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It took Louis another five hours to arrive at the hospital.
“Mr. Lioncourt,” the social worker said gently from the doorway of the dimly lit visitation room, “Mr. du Lac has arrived. I can speak with him if you’d like.”
Lestat shook his head. He squeezed Claudia’s cold hand, kissed it three times, and stood from the second discomforting pleather chair of the day. “I will—I’ll tell him,” Lestat answered, his voice barely a croak.
The social worker nodded, her eyes downcast. “I’m very sorry for your loss, Mr. Lioncourt.”
Lestat bit his lip so as not to release the sob just waiting to escape and nodded slightly.
“Mr. du Lac is in our private waiting room. I’ll show you the way.” Lestat began to follow, then looked back at the shell of his once vibrant daughter and shuddered. Claudia’s body was covered up to her shoulders with a white sheet. They’d cleaned her up well, but the burns still looked red and shiny and horrifically painful up and down her neck and the side of her face. Her hair had been swept in such a way that it was difficult to tell how much she had lost, but she did not look like herself. She seemed older and childlike simultaneously, and the thought that she could be neither ever again brought more tears to Lestat’s swollen eyes.
“Mr. Lioncourt?” the social worker asked kindly. Lestat swallowed thickly.
“I promised her I would stay,” Lestat admitted. The pity in the woman’s eyes felt overwhelming. She paused for a moment, no doubt searching for the right words.
“I’ll keep an eye on her. The waiting room is right around the corner. You can bring him here once you’re ready. Is that alright?”
Nothing was alright. Nothing would be alright ever again, most likely. But Lestat nodded his head and followed the woman’s instructions. He found the sign labelled “Family Room” and shivered, because it had been a very long while since they’d been a family, they three. And now they would never be again.
Armand and Louis were sitting on a little couch along the back wall of the room. It was also softly lit, filled with tissue boxes and blankets and complimentary bottles of water. Pitiful comforts in the face of such all-consuming agony. Armand was holding one of Louis’ hands tightly in both his own, speaking to him softly. When Lestat opened the door, Louis immediately stood.
Then he fell to his knees, because all it took was one look at Lestat’s face, and he knew.
Armand did his best to catch Louis, and instead ended up on the ground with him, attempting to cover Louis’ back in a facsimile of a hug as Louis wept and wailed.
Lestat decided to sit on the ground on the other side of Louis, his back slumped against the couch, and wait. After a while, he reached up to the side table for one of the many complimentary boxes of tissues (with lotion! What joy!), took one for himself, and held out the box to the still weeping Louis.
Louis gave a shuddering gasp, grabbed one of the tissues, and sat back into the bottom of the couch, shoulder to shoulder with Lestat.
“How long?” Louis asked.
“About three hours.” Three hours, twelve minutes and forty-six seconds ago, to be exact. But who was counting?
“Why didn’t you call?”
Lestat shrugged. “It did not seem like news you should receive while stepping off a plane.” Louis leaned further into his shoulder.
“Was she in pain?”
Yes. “No. They managed her pain well. And she was not—not conscious very often.”
“But she was—she was conscious? Did she say anything? What did she say? What did you tell her? Lestat--,”
“I--,” Lestat could not breathe. Or perhaps he did not want to breathe. Not while his daughter’s final breaths were being recycled in the antiseptic tinged air of this horrid hospital because nobody could open a fucking window.
“I told her you loved her. I told her you were on your way. She asked me to stay. She really—she wanted the window opened so badly for some reason. She wanted to see the sun, I think, to feel the wind…” Lestat trailed off, “Then she was quiet. And she just…”
She just.
Their joy.
His unexpected joy.
Louis hand was a vise on his wrist as he wept anew. Lestat leaned his head back into the couch and closed his eyes as the tears trailed down his cheeks.
“I need to see her,” Louis finally said. Lestat could not hide his grimace.
“She does not—the burns are bad, Louis,” Lestat whispered. “She does not look like herself.”
“I need to see her,” Louis repeated.
Lestat could not bring himself to follow Louis all the way into the visitation room. He stood at the door, allowed Louis to greet the kind social worker himself, and then listened around the corner with a fist in his mouth to Louis grief-stricken scream.
Lestat started at the hand on his shoulder. He turned around to find Armand, his wide eyes downcast and pitiful. “I am so very sorry for your loss, Lestat.”
Lestat was quite proud of himself for not yelling in Armand’s face. He settled for a nod and walked back to the empty Family Room alone.
He laid on the couch, arm across his eyes, and wished desperately to go back in time.
***
Lestat could not breathe.
Or perhaps, he did not want to breathe. He did not want to sit endlessly in the uncomfortable pleather chair sucking in the recycled air, antiseptic biting at the back of his throat so easily, so thoughtlessly, while Claudia, his poor beautiful Claudia could not.
Hers were rasping breaths, painful and hard-won, each and every one he’d listened to for the last four hours. Like rock against rock, sandpaper along rugged stone. She could not breathe. His daughter couldn’t breathe.
His daughter was dying.
A car crash, they’d told him on the phone. A terrible one, catastrophic. Claudia’s dear Madeleine had been killed instantly. The gas tank had exploded not long after the crash, before paramedics had arrived.
Before Claudia could get out of the car.
The burns looked painful and awful, running up and down the left side of Claudia’s body, marring her face, burning away her beautiful curls. But she was still Claudia, of course she was. Still his daughter. Still his baby. Her hand, untouched and warm, still felt the same held tightly in his.
Lestat had not let go of it since the time he arrived.
Louis was on a plane. He’d been on holiday with Armand. He was in the air right now, unreachable.
He was not going to get back in time.
“Papa,” Claudia rasped, barely a breath. Her eyes were slits, sparkling stained glass twinkling like the sun shining through to the sinners in the back of mass. “The window…open…Open the window.”
“Yes, ma cherie, yes, yes, of course,” Lestat babbled. He kissed Claudia’s hand three times before letting it go, then hurried to the window and threw the blinds open wide. The sun was shining brightly. It was going to be a beautiful spring day.
It irked Lestat, that the weather would be so uncooperative on the most horribly melancholic day of his life.
He changed his mind as he noticed the slight quirk of Claudia’s lip when the sun’s rays reached her face. He adjusted the blinds to keep the rays from her eyes. Then he all but ran back to the bed and gently picked up Claudia’s hand in both of his once more.
“Daddy?” Claudia whispered, the question obvious at the end. Lestat swallowed thickly.
“He’s on his way. He will be here so soon, I promise. He loves you so much, ma petite. I love you so much. So very, very--,” Lestat’s voice became so strangled he could not continue. He bowed his head.
“Look at me,” Claudia said firmly. Lestat could do nothing but obey. “Don’t leave. Don’t….don’t leave.”
“Never,” Lestat swore. “I am here. I am right here, Claudia. Always.”
“Open the window,” Claudia said again, begged really. Lestat could not hide his confusion.
“It’s opened already, cheri--,”
“No the—the wind. I want the wind,” Claudia elaborated softly. Lestat felt his face fall.
“I—I don’t think I can,” he answered softly. “It’s locked. I don’t think it’s allowed here. I’m so sorry, ma petite, perhaps we can find a fan…” Lestat trailed off, watching as painful, terrible tears slipped down his daughter’s face. “Oh, ma cœur. Desole. Je suis desole. Claudia, Claudia.”
“This isn’t—I don’t want to go like this,” Claudia wept. And how could Lestat do anything in that moment but kiss his daughter’s unblemished hand and weep, too?
“You won’t,” Lestat lied. “You won’t. All will be well.”
“What if there’s nothing?” Claudia gasped out. Her head tilted back into the pillows as her back arched with the agony of it all. “What if this is it? I’m so stupid. Papa, I was so—what a waste. What a waste.”
“Not a waste,” Lestat argued. “Never a waste. Joy. So much joy, Claudia.”
Something seemed to settle in Claudia at the words. Her eyes finally softened, her breathing slightly eased. Lestat felt her tiny squeeze his with all the strength she had left and he nearly wept all over again.
“Stay,” Claudia pleaded. “Stay with me.”
“I will,” Lestat promised. “I will never leave you.”
***