Substitution - Chapter 4
#4 of Substitution (TF Themes)
Substitution - Chapter 4
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This is a continuing tale for Nex_Canis - and the plot proceeds! Hope you will leave as copious feedback as before, and let me know what you think! Do remember that all votes, faves and watches will help others to find these stories to read and enjoy as well!
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"They didn't let me come to see you before...they said you were radioactive, so...either they really wanted to keep me from seeing you or they were telling the truth, and now it's finally safe to come to see you, dad."
Brantley swallowed.
He was sitting on a low plastic stool that was placed next to the bed. The room was cool, and very quiet, but for the hum of air conditioning. The equipment surrounding the bed was powered off, dark monitors, empty infusion pumps, all the millions of dollars of medical magic shut down for the moment. None of it could have helped the man whom now laid on the bed, covered with a simple white sheet, from ear tips to tail.
"They say it happened at...around quarter past 10 this morning, when they shut down your machines, dad. That's when blood stopped flowing and they declared that you had died."
Brantley looked at the towering machine that still had tubes coiling about it, empty for now.
"But somehow it didn't feel as final as it could done, you know? I mean...six days ago, last Wednesday when I heard you'd been in the accident,and they told me you probably would never wake up...I think for me you died then, dad. When I was looking at you and the doctors were saying that you were...that..."
He couldn't finish the sentence for the moment. He just looked at the mound under the white sheet.
His shroud.
Brantley rubbed his palms together. It felt comforting, in the cold room.
"Well...I told them to do it," he said. "I mean, they said that their...scan, or whatever, was ready and that they had all they wanted from you, that doing more would not improve the outcome. They said...they said you could go."
Brantley coughed.
"And I...I knew you had to go, dad. I looked at you...like I've been looking at you ever since the accident...I knew that you would want me to let go."
He held his breath and pinched at the edge of the sheet. He wasn't really supposed to touch it, but a moment couldn't hurt. He lifted it enough to reveal his father's right arm. It was covered in bandages, from the fingertips and as far up as he could see from under the sheet. Cannulas for the tubes for fluids were still in place as plastic nubs on the arm.
It looked more like the arm of an Egyptian mummy than his father's.
Brantley let the sheet back down. He felt an urge to shake his paw, as if something...wrong could have been caught when he lifted the sheet. He hadn't even touched his father. He'd been told not to. He didn't even feel a great urge to, even if much of his thoughts during the past week had been concerned with hoping that he could embrace his father once more.
"I don't know about this...recombinant thing, dad. The doctors are saying that they're not sure if it will work..."
Brantley hugged himself.
"I guess I can understand why you did it," he started, "how...how uncle Wesley died and all, and how...how it suddenly seemed like anything could happen, so suddenly. How I'd be alone and you...and you'd no longer be here - "
He bit his teeth together.
"Sorry," he blinked away the tears that had appeared.
He swallowed.
"I called mom, so she knows. I didn't tell about this yet...I just don't know how. She doesn't really need to, either because she's not a beneficiary in his policy...shit, listen to me, talking like that fucking beaver who's been coming in and out to tell me everything about the legal side."
Brantley chuckled.
"You won't believe how complicated this...recombinant...resurrection...whatever business is," he spoke along, "how you have to be recognized as a legal entity and all that. I think you'll even be getting a new birth certificate. Think about that...I'll be older than you..."
He sighed.
"I'm not sure if it works like that. They said you'll be younger..what's the point of being reborn if you are reborn as an old sack of bones? That's what that...Cordon said. I don't like him one bit. He sounds like he's got his head up his own ass."
He rumbled.
"So maybe I will end up being older than you, somehow. I'm still trying to put my head around this whole thing, and I can't...I don't know. I'll stop trying now, I guess. I'm too tired. I still haven't slept properly."
He gave a mournful look at the shrouded figure on the bed.
"But I've decided on one thing," the wolf spoke up. "There won't be a funeral for you before it's all over, one way or another. I won't bury you until these people here tell me that there's nothing more than they can do."
Hs paws clenched into fists.
"I love you, dad," Brantley said. "I won't let them mess anything up. Whatever way this goes. I promise that."
He coughed.
"Goodnight," he said. "Goodnight forever, dad."
Brantley allowed himself a very good cry at his father's bedside.
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