How could he be certain it wouldn’t happen again?
Stefan realized that he was gripping the steering wheel almost hard enough to break it. He tried to ease up pressure, but it seemed that he needed to cling to something, and that something could not be Elena.
If human transfusions succeeded in saving her life . . . how could he ever dare to touch her again?
Stefan’s throat ached. His eyes felt dry and hot. He was remembering a plan he had made back when both he and Elena were going to Robert E. Lee High School, from the days when he had just emphasized to Elena how dangerous he would be as a boyfriend. The plan had been beautiful in its simplicity.
He had decided back then that if he ever actually became a threat to Elena that he would do what he had early sworn to her he would never do, and severely Influence her mind.
He would Influence her to forget him entirely and turn back to her ex-boyfriend Matt. Matt still loved her; Matt would always love her. And Matt was a Virginia gentleman in his blood and bones. He would be strong enough to protect Elena from outside dangers, and he would never have to fight his own impulses, as Stefan did when he wanted to hold her tightly and yet not crush her.
God, he had been naïve back then, Stefan realized. That had been before he realized that Damon was in Fell’s Church, and that he had already staked his own claim on Elena. It had been before Katherine, before Klaus, before the malach had appeared in the Old Woods, before the twin fox-spirits had imprisoned Stefan in the Dark Dimension. It had been before Stefan had realized that the ley lines which crisscrossed the haunted ground of Elena’s hometown were broadcasting a beacon to attract poisonous creatures from hallway around the world.
Any one of those creatures had been savage enough to have ploughed right through Matt without even noticing him.
Matt couldn’t keep Elena safe, either. Who was strong enough to protect her from monsters? Stefan asked himself.
No one who wasn’t a monster already.
A street sign brought him out of his daze of automatic driving. Havenwick Drive. He made a sharp right turn at the light, noticing that he’d picked up another police cruiser. The three wailing cars followed him to the entrance to the emergency room—the emergency department, as doctors called it.
He parked in the space marked Ambulance Only and ran around to open the passenger door, where Elena had slumped down over her seatbelt.
“GET AWAY FROM THE CAR! DO IT NOW! Kneel on the ground with your hands on your head!” shouted a deep, authoritative female voice from one of the cruisers that had screeched to a stop behind him. He cast a tendril of Influence at its occupants, at the same time shouting, “This girl is dying! She needs help now!”
He lifted Elena and turned toward the emergency department doors. Two male voices bellowed for him to stop, and he sent out more tendrils, calming the nervous officers, replacing their fear and suspicion with trust and the desire to help.
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All the commotion had attracted startled workers from inside the hospital. Two men ran out piloting a mobile stretcher, shouting at Stefan to place Elena on it.
Once he did, the two men turned, running back through the waiting room toward the inner sanctum. But Stefan couldn’t follow them inside; this hospital was a place human people lived and slept.
He called desperately: “Can I come with you?”
“Yeah, come on!” one of the men shouted before the automatic doors closed, and with this invitation Stefan was able to enter the hospital. He Influenced anyone who could possibly have gotten a look at him, astonished by his ability to control multiple tendrils of Power at once. He blurred himself in human minds, leaving a faceless impression of dark hair and medium-tall stature.
He also planted the unyielding idea that whoever he was, he was allowed to be beside Elena; he knew that otherwise he’d be piloted away somewhere to answer questions and wait for results.
The commotion around Elena increased as she was taken into an emergency department bay and put on an examining table.
A group of people gathered around her as a man with close-cropped red hair and a clipboard asked Stefan, “What’s her name? What’s her relationship to you?”
“She’s Elena Gilbert. She’s a freshman at Dalcrest College, and she’s my girlfriend.”
Now a tall doctor with a streak of gray in her hair was looking at Elena’s mouth and throat, examining them with a very bright penlight, listening to Elena’s lungs. Stefan could pick thoughts out of the doctor’s mind; among them chest x-ray and intubation. Stefan gently but relentlessly wiped these thoughts away. Elena would gain nothing from a test she didn’t need or from being intubated.
Blood, he thought to the doctor. She needs blood.
“How old is she?” the red-haired man was demanding. “Who are her emergency contacts?”
“She’s eighteen. Her emergency contact would be her Aunt Judith.” Stefan telepathically sent the rest of the information directly into the questioner’s mind and allowed him to write down the name and address. But he also added an unspoken imperative. No one would call the contact until Stefan himself gave the order to do so. He tacked a speck of Influence right onto the form itself, causing the information to blur, just as he was still keeping his face a blur in the eyes of all the medical personnel around him. He wasn’t exactly sure why he was doing all this, but he went with his intuition that it was necessary.
“Elena? Elena, can you hear me?” called a slender, brown-skinned woman, also in a white coat. “Elena, can you open your eyes?”
Elena didn’t respond.
Blood, Stefan thought again, reduced to pleading. Just please give her blood!