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Needing reassurance was a disease, and Enrico Maxwell knew himself to be one of the worst afflicted. Not since childhood had he felt such desperation as he did now, chewing at his lip as if newly teething. He gripped the sterile, solid white bed railing before him, shutting his eyes tightly. There was no one to tell him it was alright, here in this awful hospital room. God and Jesus never seemed farther away than they did at this moment. He doubted even Mary would care to grace this place with her presence. But a stray thought told him that if all three were to enter the room, he’d banish Them in a moment.
He exhaled sharply, shaking his head. What a blasphemous notion to pay heed to, even for a devoted Iscariot! Anderson would have chastised him for such ideation, were he awake and aware…present, in any meaningful fashion.
Breathe. Breathe. Don’t look at him, it’ll only scare you like it did last time.
But he looked anyway. He was weak, like he always was without his precious Regenerator, the only true guardian he’d ever had in his life.
Instant regret shocked him into closing his eyes again. Heaven help him, he hated this. Hated this entire literally-damned hospital, for that matter.
St. Raphael’s had long ago ousted the Church from its operations, and for decades since the hospital was run by a secularist medical conglomerate. They only kept the clandestine Clerical Convalescent Ward in service as a nod and favor to one of their most generous donors, a wealthy Catholic family in the area. But that family held no ties to any of the Vatican secret sections. And not for lack of knowledge, frustratingly enough. They wanted no part of “Church politics,” one of Maxwell’s informants had once told him. And apparently, they were completely content with seeing a once-venerable Catholic institution infested by an ever-frothing slew of atheists and apostates.
If St. Luke himself hadn’t been a physician, Maxwell would have thought the whole trade accursed. The vitriol he held for doctors was boiling especially high at present, as he gazed upon his beloved, comatose Anderson and gnashed his teeth all the while.
He’d rushed here as soon as he’d heard Anderson had fallen in battle, disbelief dogging his steps until he’d found himself in front of the hospital bed. Damned vampires, monsters, degenerate scum unworthy of any divine mercy or forgiveness! He hoped the deepest pit of Hell was yawning wide and waiting for them, if such horrid creatures would even be permitted into the afterlife.
“Wake up, Anderson! By God, by Jesus. Please. Wake. Up!” He shook the bedrail, muttering like a child to the unresponsive Regenerator before his words died down into whimpers. Yet when he quieted, there was no other sound in the room but the beeping and whirring of those horrid machines they’d hooked the dear man up to. At least he seemed to be breathing mostly on his own, yet they still had him attached to equipment that would assist him in the task. That wasn’t a good sign, in Maxwell’s view.
Please, let him awaken. I love him, I need him! You shan’t take him now! I can’t…I can’t be left alone…
The grown man in him knew he wouldn’t be alone, even if the worst should happen. Leagues of hangers-on, staff, and assistants would throw themselves at his feet for the opportunity to tend to him in his grief, to say nothing of his juniors in the Section proper. There were other contacts in the Vatican too, influential bishops and other high clergy who would no doubt visit to offer condolences…and to encourage him to send over a few more of the most promising young Iscariots to the labs for expedited processing. The Church couldn’t leave her best, most valuable Regenerator unreplaced for long, not with her thousand enemies striking the Vatican’s gates every waking moment.
Yet the hungering child still sleeping in the depths of his heart held no care for any of it. He wanted, no, needed Anderson, as surely as lungs needed air and the body needed blood. And he would do anything, ANYTHING, short of selling his soul to the Devil himself to bring the man back from the brink, even if it cost him his own life.
If only he could know for sure that the great and scarred holy warrior resting deep within the repose of the injured would be left upon this earth just a little longer, to smile and to laugh and to smite the defiant, monstrous heresies of the world as he always had before. Above all else Maxwell needed the peace of God, yet that seemed to be in short supply…unless comfort was withheld from him on purpose, for divine reasons beyond fathom. He gave the heavens a rueful glance, but his tearful eyes were met only by the uncaring ceiling. Not even the angels would dare to pay this truly godforsaken place a visit, nor would anyone else. Only he was here for Anderson in his greatest time of need, but the best of all the Regenerators knew it not.
Maxwell crept up to the head of the hospital bed and stared down at Anderson’s placid, still expression. On some puerile impulse, he dipped low and placed a kiss on the man’s lips. But there was no fairy-tale awakening, no more stirring than he’d seen seconds before.
He didn’t know what he’d been expecting, really.
Suddenly he felt exhausted, battered beyond belief. He was no more alone in the room than he had been before, but somehow he perceived a great emptiness weighing down his thin shoulders. The feeling warred with a great fury building inside his chest, and he was closer to openly raging at God than he ever had been. He forced himself to turn away from the bed, suppressing a sob as he did.
Showing such anger towards the Almighty was a risk that he couldn’t take. Inviting an even deeper abandonment upon himself would virtually be a death sentence. Ever since those lonely days in the orphanage, it had been a fight to earn God’s notice – and he wasn’t sure if his efforts were successful. But He knew what was in every man’s heart already, didn’t He? That meant he was damned regardless of what he did, as the timeworn precepts of his Section decreed. Best to accept that, just as he needed to accept that Anderson might never wake up again.
But just as he went to exit the room, he heard a commotion from behind him. Laborious, effortful breathing, a shuffling of sheets, the sudden alarmed beeping of medical machinery detached from the subject of its monitoring…the cacophony was a symphony to his ears as he dashed back to the side of his guardian.
“Anderson! Anderson!” he shouted, breathless and grinning even as a small platoon of staff rushed into the room and tried to pull him back from the bedside.
“Sir, we need to get him hooked up again-“
“Damn that and damn you all – to Hell. Look, he’s up, he’s awake, ha ha ha! He’s back. God let him come back! Jesus…Jesus, thank you. Thank you!”
His rambling words flowed out like water turned into wine, so fast that even he couldn’t comprehend them. And he barely felt the nurses’ hands tugging him out of the way as he stared at the waking miracle before him. The bandaged giant, who didn’t acknowledge the fresh blood running down his arms where numerous IVs and tubes had once been inserted, had eyes for him, only him. The Director of the Iscariots felt as if his heart might pound out of his chest. Though Anderson’s voice was thin, thinner than Maxwell ever wanted to hear it being, to listen to it now was like being treated to a performance of Heaven’s own choir.
“…I’m back, Enrico. Did ye really think I was gone fer good?” he rasped.
“No…” Maxwell said, smiling even as the medical staff crowded around the man he loved and blocked him from his sight. “Not even for a second.”
And at least in that moment, it felt like the truth.