her mouth twitches when she finally meets me gaze.

  “Look, I could get in a lot of trouble for telling you this, but I was here the last time Ketchup was brought in.” The twitching gets worse and Annabelle squeezes my hand. The nurse takes a deep breath and continues. “I’ve been here for five years, and I’ve lost count of how many times that poor kid has been brought in here. It’s been less lately, which nobody can explain, but with the heart defect he has, it’s a miracle he’s still alive. From what I’ve heard, when he was born, they told his mom he would be lucky to make it more than a few years. Somehow, he’s proved them all wrong, but surviving something like this…you guys should be prepared for what might happen. His chances aren’t good. I’m sorry.”

  She darts away after that, unable to look at our shocked and defeated expressions a second longer. “Heart defect?” Annabelle asks. “Did you know about that?”

  I shake my head. “I don’t think Van did, either. He’s never said a word about it.”

  Annabelle begins crying softly and I pull her into my arms. However Van managed to heal the gunshot wounds, it will crush her to wake up and find out it wasn’t enough. How could he not tell her he could die at any moment? How could he not prepare her? Irrational anger builds within me. I know it’s not fair. I get that he probably didn’t want to be treated like a sick kid his whole life. How could he be okay with her watching him die unexpectedly, not understanding or being prepared? Didn’t he understand what that would have done to her? What it will do?

  I know I should call Oscar and give him an update, but I need a few minutes to process this. How do I explain everything? Oscar always has liked Ketchup, and loves that he took care of Van and made her happy. He won’t take the news well.

  “Vanessa Roth?” a voice asks from behind us.

  Turning, I find myself facing a middle-aged woman dressed in scrubs. “Yes,” I croak, my voice raw from holding back so many emotions.

  She smiles. “I’m here to take her upstairs. You can come with me, but only family can be in the room with her right now, and only two at a time. There’s a waiting room right outside for everyone else.”

  “Do you know anything about the guy brought in with her?” I ask. “William Keane?”

  Shaking her head apologetically, she says, “Sorry, I don’t, but once we get your sister settled I can see if there are any updates, okay?”

  “Thank you.” My voice breaks on the last word and she reaches out to pat my shoulder, though she has to reach to do it.

  We wait as she readies Van to be moved. While she does, I text Chris and Oscar to let them know we’re moving. I don’t say anything about Ketchup yet. It seems to take forever before we start moving, and then to go through the process of checking her in on a new floor and settling her into a room. Even though the nurse explained the rules about visitors in the ICU, she doesn’t ask if Annabelle is family and steps out once she’s done with Van. She says something about the doctor being in soon to discuss further tests before walking over to the nurse’s station.

  Annabelle and I sit in silence until Chris texts to say he’s on his way up. She kisses me on the cheek before stepping out to meet him and trade places. I feel the loss of her presence immediately. Chris isn’t exactly an even substitute, but I stand when he walks in and let him crush me with a massive hug. Despite my texts, when he pulls back, his face is pinched with worry.

  “Do you know anything more?”

  All I can do is shake my head.

  “She hasn’t woken up, even for a minute?”

  “No.”

  Chris sinks into a chair and I take the one next to him. His head shakes back and forth slowly. “How did she do it?”

  “Heal Ketchup?” I ask, though I know exactly what he’s talking about.

  “Annabelle’s cut, that could have been anything. Van’s power tends to act irrationally. But this?” He leans his head against the wall. “Is this the Gift? Or is it just some other incredible thing she can do?”

  Considering his question, I’m not sure I know the answer. “She felt something, before Oscar’s wedding. We were practicing together and she felt a gift. Said it felt like our grandma and Ketchup. If it was this healing thing, I guess that makes sense with our grandma since she’s been working so close with her to manage her pain, but Ketchup…”

  My words trail off as realization hits me. I almost laugh. We missed it. We all missed it.

  “What?” Chris asks, puzzled by my strange reaction.

  “Strong gifts work latently, right? With the Gift being so huge, supposedly so powerful, why would it be any different?” I ask.

  Chris cocks his head to the side, his eyes narrowing as he thinks. “It shouldn’t, but…one little cut doesn’t qualify…”

  He stops when I start shaking my head. “When they discovered my grandma’s cancer, her doctors told her she had a month, maybe. That was before David showed up. And Ketchup…maybe if the idiot had told us the truth we would have figured this out sooner.”

  “Ketchup knew about the cancer?” Chris asks in confusion.

  “No,” I snap, “but he knew he had a heart defect that was eventually going to kill him.”

  Chris’s eyes widen. “What?”

  Slouching down into my chair and folding my arms as I glare at nothing, I want to strangle Ketchup. “She’s been unconsciously healing them the entire time. A tiny bit, just enough to keep them going longer than they should have. That’s what Cat meant,” I realize.

  More confused than ever, Chris runs a hand through his hair. “What Cat meant?”

  “She told Van her power was more advanced, even though that really doesn’t seem to be the case most of the time. Conscious control, Van’s never been the greatest. Latent control, what her power does by instinct, it’s phenomenal. Because of this,” I snap, “because she’s been healing Ketchup’s heart since kindergarten, and healing our grandma since the cancer started eating away at
her, however long ago that actually was. I’ll bet anything that’s what caused her weird bond with Ketchup, why he calms her hunger and seems stronger around her. If this isn’t the Gift, I don’t know what could possibly beat it.”

  Staring at my unconscious sister in shock, Chris is at a loss for words. The silence is filled only by our thoughts, yet they press down on us both. I hold back everything I’m struggling to deal with and understand until I simply can’t do it anymore and the words slip free with my fears.

  “He might still die,” I tell Chris.

  He nods, having already pieced that possibility together.

  Van won’t wake up. Ketchup’s heart might give out under the strain of being shot twice and healed. I’m at the limit of what I can handle. We’ve come so far. This can’t be where it all falls apart.

  My phone buzzes, reminding me I should have updated Oscar by now. I pull the phone from my pocket, expecting a text asking what’s happening. That’s not what I see.

  Zander, Grandma is gone. It hurts more than I thought it would.

  My fingers clench around the phone as I stare at Oscar’s text, at the simplicity of the message, at his admission that losing someone he despised and refused to forgive still hurts. My own grief threatens to overwhelm me as I realize I never even said goodbye before racing after Van. Then I think of my sister, of how close they once were, how like Oscar, even though lies drove a wedge between them, she’s going to wake up to the reality that she is gone. My shoulders begin to shake.

  Chris pulls me into a hug as I cry and beg Ketchup to pull through. She can’t survive losing them both.

  Chapter Twenty-Four: Supposed To

  (Vanessa)

  I can’t figure out what went wrong at first. Pulling my power to its source always feels awful, but never this bad. My entire body feels wrong, empty of power except for the bit huddled next to my heart. That’s what is confusing me. Where did the rest of it go? If I pulled it back from the rest of my body, I should have lots at the source, not just that little wisp.

  And why do I hurt so much?

  Whatever Zander and I tried, we’re never doing it again.

  Peeling my eyelids open, as soon as I see the white walls of a hospital, it all comes rushing back and I’m hyperventilating before Chris can jump out of his chair. I try to bat his hands away when he puts his hand over my eyes and tells me to concentrate on the black, like I’m in his isolation room, but my body barely responds to my commands. The weakness terrifies me and I start crying hysterically.

  “Ketchup,” I wheeze between sobs, “I need…is he…where…?”

  “Take a deep breath, Van. Breathe for me so we can talk,” he says calmly.

  Knowing he won’t tell me anything until I do as he says, I fight against my panic. Breathing hurts. Everything hurts. Especially my leg. And my arm. I think I got shot in those spots, but my head is still fuzzy, and I don’t understand why they haven’t fixed themselves until the disgusting feeling creeping around my body reminds me my power has vanished. That sets off another round of panic and Chris ups his efforts to calm me down.

  Pinning my arms to my sides, he keeps his hand over my eyes and puts his mouth right next to my ear so I can’t hear anything but his commands to breathe and calm down. To anyone else that would probably set off even more panic, but the closeness and blocking out of all other sensory input finally begins to break through my mania.

  My concentration is as shaky as my feeble arms but, one by one, I shut down my senses and force my lungs to expand and contract as slowly as possible. Only when Chris is satisfied that I’m not going to flip out again does he back off and take up position next to my bed.

  His stance and expression are extraordinarily calm as he watches me. That puts me on edge, but I manage to hold back anything stronger. “What do you remember?” he asks.

  “Everything. Running, stopping at the intersection, the car getting shot up, Ketchup almost dying.” My voice breaks and tears spring to my eyes. “I saved him, though, right? I fixed where he got shot?”

  Chris frowns, but nods slowly. “Ketchup’s fine.” That’s all I need to hear in order to take my anxiety from rooftop levels down to the basement. There’s something about Chris’s stance which hints things aren’t that simple.

  “Do you remember how you healed him?”

  That takes a little more thought. “It started off as feeding on the pain, which I didn’t want to do,” I tell him emphatically, “but then it wouldn’t stop. The hunger kept pulling, but so did Ketchup’s body. It was this crazy circular thing. The more my hunger sucked up, the more of my power he needed. I gave him everything. Everything I could.”

  Wiggling my numb fingers, I still don’t like the feeling, but knowing it’s a result of saving Ketchup makes me dislike it a little less.

  “Could you tell what you were healing?” Chris asks.

  That seems like a really stupid question. “Bullet holes,” I say drily.

  He rolls his eyes. “Could you feel what you were doing as you healed him. Like when Godlings heal themselves. Learning anatomy and physiology at the compound taught you to better heal yourself and track illnesses and injuries, because you knew how to direct your power to what needed to be fixed. Was it similar?”

  Maybe his question isn’t as stupid as I thought. “Sort of,” I admit, “but it was harder to follow. Everything moved too fast. I could feel the bullet holes closing up. There was this point where I thought I was almost done, then this other weird thing happened. My power just ran off and went after something else. It took more, like a lot of power, but I gave him everything I had. I thought…I thought he really would need everything. Like with Ivy.”

  Chris’s expression softens. “You thought you were giving up your life for his?”

  “I would have done it,” I say as tears well in my eyes.

  Reaching over the bed rail, he squeezes my hand. “I know you would have, and so does he. Luckily, fully healing Ketchup only required almost everything.”

  Something about his word choice bothers me. Or maybe it’s his tone. I’m not sure, but there’s something he isn’t telling me. “Where is Ketchup?”

  Chris considers his answer for a moment. “Probably having another test of some kind run on him.”

  “Why?” I demand. “You said he was fine.”

  “Why?” Chris laughs for some weird reason. I want to punch him for it, but I doubt it would do much good. He eyes me as though he knows what I’m thinking, then says, “Probably because no one can figure out how he magically healed his bullet wounds and why the congenital heart defect he was born with, and should have killed him as a small child, has miraculously disappeared.”

  “What?” I ask slowly. “There’s nothing wrong with Ketchup’s heart.”

  “Not anymore.”

  I listen, silent and motionless, as Chris tells me about the hole in Ketchup’s heart, the messed up valve that wouldn’t let his blood pump normally, how they were too severe and he was too weak to allow for surgery as an infant, how as he got older the problems caused damage to his heart muscle and it wasn’t uncommon for him to be rushed to the ER when things got bad. I don’t know what to think or say when he tells me how the doctors were amazed and confused when Ketchup turned five and started kindergarten, and everything wrong with him just seemed to pause.

  Nothing got worse. Nothing got better. He’d still have times where his mom would have to rush him to the hospital because his heart wasn’t able to get enough oxygen to his body, but the overall issues were at a standstill. I vaguely remembered Ketchup missing school more than other kids when we were little. He always came back the same as before. I had no idea he was ever sick, not more than a cold or flu, anyway.

  If that weren’t enough to make my head check out, then Chris tells me how I was the reason Ketchup didn’t die as a kid and how my latent gift has been keeping him alive this whole time, and how that something else I felt while trying to save him from being shot was the h
eart defect, and healing something that big truly did almost kill me.

  He gives me a minute or two to make a valiant attempt at processing everything he’s told me. I don’t even make a dent before he asks, “How’s your hunger right now?”

  I have to shake myself to find a single word. “Nonexistent.”

  Unsurprised, he nods. “Tell me when it returns. I don’t want you here when that happens.”

  My heart rate spikes as I consider what he means. I feel nothing now because my hunger and power are so severely depleted, but when it does come back, it will be bad. I’ll be ravenous, and being ravenous for pain and suffering in a hospital, literally filled to the brim with it, would not be good.

  “How long?” I demand.

  Chris laughs. “That is as big of a mystery as what you did for Ketchup.”

  “When can I see him?” I ask. Even after everything Chris has told me, believing he’s really fine isn’t as easy as a few reassurances.

  “I suspect he’ll be by soon. I texted everyone that you’ve finally woken up. Zander, Annabelle, and Caleb are in the lobby, but they’ll let Ketchup see you first.”

  I’m anxious to see everyone and get out of here, but I need to see Ketchup with my own eyes, touch him and make sure this isn’t a dream. I’m so focused on that, I don’t immediately react to the rest of what Chris said. It takes a few minutes for it to sink in. “Finally?” I ask. “How long have I been out?”

  Chris shifts anxiously. “Three days. We’ve had Godlings patrolling the hospital, inside and out, but the sooner we can get back to the school, the better.”

  “Do you know who?” I ask.

  “Police have questioned everyone who witnessed the shooting, multiple times, but no one saw anything useful. Dark windows, no license plate, no faces.” The tightening of his jaw could mean frustration at the lack of information, but I know him too well to be tricked.