Misha
Iwait for them outside until night falls. I wait, and wait, only driving away to get food, and then parking right outside the door again to wait for them to be done with the exorcism.
You can’t just stroll back in when it’s already underway, and I have to assume they’ve got things under control.
I think about calling Trine, but I’m not going to do that. She has every reason to be angry. We should’ve disclosed far more than we did, but we didn’t do any of that, and she’s obviously upset. She needs time to cool down. I don’t blame her.
If I were in her position, I think I would be furious too. There’s nothing I can say that will make her rethink it, but there’s no part of me that wants to disclose everything that happened to her. I think it would do nothing but make her uncomfortable or upset her, and I assumed that, since she wasn’t asking me any questions, she didn’t want to know. I was an idiot.
We all were. And Trine suffered the consequences for it.
I’m still in my car when I see the door to the suburban house open, Luke and Rei walking out shrouded by darkness. It’s not misty anymore, but the automatic lights outside don’t come on when they go on the concrete. Just from the way they’re standing, I can tell that they’re exhausted, and I don’t know how successful they were.
They get closer to the car, neither one of them saying anything. They look exhausted, Rei opening the passenger door of the car and Luke sitting in the back. "How’s he doing?" I ask. "I could’ve gone back in, but…"
It gets too much sometimes. When I’m already stressed, I’m particularly vulnerable to the demon. It’s better that I stay outside.
I think all of these things, but I don’t say any of them. I don’t have to. They get it.
I sigh, leaning against the headrest as I put the keys in the ignition.
"Oh, it’s bad," Woods says from the back. "I think we need to hook him up to an IV. He’s going to get dehydrated fast. We tried to give him water, but it’s pointless."
"Yeah, he won’t eat or drink anything," Salinas adds. "It’s going to get worse before it gets better."
"Ifit gets better," Woods says under his breath. "He’s really far gone. This is a bad case."
"What are you thinking, doc?" I say.
"I’m thinking that we might need to talk about inpatient options," he says. "Maybe respite care for his mother. If he is possessed, we need to try and handle that as quickly as possible, but even if he isn’t, whatever he’s going through…it’s really bad."
Salinas smirks. "That’s your clinical assessment, is it?"
"It’s not funny," Woods says, but there’s a smile in his voice. He gets serious again as I drive away, ready to take us to a restaurant nearby. Mrs. Souter is back to watching him, and Woods gave him a sedative to sleep through the night. She has us on speed dial if something is to happen, but we can’t stay there all the time. It makes the possessed feel overwhelmed, and worse than that, it makes the demons impervious to us.
The more we’re around them, the more vulnerable we are. So we leave, and we always try to shift the mood–because letting it get to us is the easiest way to lose.
And as an exorcist, if you lose, you might lose the subject. Not just them, but their soul.
So we try to focus on more mundane things, our fucked up sense of humor the only thing holding us through the darkest of times.
Traffic is getting bad, and it’s hard to leave the little suburb and merge left at a stop sign. "Seriously, though, he’s not doing well. He’s hurt. He’s going to get worse. We have a few days tops before we need to take him to a hospital, and we won’t be able to do anything there."
I breathe out shakily, the suburbs getting smaller and smaller in the rearview mirror. "And if we don’t get him to a hospital…"
"Then he’s going to die," Woods says. "I don’t know how long it’s going to take, and I don’t know what’s going to happen to him exactly. I don’t even know what he’s sick with. But I do know he’ll die."
"This is fucked," I say. "We have to help him."
"I know," Salinas says. "We’re trying."
That’s all we can do. Salinas reaches forward and starts messing with the radio as I turn right on a narrow street, following the GPS on the dashboard. Woods leans forward. "What happened with Trine?" he asks. "How’s she doing?"
I sigh, and Luke turns down the radio before I speak again. "Not great. She’s angry. I don’t think she wants to talk to us again."
"She’s not scared?" Woods asks.
"No, I think she’s plenty scared," I reply. "I mean, I think the anger is a byproduct of how scared she is. She didn’t ask us any questions, and now she’s upset we didn’t tell her everything. I don’t think she wants anything to do with us."