Samuel sat in the back with Mimi while Adam drove. He bandaged the worst injuries and put the cannula in a place that wasn't irritated. He used the tools he had with him, trying to get the bone fragments out of Mimi's lungs, but the damage was too severe, and what he could do in the car was very modest. It would take time to repair that rib cage. It was not easy to try to operate in moving car.
He wrapped Mimi back up in the blanket and wondered what a terrible three weeks Mimi must have had, how Damon could do something like that to his own wife.
Samuel had had dozens of wives in his life, maybe more. Most of them, he knew, always died of their time, and he had loved each of his wives deeply, as well as all of his children. He had tried to turn all his children into wolves. Bran had helped, and they had all died.
Then Ariana happened, and Samuel didn't want to remember it. He felt that Ariana had done something terrible to him and Bran at one time, and it hadn't come out yet. Then, in the future, maybe.
The trip would take about an hour, and most of the time, Samuel just stroked Mimi, already thinking about what he had to do and knowing that the surgery would be long and demanding. He knew Mimi could regrow any part of her body, but it would take energy, and he could already see directly from Mimi's face how fucking skinny she was.
Three weeks her metabolism had been burning calories like crazy, so even in her basic metabolism without any nourishment, if she would be fully clothed and resting she would lose over kilo a day, and now her metabolism had been working overdrive for 21 days at least, maybe more and she has lost a huge amount of weight.
They drove to the Missouri House, and Samuel took Mimi straight to the operating room. He began the slow and precise work. He removed pretty much everything. Mimi's heart was badly damaged, too, so he removed the lungs, the heart, all the ribs, and the sternum. Well, there weren't many ribs there, just broken bones. He fixed her spine as well as he could.
He flushed the whole chest cavity and cleansed it before he infused a healing booster his team had developed. It helped Mimi grow something. The lungs and heart formed. He worked diligently, gently but precisely.
He put in an internal temporary support structure, which gave support to the lungs and heart that Mimi had grown. The ribs were mostly cartilage. And he made an external support on top of that.
Samuel dripped Mimi with lots of calcium and phosphorus, slowly strengthening the cartilage into bones. He took blood tests on Mimi and put a strong general antibiotic on the drip when Mimi had mild signs of inflammation.
He then put Mimi to rest in an incubator on proper meds and fed intravenously. He did not put the intestinal puree in, as he did not want Mimi to waste energy digesting the food, but he dripped the nutrients directly into the vein. Mimi was in a deep coma in the incubator because Samuel wanted Mimi to be completely pain-free.
She weighed only 31 kilos; she had lost half of her weight, her metabolism was now slow with the help of drugs, and there were a still lot of pieces and metabolites from those dental substances and they were the ones that whipped her system into frenzy.
Damon returned three days later, very remorseful and full of self-loathing. He had woken up in a hotel room in Dresden and remembered everything. This time, what was most horrible was the pleasure he had gotten from making Mimi hurt. It was so foreign, so perverse, but he couldn't deny it. He remembered how it felt.
He hated himself for it, and now he was very unsure he wouldn't do it again. The explanation that there had been an evil spirit in him was not enough because an evil spirit was evil, but it had to be in him to start this thing. Just having an evil spirit wasn't an explanation. He returned to the house, went into the living room, took a bottle of bourbon, and started drinking.
Samuel had to be at the clinics during the day, of which there were several in Missouri, so he always had time to check on Mimi in the evening or every few days. Mimi would be asleep for a while, and there was no rush. Those drugs and metabolites took time to chop out, and she needed and deserved rest and to be safe in the incubator. Samuel paid no attention to Damon or his drinking; he was hardly even in the house all the time.
What bothered Adam again was that Samuel wasn't taking care of Mimi all the time and had pretty much put her in a coma in the incubator, and the enormous bags of nutrition just dripped out. Samuel had told him she needed time and rest. Her metabolism was now slow, his cocktail would keep it slow so she could get better.
There was an external support around Mimi's chest that allowed her to breathe; it acted like a chest, supporting and allowing the lungs to move. Mimi slept, barely breathing, a pale, tired-looking, fragile, tiny thing. Sleeping beauty in her coffin.
Adam just watched as Damon sat and drank, drank, and hated himself. When someone would fucking do something here? Adam knew about making mistakes and he had done what he could not fix, and ever since he had sworn to himself that if he would make mistakes what he could fix, he would fix them, no matter of pride or anything.
Damon drank bourbon two days in a row, and Adam came up to Damon and said: "Well, how's that gonna help Mimi? It doesn't. Stop drinking and go and help. Surely you can do something. Right now, she is resting in the incubator and Samuel is in his clinics, keeping her resting in that box forever. "
Damon looked at Adam and said, "I enjoyed it. Fuck oh fuck, I'm disgusted at how I enjoyed it when Mimi was fragile, in pain, powerless, fucked up. And I didn't even think of it as a lesson, as a torture session. Fuck, I'm a monster."
Adam growled and said, "Help Mimi, pay your debt, fix what you broke. Fix your mistake."
He offered no further sympathy. Damon looked at the pack leader for a moment, sighed, and acted. He had to try, at least.
Damon put the bottle down and walked to the medical bay. Mimi was back in the incubator. Of course. Samuel's favorite thing to do. He sat and read through Samuel's notes.
Mimi was on antibiotics for nothing. The blood tests hadn't been taken until the day of arrival, and it had now been five days. Her metabolism had driven way too down. No medicine or metabolites would be chopped off. The medication was too heavy, and Mimi would have benefited from a warm visceral puree straight into her stomach. It would help her body to function normally and also keep the temperature up. She was too skinny, but visceral puree would help her.
"Oh well, I guess I'll have to make do," Damon muttered aloud.
Adam watched from the doorway as Salvatore straightened up and worked. Adam thought to himself that maybe Mimi would wake up sooner than in six months.
Damon acted. First, get Mimi out of the incubator. He changed Mimi's tranquilizer so he wouldn't have to keep her in a coma. He lifted Mimi onto a stretcher and took her to the operating room first thing.
Samuel had had to leave for the clinic and could stay there while Damon continued to treat Mimi. He was now thinking like a doctor, focusing on medicine.
In the theatre, he opened Mimi's chest, first removing the external support structure. Then he poured his blood over Mimi's ribs and removed the metal frame inside, as it was slowing the healing process. Mimi's body was too sensitive to use normal surgical metals, like titanium. His blood made the bones grow faster, and soon, they were strong enough to function as they should.
During the operation, he kept the collectors in his mouth, which were thin plastic tubes with little flared ends and a membrane in them. He put them on his teeth; the membrane irritated the nerve endings at the tips of the teeth, causing the substance to drain into the tubes and into the bag.
He made a couple of liter bags ready as he drained the blood and inserted a feeding tube into Mimi's stomach. After surgery, he took Mimi to the hospital bed and put warmed visceral fluid to drain into her stomach.
He then proceeded in the same way, giving her a couple of bags of dentifrices that his teeth wanted to give. Those would take care of those metabolites, too much cortisol and other neurochemicals causing stress, making her metabolism spike.
Damon was angry with himself because he was weak, and he was enjoying himself. Dresden had removed the evil spirit that had been harboring in him. They probably came during the vampire wedding.
If it would help, he wouldn't do this to Mimi anymore. That feeling of pleasure still bothered him, and it drove him to heal Mimi. Somehow, he had to make right what he had broken.
He nursed her for a week, and then she was much better, her ribs completely ossified, but he couldn't face it, so he left.
He sent the elders a message in fire and brimstone about the evil spirit and took a break from their business; he didn't want to have anything to do with them now, and that they had put the evil spirit in him, and if it had caused that, then such elders should be left to their own devices.
Evil was blissful. The strength and power he had felt when he had seen the invincible weak in pain had given him incredible strength and pleasure. And also, he used his own sense of pleasure to manipulate good. Getting it to go back into a cycle of self-pity and self-loathing that would have been impossible to break, but the satanic Hauptmann did just that and got good to do what is always his purpose.
Good's purpose was to fix what he, the evil one, broke, so when he broke the invincible, the good one fixed it, thinking himself to blame. The potion the wizard had developed again had taken a lot of his strength and put the Core back in the cage. Too bad the evil spirit had been exposed, but he could do without it. Next time, he wouldn't even let the Core get free or a good one be in charge, but he would deal with the invincible all by himself, from start to finish.
When I woke up, I was in a hospital bed, but I wasn't restrained, and there were no tubes in me. Thank God.
I remembered quite a fucking lot about the three weeks, and how I knew it had been three weeks was when Damon had told me, in a very creepy voice, whispering in my ear, how long I'd been there.
I never thought he was capable of such sadism, but now I have experienced it. The whole thing left its mark, and although I had healed, my mind had taken a hit. All the work Samuel had done to get me used to the IVs slowly was gone after those few times.
I remembered all the cannulas, the drip stands, the helplessness, the pain. Now, there wasn't so much fear and terror as I was sometimes quite sane and in pain, but there had been enough of that psychic torture.
I was at the starting point, so I couldn't stand injections, drips, or anything. And I was terrified of Damon again. I wanted to get out of the hospital environment, and some strange instinct drove me to find a place to hide.
I got out of bed and started staggering along, medicated, to somewhere safe. I found one bedroom and went into the air conditioning duct. I was dizzy. My vision was so fucking blurry, but the need to get to safety drove me on, and I couldn't help myself as I scurried down the corridors looking for somewhere to hide. At least Damon wouldn't find me there. I fell asleep there. I was safe.
Adam went to the med bay to see Mimi when earlier Damon had come out, took the car keys, and said briefly that Mimi was fine and would wake up in a couple of hours.
He would come back sometime. Now was not the time for him to act at all. Adam could see the raw pain in Damon's face, the remorse, the self-doubt, the accusations, and he knew that no amount of talking would help. Time might help, and somewhere along the line, the two would meet again.
Adam walked to the medbay in his thoughts. He had intended to take Mimi to bed and let her wake up there, but when he arrived at the medbay, it was empty.
Mimi had then woken up and was hobbling off somewhere. Adam followed her scent and then found a bedroom with an open door. Mimi smelled of fear, so it had been easy for him to find this one.
He went into the bedroom. The bed was empty. There was nothing under it either, and then Adam saw an open air duct grate.
He crouched down and looked. Mimi was sleeping in the air duct. Adam sighed and rolled his eyes. He cursed as he tried to get a hold of Mimi.
I woke up to Adam swearing. I had retreated to the back of the duct, and Adam couldn't reach me.
I said, "Leave me alone so Damon doesn't..."
Adam sighed and said: "Salvatore ran off again when he got you in shape. Just get out of there. It's all right."
I looked around for a while, and I was pretty cold. It was still summer or early autumn, after all, and the air conditioning had been on pretty cool. I crawled closer, and Adam caught me and carried me to the bed.
"You're freezing, well I'll warm you up." He murmured softly in my ear.
I mumbled something. I was still all drugged up. Adam came to sleep next to me. I fell asleep in a safe place. I listened to Adam's calm rhythm, my head resting on his chest, and let sleep come.
I woke up on my own again, feeling dirty. Time had passed, so the drugs must have worn off, and besides, now I wanted a bath. I sat up, and my head was a little unsteady, but the thought of a bath was just too wonderful.
I staggered into the bathroom, undressed. I drew myself a lovely bath and went in. Oh, how lovely! I closed my eyes and enjoyed it. I relaxed completely in the hot water. I fell asleep.
The bathtub was unheated, and the air conditioning was on cool. As the temperature dropped, the woman's drugged sleep only deepened. Degree after degree dropped. The core temperature dropped, Mimi's lips turned blue, and her heart rate slowed; her breathing was shallow, slow. What had started out as a drugged sleep was now, as the core temperature plummeted and the hypothermia deepened, becoming something of a coma. Mimi's organs shut down, and their function slowed down, almost stopped altogether.
Adam was in the kitchen making dinner. He had given Mimi a strong sedative in the early hours of the morning so she would not wake up for a few more hours, and when she did, she would still be on the medicine.
This was another new type of sedative developed by Samuel's team, and it worked well. Mimi was not yet resistant to this.
Adam finished his meal and went and see Mimi. She would probably still be asleep, but he made sure now. The bed was empty.
"Oh, fuck," he sighed.
Adam whirled around for a moment and noticed the bathroom door was open. Mimi was in the tub, unconscious, her lips blue. Adam tried the water. It was cool, room temperature, and the air conditioning was fucking on. His heart raced, but somehow he could function.
Adam got an enormous pile of towels for the bed and put the hair dryer on the wall. He grabbed an ice-cold Mimi from the bath and carried her to bed. He started rubbing her dry, rubbing her all over with the help of the hair dryer.
Mimi's heart was beating, but slowly and softly, and her breathing was non-existent. Adam picked up his phone, put it on speaker, and called Samuel, explaining the situation.
Samuel told him to keep going, and when Mimi came to, hot liquid, soup, whatever so that the core temperature would rise. Mimi was to be kept warm until the temperature reached 40, and then he would take the tests when he came in to see if there was any organ damage. He also told Adam to make sure that she stayed at 40 degrees as well.
I woke up to someone repeating my name and rubbing me like a madman. At the same time, blowing some hot air at me. I opened my eyes. Adam was furious and worried.
Oh, I must have fallen asleep in the bath and caught a chill. Well, I'll warm up in a minute. I changed my position and moved away from my hair dryer. I've always been a fan of cool, and now the hot air was oppressive. Adam had tuned my hair dryer to blow in my direction.
I said, "I'm already awake. Take that hair dryer off and let me get dressed."
Adam said firmly, "Your core temperature, look at that, is only a meager 34 degrees at the moment. The hair dryer stays on. I'm going to wrap you up in blankets, and then I'm going to bring hot liquid, soup, cocoa, or anything until your core temperature is close to normal. What on earth were you doing on your medication to take a bath? And you don't have a lick of sense."
Adam was agitated. His eyes glowed yellow.
I looked at him innocently and said, "I didn't feel so medicated. I didn't even really notice that I just felt dirty."
Adam said: "Now every tub in this house has had the plugs removed until you get your wits about you. You only go to the bath when you're properly conscious, and you don't fall asleep in there."
I nodded. Adam continued to massage me, making sure my hair was dry. I said nothing. I was pretty chilled, and I noticed I was very slow; well, that's what you get for being hypothermic.
Then he turned off the hair dryer and wrapped me in at least six blankets. Put me in a thick flannel nightdress with long sleeves. I was left to wait in a wrap for the broth.
The first one was a thickened chicken soup, and it was wonderful. I devoured it. Then there was the meat stew, with chunks of meat and more fat. Next was cocoa, the hot kind.
I warmed up and noticed how I wasn't quite so slow and stiff anymore. My core temperature went up. I was already 37 degrees when I started shivering. Now I was getting cold. I felt like no amount of blankets would be enough, and my fingers were so fucking cold they hurt.
Adam brought warm soups again, which I drank greedily when it was so fucking cold. He looked at me sternly. Finally, I warmed up. Adam brought me another steaming cup of cocoa, and I drank it eagerly. I was getting sleepy and very sleepy. Adam came to my side and held me against him. I fell asleep again once I was safe. It took energy to warm up.