Bab 479: 38. If Tomorrow Never Comes.
Damon started to make a treatment plan for his wife in his mind already. He had her now in his arms. She was feeling feverish, but that drug would affect the same time her thermoregulation, making her hypothermic. Mimi would have to be warmed up and some more tranquilizers and sedatives added, and then she would be easier to treat. Because her metabolism was now so fast because of the metals and whatnot, so drugs might not stay on long, more drugs would keep her in a deeper state of unconsciousness and painlessness too.
Now Damon was carrying his skeleton wife to the car, so he reckoned the weight was hovering around 20-24 kilos—pathetic weight. She had been given a huge dose of drugs for this weight and she was hot. She had a fever, so she most likely burned that medication quite fast off of her. Damon was not sure was a fever from metals or infection. Metals tended to raise her body temp and metabolism by several degrees, and it could be that too.
They kept Mimi asleep the entire plane ride. Damon sat by her the whole time. Not letting Bran or anyone else come too near to her. He was feeling very protective of her. They were on their way to America, in the Chicago house.
Samuel and Damon discussed Mimi's care for half the trip, and the other half, they argued. Samuel wanted Mimi in the incubator to get a good rest and get stronger, while Damon wanted to keep Mimi awake from time to time so he could watch her recovery. Adam was feeling kind of tired.
Bran looked at those two to get into an argument and he was not sure if he had to right or expertise to get in between those two. Both of them seemed to have their side full of arguments, but Bran just could not tell which one was right. Charles was flying the plane, and he let his half-brother and Salvatore discuss freely, not offering his opinion on the care of his wife too.
According to Damon, it would do Mimi good to feed herself and be awake for a while. Not just sleep for a month in an incubator, as Samuel had planned. Samuel told him that the skeleton needed rest, nourishment, and peace to recover. Not crawl onto the floor. Damon told him that Mimi would not get better in six months if her system was not challenged. He was not gonna wake her right away, but no need for a sleeping beauty treatment for her.
Another thing they argued about was the medication. What medicine and how much? Samuel had his team of researchers who had been studying Mimi for years and had given her lots of drugs and antibiotics. He had a lot of preparations for Mimi and Chicago was full of them. Samuel also suggested that maybe Mirella could be used, but even Bran did not want Mirella interfere to with Mimi's treatment. He spoke about Mirella like she had been a whore or some sort of lower creature.
Adam listened as men talked about things. Samuel wanted to use drugs that had been tested and measured, made to fit Mimi, and also even tested with that analyzer with AI on it. Conversely, Damon had faith in his teeth. He patiently showed Samuel the collectors in his teeth and the 12 bags that had already been spilled. The bags were striped and always came with a little of one substance and then another. Quite a few of the bags regularly contained velvet, the black kind, a strong anesthetic that would keep Mimi asleep. But since the investigators hadn't gotten the samples and didn't know the strengths and what Damon was so sure of.
Samuel had a lot of problems. He felt that so many things could affect Damon while he was doing dental substances and was he always sure that those substances were the best that they could be. Was there a chance of misforming them, or did Damon's feelings affect them at all? His team had raised all of these questions. Samuel wanted to know for sure that everything was as it was supposed to be.
Damon had given them samples of velvet, but they were different strengths each time and slightly different formulations, real precision drugs, but Samuel wanted a drug that was always the same, always consistent, that you could trust. He didn't listen when Damon tried to explain that Mimi was chaos, Mimi wasn't consistent, and her medication had to be reactive. Damon was tired of explaining all the intricacies of Mimi's physiology to Samuel. Some of them were such that even Samuel was not aware and Damon knew these things just by his instinct alone.
Eventually, they arrived, and Damon carried Mimi in himself and put her in a patient bed, not an incubator. Damon had patiently told Samuel that Mimi's body temperature was elevated. Mimi had a high fever, so the incubator would not be needed. Metals affected her in addition to many infections that ravaged her body.
However, Samuel was afraid that Mimi would go into sepsis and her body temperature would drop; therefore, it would be good to have the incubator warm. He put an incubator to warm up, anyway. He was not sure if Damon could be around all the time to treat her or if would there be a wallet and phone on the table some morning when he had just gotten bored taking care of her. He was prepared for everything.
Bran, Adam, and even Charles eventually got tired of the men arguing and persuaded Samuel to go to his research team with a couple of Damon's dental bags. Damon had given him a few bags he had done, mostly full of velvet in different shades, and a few metal binders. Those would be good to study too. That would keep Samuel busy. And if the scientists could manage to make velvet, that would help, too. And if they could do those metal binders too, it would be a big plus in the future, if sometime Damon is not available at all.
Damon took a lot of blood samples from Mimi and sniffed her blood. She had been washed gently, cannulated, and kept in bed asleep. He put all his bags in a drip. Some had already been dropped off on the plane. If this had been an acute situation, meaning he didn't have time to make the bags, he would have gathered Mimi in his arms, sunk his teeth into her neck, and drained the stuff right down there. It was a more natural way, but he had learned to do this too over the years as it was not possible for to him just sink his fangs and get over it.
But because Mimi had to be knocked out and do some tests and there were no facilities on the plane, Damon had made the bags. He kept sniffing Mimi's blood every few bags, and the self-loathing would rear its head again when he smelled the metal residue. They kept her asleep for a few days, dripped those bags to bind as much metal as possible, and tried to get her in a much more stable state before anything more drastic could be done.
Samuel, Adam, and Charles were ready. It was good to have several doctors in the pack for this. So the operation would not be too long and too rough for so weak Mimi. They had to operate Mimi first. All the damage, the infection, the metals. Damon put the operation room in order and carried her himself there.
They opened her up, and it was the cleanup operation. There had been a vague thick mass inside Mimi, and none of the internal organs had survived. Damon was disgusted as he sucked the mass, and the three balls were still spinning inside Mimi. None of the men said anything as they worked fast and efficiently, as gently as possible, too.
Mimi's body cavity had been packed with bumps. It would heal and provide nutrients. It was donated from the wedding, and it only smelled of Damon, not Adam and Charles. In addition, the bump had been reinforced with various concentrates and also had a lot of Damon's blood on it. At the moment, the best thing for Mimi was to rest.
They had a pump that worked like a heart and circulated blood and medicine around the body. Every few days, they would check on the situation, add more bumps, and when the infections had subsided even a little, Mimi would get organs from one of the pack. If she does not show signs of growing her own. But she was very weak and they suspect that it might be quite a long time before she would even try to grow them. So donation was a good option.
It was two weeks before they got Mimi's organs transplanted that agreed to survive. Damon was at work the whole time, doing dental work, wiping Mimi down, and watching her blood. He did not put his teeth in her neck, but kept collectors on his teeth and drained one bag after another. Sometimes bags had been pure velvet, and he put those bags in somewhere safe, not use on her all the time.
Adam and Charles would check in now and then and forcefully take Damon to eat and shower. He didn't suffer from being away from Mimi for long. Samuel had been busy with his team and those dental bags and his clinics, so he was not so much in-house. Bran was not in the house. He had been called off to tend to various alpha problems, too.
I woke up. I was really drugged, tired, and cold. Oh, still running a fever because I was literally shaking and the damn lights looked yellowish. I could feel my heart beating, so I'd been given organs. Fine, that is just good. Automatically, I ripped out all the IV tubes and crunched them very carefully, even though I didn't have much strength.
I had learned to tie the tubes in such a way that they should be changed. My little knots would cause them to be permanently kinked and the flow of liquid would not come as it should, for example, for the infusion pump to understand that it often malfunctions and usually those tubes were changed, not even tried to untie them. I had strength and dexterity in my fingers in that amount.
Really, I was pissed and pissed hard. I felt like my bladder was about to burst. I pushed myself into a sitting position. These were good patient beds. These didn't have down the sides so I could get up. Oh yeah, it's Chicago, huh? When I realized what house I was in. I didn't know how long I'd been under anesthesia, but that was one thing I didn't need more of right now. I wanted to work to get better and get over that damn torture session in that spiteful bunker.
No more Sleep. Drugs, tranquilizers. I could sit up and, after a moment of being upright, the next stage, standing up. Yes, I did that too. Well, then I started to walk, and it wasn't quite perfect because I was as fucking drugged up as I could be. My eyes were floating, and the horizon was throwing, but I knew from old memory to get to the toilet and make myself pee. I had to stagger quite a lot in order to get around, but I was persistent and my bladder was a really good motivator to get me moving.
Oh my God, what a relief. Oh, my goodness. I finished my business, and I was ready to get back in that bed, take a breather there, and then continue my way up the first floor to my bedroom downstairs. So I stood up. I managed to stand up from the toilet this time, but I had to hold on pretty hard to keep from falling over. Then, my eyes blackened menacingly. No, back to sitting. I sat on the toilet seat for a while and I knew I needed to get on moving, but not walking.
And out of old habits, I rolled down so that I could crawl. This was better. I could quite easily move on my fours and I knew that I could get myself back into bed, too.
I exited the toilet when Damon said, " Really, Mimi? Again. Can't you ring the bell? What is it with you and always having to start doing that when you're still on your meds? And with a fever. "
He lifted me to face him and looked into my eyes. "Yep, still on medication, young lady, you should be in bed. You still have a fever after three weeks of treatment. Do you realize, three weeks you have been here for treatment? Now I'm going to take you back to bed and make sure you go to sleep. That fever needs to come down, and crawling around like this is not going to help it."
Damon was a little on edge for some reason. Strange. I just don't understand, I said innocently as innocently as I could, "But when I needed to pee,"
Damon looked at me steadily for a moment, carried me to bed, tucked me in, and said, "Or peed."
And was completely silent. I tried to look as innocent as possible.
Damon put a new bag in the drip tray and had already replaced the tubes with new ones. Then, without asking any questions, he turned my head and cannulated my central line again. He made the drip going pretty fast. I could see it was velvet, at least mostly. I sighed in my mind. I did not want to sleep the whole time. He sat then on the chair next to me, stroked me, and watched me. He looked a little worn out already, thinner and paler, maybe.
When the bag was well underway and my eyes started to close, Damon got up from the chair next to me and went to get the new bags he'd put in the drip. I fell asleep watching him work. He did not say a word.
As days went by, my infection slowly, very slowly, was getting better. Damon wanted my body to be challenged so I would recover faster, but I was a terrible patient, at least to Damon. Once my infection started to subside, they kept me more awake, so I was a nuisance. I was quite fucked up the whole time in that damn bunker, so it translated to my attitude as been patient.
Normally I am quite impossible to treat, but I try to cooperate, not this time. I would get out of bed, and if Damon came to help, I was a limp spaghetti. So he did not easy time picking me up on the floor as my whole body was limp. But then, when Adam or Charles would come and help me up, I was not fucked up with them, so I was cooperative. I would grab Adam by the neck and support myself if Adam came. He had it easy.
With Damon, I went the distance. No matter how much he put me in shape, I got so fed up with those shed sessions I had an attitude even when I was recovering. I knew how to be awful patient, so freaking awful that even his very long nerves, when it came to caring for me, were at snapping point. Even though he made the alert bell available, it always dropped so that I couldn't reach it and had to try to get going myself. All it took was a little careless moving around in bed when I needed to change my position.
The same thing with food, when Adam and Charles brought me food to be eaten, no problems I could eat just fine by myself, but when Damon brought the tray to me, I was always so damn tired and sick so he had to feed me, literally, feed me the whole time and no matter how Adam and Charles told him I had fed on myself for days.
I was out of bed whenever I wanted and I had quite a selection of places where to hide too. So many hidey holes, under beds, even a few cupboards, and, of course, my specialty, finding somewhere up, high place where to perch yourself to sleep. My feline side was also awake, and it had its own ideas.
Once again, I was pissed and on my way to the toilet, crawling when I couldn't cope, and Damon came into the room and started picking me up. I pissed my pants, and I let go. And again, I was completely innocent. When I was going to the bathroom at the very last minute...
Damon cleaned me up and the floor, changed all my clothes patiently, and tried to explain things to me, but because I had an attitude and I liked to do my tricks, it took me eight weeks to recover. I'm told it would have taken much less time if I'd known how to be a good girl.
My husband used to drag me to bed, even though I could almost walk now, and put me to sleep, and then when eventually I woke up in our bedroom, there was a phone and wallet on the bedside table. Damon had left again. I guess he'd had enough of his wife for a while. I could not really blame him. I had been a very naughty girl in all the two months that it took him to get me well.
Status Power Mingguan
-- Peringkat
Power 
-- Power
stone