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Six days prior . . .

"So, Aaron, are you gonna go see your girlfriend today?" a little girl asked with an unintentional lisp from the gap where her two front baby teeth had fallen out.

"I don't think that I'll be able to Kim. See, her parents don't know that we're dating, so it would be hard to go and see her." I always seemed to have the little kids prying into my personal life. But it wasn't as though they were going to go out and tell the world my secrets since, in their eyes, this building was their world.

"Why not just go and introduce yourself? Then they would know and you could go and see her." She had an innocent smile on, and it was an innocent question, but it was always hard to try and explain some things to younger kids.

"I can't just do that. It's a bit more complicated than that."

"I don't know why it'd be that hard. You just gotta talk to 'em!" She grinned once more, showing off her spacious mouth, and skipped off. I was just glad that my excuse seemed to be enough to make her lose interest.

After learning from Jenn that any and all contact before and after school was practically banned, my heart had sank into my shoes. Sure, I could still see her during school, but with the semester kicking into second gear it was hard to actually get time to spend with her and not time spent studying with her. Nevertheless, the weekend had been coming fast, and I still had no ideas on how to not have to go two full days without even talking with Jenn.

"Maybe a walk could give me an idea or something . . . " I said aloud. In reality, it was just an excuse to get out of the building and try to find some fresh air amongst the up-and-coming city scape surrounding me. That, or the possibility of walking by Jenn's house to try and sneak in a quick chat via movie-esque window-to-ground scenario. Of course, that was speculating that she had a room with a front window and that it was on the second floor. So with the idea of a screenplay romance on mind, I embarked on my completely random stroll around town . . . randomly planned, that is.

It wasn't that the city wasn't a great place to live, but I had always remembered the subtle simplicity of the countryside. Every summer my parents would take me out to a summer home they had out in Colorado. The view was brilliant. I could see the few other homes that adorned the valley side, the local wildlife as it flourished, and the warm glow of the city lights in the distance. The entire time I was there I felt like I was safe.

The house had to be sold after their deaths, just to pay for a mix of burial fees and the debt that they were in. Which just went to show that they lived split lives between the illusion of middle upper class and the reality of borderline poverty. All for the sake of letting me live a life better than most. But that's a tidbit too much than what I should really digress.

My trip around town was both dull, and uninspiring. No ideas had come to mind in more than three hours. Not even an interesting thing happened. Only the boring cars that drove by, with the exception of one ambulance that sped by going far over the posted speed limit, with sirens and lights blaring. "Poor sap. Must've been something quite bad for 'em to go that fast . . . " If only I knew the half of it.

Saturday came and went without anything Jenn related. The few weekend odd-jobs that I'd been doing and only minutes before remembered kept me occupied for most of the day. Then back at the orphanage I was talked into the routine cleaning squad. It was like the world was trying to make me not think about the enjoyable time I could have had with Jenn, if God would have let me. At the moment it seemed that God teamed up with the world to try and make me suffer.

The last twenty-four hours before I got to see Jenn again started out the same way. I worked in the orphanage the first half of the day, and went to the afternoon church service after that. I had always questioned why there would be services Saturday nights, Sunday mornings, and Sunday afternoons, but it made a little more sense the more I went to the later service. The service seemed the same as before, the same mix of Law and Gospel. Just enough to scare the people before bringing up their lack of need to worry. It was a process that seemed fitting for people who required a weekly reminder of their faith.

"Hey Aaron, I'm surprised to see you here," a freshman suck-up from school said walking up to me after the service.

"I'm fairly sure that I've been going to church since I was born, and I don't plan on stopping any time soon. Not unless the church reforms itself into a mass of heretics, but then I'll just go do some independent study." The kid was getting on my nerves just by the way he infused sarcasm with the pseudo-concern the group he was with showed.

"I didn't mean it like that, pal . . . Oh, you must be praying for her or somethin' like that, right?"

"And just what might you mean by that, you little lemming?" The lemming part slipped out, but I enjoyed the delivery of it nonetheless.

"You mean you don't know? Oh man! He doesn't even know about his own girlfriend! What kind of boyfriend can't even keep tabs on-"

That hit a nerve. A nerve that was hard to hit, but when it was . . . "What're you talking about?! What's wrong with Jenn?!" I was about to grab his shirt and shake the answer out of him if he hadn't opened his mouth in two seconds.

"Dude, she got the shit beat out of her by Christie! She's been in the hospital since frikin' Friday!"

Stop. Everyone put your seats in their full, upright back positions. The plane's engines have exploded, and we're going down in a ball of fire. We hope you have enjoyed flying with Disaster Airlines, and we wish you the best as you die horribly slow and painful deaths. Bye-bye.

If there was a word that I could think of that defined the stage after panic has made one's heart explode, that would be what I felt. Before I even fully registered what I was told I was running out the door. People were still loitering in the halls as I pushed my way through, out to my car. What I thought was an exact copy of it was parked right beside it. A 2003 Saturn Ion Coupe, gunmetal silver, with tinted windows.

I didn't care about it until a hand was wrapped around my neck and I was slung onto the hood of it, denting it in. "Hey, buddy-boy. You dun messed with the wrong mutha' dawg. 'N now, it time to pay fo what'cha did."

"And here I was thinking that we had advanced as humans beyond racial mockery . . . " I said through choked words. I was rewarded with a foursome of knuckles impressing themselves on the entirety of the left side of my jaw. If the fresh flow of blood wasn't enough, it was definitely the feeling of my teeth loosening that made my stomach turn. Coughing and spitting out a mouthful of the red stuff, I managed to stutter out a few words. "Guess I deserved that . . . "

The guy was coming in for another punch when I saw his arm grabbed from behind and pulled backward. It wasn't until I heard a pop and then a scream that I realized my rescuer had just dislocated the arm of the guy attacking me. I lifted myself slowly to find the reverend that had given the sermon not twenty minutes ago was the one who took control of the situation. I couldn't help but let out an awestruck breath of relief. One wouldn't think that a man of the cloth would be able to easily subdue a behemoth of a teenager.

"I may be a man of God, but that doesn't hold me back from some punk kid breaking faces on the church's sidewalk," he said, releasing the kid's arm to let him whimper over it. "Clayton, I want you to call the authorities and make sure that this kid is taken care of. Don't worry too much about his arm. It shouldn't be the first of his worries." The pastor, still in his traditional black shirt, matching pants, and collar walked to me and held out an arm. "We need to get you to a doctor, Aaron. C'mon."

"Better hurry . . . I've got someone I need to see." Then we got in his car and sped off to the hospital.

The emergency room wasn't near the stereotypical mayhem that I had anticipated. The organized shuffling of covered shoes and scratching of pens on clipboards was almost melodic when mixed with the beeping of machines. The reverend explained to the front desk my predicament, much to my embarrassment, and I was taken back for examination. Through a series are routine questions and small pokes and prods at my various injuries it was decided that I was fine, other than needing to get some liquid stitches for my eyebrow and to be careful when eating hard foods for the next few weeks.

A quick administration of cold and unloving doctor treatment, I felt ready to burst out of the room. I had more important things to attend to than my own personal well-being. Jenn was here, and this white-collar generalist was keeping me from her. "Sir, can I go now? I need to see someone."

Every millisecond he didn't answer I grew more and more impatient. Finally, after taking the time to sand his hand against the five o' clock shadow on his chin, he cleared me for an early dismissal. It was my guess that they had their own priorities that didn't tailor at all to mine.

"I'm sorry sir, but any and all visitations to Miss Strippe's room are strictly forbidden. There are certain restrictions when dealing with those of her kind."

If it weren't bad enough that Jenn was in the hospital, or that she was there because of some psychopathic freak who couldn't take 'No' for an answer, there just had to be 'restrictions' that made it so that I couldn't even see her. "What kind of hospital is this? 'Her kind'? Who the hell decides the way that patients get treated? She's a living, breathing, thinking, loving person! And you have no right to treat her like some animal you pick up off the street!"

"Sir, please understand-"

"NO! I'm not going to understand that your hospital can go about restricting me from my girlfriend!"

That was the first time I had ever used that term to describe our relationship, but it was true, wasn't it? I didn't think it was too hard a concept to understand; two people that loved each other could date, right? Apparently not, or so from the expression on the receptionist's worn face. Her tone went cold and straightforward. "Sir, I am going to have to ask you to please leave, or I'll be forced to call security."

I learned the hard way. With the help of hospital security, I was removed, with minimal resistance on my part. I figured that I'd find some way of getting in one way or another. It was just a matter of figuring that way out.

* * * * *

The man had a worried expression on his face. His eyes showed paranoia, and his voice was shaky. "I'm not so sure about this Aaron. If we get caught, I'll be in a ton of trouble. Are you sure that you want to risk it?"

I gave a heavy sigh. "Stephen, you've got to get it through your head. I'm gonna see Jenn, and nothing's gonna stop me. Besides, you said it yourself that the security his so lax at night because they practically lock this section down."

"Exactly! They lock it down for a reason dude . . . "

"Yeah, because people like Jenn are deemed 'potentially dangerous' and must be dealt with by treating them like animals. Now put on your man-pants and quit being such a baby about it."

The fact was that I was trying to hurry before I lost my fearlessness. It wasn't as much the fear of being seen that was creeping up on me, but the thought of what I might find. It was easy to admit, to myself, that I was terrified of what condition I would see Jenn in. Tubes, needles, and anything else doctoral or medical attached to a body twisted and mangled beyond recognition; the thought alone sent shivers down my spine. As Stephen and I started down the bitterly depressing hallway, I couldn't help but start to have regrets.

Each step made me wish more and more that it was all nothing but a dream. That I was just going to wake up from a bad dream. It would be Monday morning, and I would go to school and be with Jenn like nothing ever happened. But I never woke up. I kept walking until I found what Stephen told me was her room number, staring face-level with me. My hand trembled uncontrollably as I reached for the polished brass handle.

"Dude, just be sure to not get caught when you leave. I'm headin' out of here before they see that I'm not cleaning," Stephen said as he slowly started to back away. He was gone around a corner before it even sank in what he said.

Everything was going in slow motion. I could hear the latch in the handle slowly creak and grind until I was completely open. The feel of the door barely shaking as metal rubbed against metal in each hinge. And then, the door was opened, and I tore my eyes from the floor and up to take in what I was nearly having a heart-attack over seeing.

The room looked like a normal hospital room. The walls were an off-white, the linoleum floor was waxed and clean, the ceiling was stuccoed and nicely painted a flat white. A few flowers sat in various locations around the room, each filled with flowers varying from geraniums and daisies to tiger lilies with babies breath accents. They were beautiful to look at, but weren't enough to divert my eyes from the bed.

My heart rate jumped and my breath was dashed to short gasps. Jenn was lying on the bed, tubes protruding from the side of her mouth, needles lining her arms, cloth bandages wrapping various visible parts of her arms and upper body; it was enough to make my stomach turn and my head start to spin.

For the next three days I went back to visit her every night. The first two times I spent purely in a state of shock from the events that had transpired. During the third night, my visit was interrupted by a young woman who seemed to be sneaking into the room. After trading excuses for our illegal entrance into a restricted area, I learned that she was a nurse that didn't enjoy seeing the treatment of the patients like Jenn, and so came in after hours to check up all of them. We agreed to not tell anyone else of our plans, and that she would call me when . . . if, Jenn woke up.

* * * * *

I was walking as fast as I could. I learned early that running was an easy way to get a boot out of the hospital. There was no way that anybody was going to stop me, but I didn't need the extra security guards coming after me sooner than necessary.

Nevertheless, there was little resistance against my trek to Jenn's room. It must have been the nurse, Erin-only by coincidence having the same sounding name. The handle of the door opened with ease and I barged in. "I came as soon as they told me-" I started, but held my words as soon as I saw that she wasn't the only one in the room. "Mr. Gillet?! What're you doing here?"

"Aaron?!" he said as soon as he saw me.

Before I could even think, he moved toward me, pushing me back outside the door. Just why the man thinking about adopting a near-adult like myself was in the same room with Jenn made my brain twist into a knot. "Sir . . . what . . . how . . . w-why-"

"Why am I in a hospital room that has my daughter in it? I should be asking you what you're doing intruding in a private room in the restricted section of a hospital. Now, you'd better start explaining yourself quite quickly."

For the second time everything in me came to a grinding halt. "... D-d-daughter?" But how was that possible? Jennifer Strippe . . . Jonathan Gillet . . . The two didn't match, so how could Jenn, my Jenn, be his daughter. "There must be some mistake," I thought to myself, "but she was there . . . on the bed."

If I said that it was easy to explain to a man who was considering adopting you that you had been dating his daughter for the past few weeks without knowing whom her father was, then I would be lying through my teeth. It took the better part of three full hours to be able to squeeze out enough words to prove that my intentions weren't to harm his daughter in any way without inserting my foot into my mouth. But, a shaky understanding was made as almost a final resort, and I was allowed to see Jenn.

With the added eyes of her adopted parents piercing right through me, my steps were more uneasy than before. My face was a shade of white that matched the walls, or at least I thought that I must have been. And when I looked down to see the expression on her face, everything else in the world seemed to just disappear.

The fur on her face was matted in places, but didn't take away from the beauty that I still saw. Her mouth kept perfectly still, not even twitching, yet her eyes wavered and glistened with what seemed hundreds of emotions. Her father had told me, once I had convinced him that my reasons for being there weren't improper, that she wasn't able to talk. But at that moment, I was happy just seeing her eyes open and alive.

"H-hey Jenn. I guess you decided to come back to us, eh?" I asked with a quivering and half on the brink of crying tone. "Glad to see that at least we get to see your beautiful eyes again." That I said in a lower voice out of fear and embarrassment of the two others watching like hawks.

Jenn flickered her eyes as tears started to form and turned her head away. I understood that as a sign that she must not have wanted me there, so I bowed my head and started to turn back. "Sorry, I'll let you have some time with your family."

I put my hand on the rail to lift myself up, and looked over to her parents-the same two who had planned on making me their son just weeks ago. Their faces showed a glad relief, but also a deepening concern. Whether it was for their daughter's safety or for what was going to happen with me I'm not sure. But, before I could turn enough to leave, I felt the hairs on the back of my hand bristle up. Like a precognition, I felt the soft touch of Jenn's paw on my fingertips.

Her head gave the slightest of movement. Right. Left. Right. Left. The look in her eye paralyzed me. The brilliant emerald glow of her stare stained with tears showed everything that she wanted to say but couldn't. "I don't want you to go. I want you to stay right here. Stay with me."

Not that I could say no, I returned my gaze to her parents. The disappointment in her father's eyes dissipated into more understanding and he gave a nod. I let my hand wipe a tear from her eye. "No matter what, everything's gonna be okay. As long as I have you, nothing can separate me from you . . . " I gave one more look back to her parents . . . the ones that I was about to become family with . . . and offered a nod back. "I love you Jenn, and I'll never let you go." I kissed her forehead softly as a tear fell from my cheek.