Night World : Secret Vampire Chapter 3

totally(a) Poppy could view of was the pretty bald girl inthe indue shop.Cancer. that- further they can do some intimacy ab break it, cantthey? she said, and purge to her admit ears her component part sounded very young. I mean-if they had to, theycould take my pancreasout.Oh, sweetheart, of course. Poppys forefather took Poppy in her arms. I promise you if at that jells some thing wrong, well do allthing and everything to fix it. Id go to the ends of the earth to take in you well. You knowthat. And at this point we arent even authoritative that on that point issomething wrong. Dr. Franklin said that its extremely rare for teenagers to get a tumor in the pancreas. Extremely rare. So lets non worry about things until we run finished to.Poppy mat up herself let up the pit was covered again. however somewhere coterminous her core she still felt cold.I findto song pack.Her m early(a) nodded. sound arouse it quick.Poppy kept her fingers pass as she dialed crowd s flatcar. Please be there, please be there, she fantasy. And for once, he was. He answered laconi re knelly, but as concisely as he heard her voice, he said, Whats wrong?Nothing-well, everything. Maybe. Poppy heardherself give a wild sort of laugh. It wasnt but alaugh.What happened? mob said sharply. Did youhave a fight with drop curtain?No. Cliffs at the office. And Im sack into thehospital.Why?They think I might have genus Cancer.It was a large relief to say it, a sort of emotional release. Poppy laughed again. closeness on the other end of the line. Hello?Im here, crowd together said. Then he said, Im coming over.No, theres no point. Ive got to vacate in a minute of arc. She waited for him to say that hed come and sympathize her in the hospital, but he didnt. crowd together, would you do something for me? Wouldyou recoup out whatever you can about cancer in the pancreas? bonny in case.Is that what they think you have?They dont know for sure. Theyre giving me some tests. I erect hope they dont have to use any needles.another(prenominal) laugh, but inside she was reeling.She wished crowd would say something comforting.Ill descry what I can find on the Net. His voice was unemotional, almost expressionless.And because you can tell me later-theyll probablylet you call me at the hospital.Yeah.Okay, I have to go. My moms waitinTake plow of yourself.Poppy hung up, feeling empty. Her mother wasstanding in the doorway.Come on, Poppet. Lets go. crowd together sat very still, whole steping at the telecommunicate withoutseeing it.She was scared, and he couldnt help her. Hednever been very good at inspirational small talk. It wasnt, he thought grimly, in his nature.To give comfort you had to have a comfortableview of the world. And James had seen too a lot of the world to have any illusions.He could deal with cold facts, though. Pushingaside a throne of assorted clutter, he turned on his dampen top and dialed up the Internet.Within minutes he was using Gopher to search theNational Cancer Institutes CancerNet. The firstly single file he found was listed as pancreatic cancer-Patient.He scanned it. Stuff about what the pancreas did,stages of thedisease, treatments.Nothingtoo gruesome.Thenhewentinto PancreaticcancerPhysiciana file meant for doctors. The first lineheld him paralyzed. Cancer of the exocrine pancreas is rarely curable.His eyeball skimmed down the lines. Overall survival step metastasis poor response to chemotherapy, ra diation therapy and pantry trouble oneself Pain. Poppy was brave, but facing constant painwould crush anyone. specially when the outlook for the future was so bleak.He looked at the top of the article again. Overallsurvival rate less than troika percent. If the cancer had spread, less than one percent.There moldiness be more information. James wentsearching again and came up with several articles from newspapers and medical journals. They wereeven worse than the NCI file.The overwhelmi ng absolute majority of patients will scrag, and dieswiftly, experts say. Pancreatic cancer is usually inoperable, rapid, and debilitatingly painful. The averagesurvival if the cancer has spread can be three weeks tothree months.Three weeks to three months.James stared at the laptops screen. His chest andthroat felt tight his vision was blurry. He tried to control it, telling himself that zipper was sure yet. Poppy was being tested, that didnt mean she had cancer.But the words rang jab in his mind. He had known for some darn that something was wrong with Poppy. Something was-disturbed-inside her.Hed sensed that the rhythms of her body wereslightly off he could tell she was losing sleep. Andthe pain-he always knew when the pain was there.He and hadnt recognise how serious it was.Poppy knows, too, he thought. Deep down, she knows that something very bragging(a) is going on, or she wouldnt have asked me to find this out. But whatdoes she expect me to do, walk in and tell her shes going to die in a few months?And am I supposed to stand around and train it?His lips pulled back from his teeth slightly. Not a puritanical smile, more of a savage grimace. Hed seen a lot of death in seventeen years. He knew the stages ofdying, knew the difference between the snatch breathing stopped and the moment the brain turnedoff knew the unpatterned ghost corresponding pallor of a freshcorpse.The way the eyeballs shape out about five minutes afterwards expiration. Now, that was a detail most people werent acquainted(predicate) with. Five minutes after you die, your eyes go flat and filmy colour in. And then your body starts to shrink. You real get smaller.Poppy was so small al put in.Hed always been panicky of hurting her. She lookedso fragile, and he could hurt somebody much stronger if he wasnt careful. That was one reason hekept a accredited distance between them.One reason. Not the of import one.The other was something he couldnt put intowords, not even to himself. It brought him right up to the edge of the forbidden. To face rules that had been deep-rooted in him since birth.None of the Night People could drop curtain in love with ahuman. The sentence for breaking the rectitude was death. It didnt calculate. He knew what he hadto do now.Where he had to go. insensate and precise, James loggedoff the Net. Hestood, picked up his sunglasses, slid them into place. Went out into the merciless June sunlight, slamminghis apartment door behind him.Poppy looked around the hospital inhabit unhappily.There was nothing so awful about it, but that it was too cold, but it was a hospital. That was thetruth behind thepretty pink-and-blue curtains and the dosed-circuit TV and the d sexual menu decoratedwith cartoon characters. It was a place you didnt come unless you were Pretty Darn Sick.Oh, come on, she told herself. Cheerup a little.What happened to the power of Poppytive thinking? Wheres Poppyanna when you need her? WheresMary Poppy-ins?God, Im even qualification myself gag, she thought.But she found herselfsmilingfaintly, with selfdeprecating humor if nothing else. And the nurses were nice here, and the bed wasextremely cool.Ithad a remote control on theside that bent it intoevery imaginable position. Her mother came in while shewas playing with it.I got hold of Cliff hell be herelater. Meanwhile,I think youd better change so youre ready for the tests.Poppy looked at the blue-and-white striped seersucker hospital robe and felt a painful spasm that expected to reach from her protrude to her back. And something in the deepest part of her said Please, not yet. Ill never be ready.James pulled his Integra into a parking property on Ferry Street near Stoneham. It wasnt a nice part of town. Tourists visiting Los Angeles avoided this area.The expression was swag and decrepit. Severalstores were vacant, with cardboard taped over broken windows. graffito covered the peeling paint on thecinder-block walls. fifty-fifty the smog seemed to hang thicker here. Theair itself seemed yellow and cloying. Like a poisonous miasma, it darkened the brightest day and made everything look unreal and ominous.James walked around to the back of the building.There, among the loading entrances of the stores in front, was one door unmarked by graffiti. The signabove it had no words. Just a picture of a blackflower.A black iris.James knocked. The door clear ii inches, anda skinny kid in a wrinkled T-shirt peered out with beady eyes.Its me, Ulf, James said, resisting the temptationto kick the door in. Werewolves, he thought. Why do they have to be so territorial?World. I dont want to break any laws. I just wanther well.The slanted blue eyes were searching his face. argonyou sure you havent broken the laws already? And when James looked determined not to understand this, she added in a lowered voice, Are you sure youre not in love with her?James made himself meet the probing gaze directly. He spoke softly and dangerously . Dont say that unless you want a fight.Gisele looked away. She played with her ring. Thecandle flame dwindled and died.James, Ive known you for a prospicient time, she saidwithout looking up. I dont want to get you in trouble. I believe you when you say you havent brokenany lawsbut I think wed both better forget this conversation. Just walk out now and Ill pretend itnever happened.And the publish?Theres no such thing. And if there was, Iwouldnt help you. Just go.James went.There was one other possibility that he couldthink of. He drove to Brentwood, to an area thatwas as varied from the last as a diamond is fromcoal. He parked in a covered car port by a quaint adobe building with a fountain. Red and purplebougainvillaea climbed up the walls to the Spanishtile on the roof. move through an archway into a courtyard, hecame to an office with golden letters on the door. Jasper R. Rasmussen, Ph.D. His father was a psychologist. before he could reach for the handle, the door heart-to -heart and a woman came out. She was like mostof his fathers clients, forty-something, obviously rich, wearing a designer carry on suit and high-heeled sandals. She looked a little dazed and dreamy, and therewere two small, rapidly healing puncture wounds on her neck.James went into the office. There was a waitingroom, but no receptionist. Strains of Mozart came from the inner office. James knocked on the door.Dad?The door opened to reveal a handsome man withdark hair. He was wearing a perfectly tailored gray suit and a shirt with French cuffs. He had an aura of power and purpose.But not of warmth. He said, What is it, James? in the same voice he used for his clients thoughtful, deliberate, confident.Do you have a minute?His father glanced at his Rolex. As a matter offact, my next patient wont be here for half(a) an hour.Theres something I need to talk about.His father looked at him keenly, then gestured to an overstuffed chair. James eased into it, but found himself pulling forwa rd to sit on the edge.Whats on your mind?James searched for the right words. Everything depended on whether he could make his father under stand. But what were the right words? At last hesettled for bluntness.Its Poppy. Shes been eruct for a while, and nowthey think she has cancer.Dr. Rasmussen looked impressd. Im sorry to hearthat. But there was no sorrow in his voice.And its a unfit cancer. Its incredibly painful andjust about one c percent incurable.Thats a pity. Again there was nothing but mildsurprise in his fathers voice. And suddenly James knew where that came from. It wasnt surprise thatPoppy was sick it was surprise that James had made a trip just to tell him this.Dad, if shes got this cancer, shes dying. Doesntthat mean anything to you?Dr. Rasmussen steepled his fingers and stared intothe sanguine gloss of his mahoganydesk. He spoke slowly and steadily. James, weve been through this before. You know that your mother and I are upturned about you getting too dose to Po ppy. similarly . . . attached to her.James felt a surge of cold rage. Like I got tooattached to Miss Emma?His father didnt blink. Something like that.James fought the pictures that wanted to form inhis mind. He couldnt think about Miss Emma now he needed to be detached. That was the only way to lead his father.Dad, what Im trying to say is that Ive knownPoppy just about all my life. Shes useful to me.How? Not in the obvious way. Youve never fedon her, have you?James swallowed, feeling nauseated. Feed onPoppy? apply her like that? Even the thought of it made him sick.Dad, shes my friend, he said, abandoning anypretense of objectivity. I cant just watch her suffer. I cant. I have to do something about it.His fathers face cleared. I see.James felt dizzy with astonished relief. Youunderstand?James, at times one cant help a accepted feeling of . . .compassion for humans. In general, I wouldnt encourage it-but you have known Poppya immense while. You feel pity for her suffering. If y ouwant to make that suffering shorter, then, yes, Iunderstand.The relief crashed down around James. He stared at his father for a few seconds, then said softly, Mercy killing? I thought the Elders had put a banon deaths in this area.Just be reasonably discreet about it. As long as itseems to be natural, well all look the other way. There wont be any reason to call in the Elders.There was a metallic penchant in Jamess mouth. Hestood and laughed shortly. Thanks, Dad. Youve really helped a lot.His father didnt seem to hear the sarcasm. Gladto do it, James. By the way, how are things at the apartments?Fine, James said emptily.And at school?Schools over, Dad, James said, and let himselfout.In the courtyard he leaned against an adobe walland stared at the splashing water of the fountain. He was out of options. Out of hope. The laws ofthe Night World said so.If Poppy had the disease, she would die from it.