Damon lost it. He began to make a sweeping motion that would have ended by dashing the landlady’s cup of tea to the floor. But partway through he had to alter his hand’s course and absorb most of the kinetic energy into himself—ouch! He ended up smacking a fist into his open palm.
And it was all because someone with the voice of medical authority had just cried from across the room: “The doctors say she’s awake!”
Damon whirled. The people in the waiting room parted before him like water-lilies before the prow of a rowboat. He walked straight up to the nurse who had just spoken and said, “I need to see her. I need to see Elena, right now.”
No one contested his right to see Elena first, although Damon had forgotten to lace his words with heavy menace. The nurse didn’t even look surprised; he just nodded and hefted a file in his right hand.
“That’s good,” he said. “We may be able to clear some things up with the doctors. Come with me.”
Damon forced himself not to steal a backward glance at the roomful of people—most of whom ordinarily barely tolerated him—but he couldn’t shut his ears to the soft calls of good wishes. He couldn’t bother about the Waiting Room Weirdness any longer, though. All he could think of was how much he needed to see Elena. Somehow, when he was able to speak to Elena, everything would make sense.
He followed the nurse into the first lighted ICU room and found, to his displeasure, that it was crowded with people taller than he was. Doctors, he supposed. He forced his way through their ranks without apologizing until he could see the bed, which was adjusted so that Elena was half-lying and half-sitting-up.
Elena!
In that first moment, while she didn’t notice him, he was able to swill down the sight of her: from cheeks that were only starting to regain their color, to an unblemished neck that was softly rounded and creamy pale. Her dark blue eyes looked very large in her face and her magnificent hair was in tangled disarray. There were entirely too many gadgets hooked to her. But she was alert—she was speaking—she was . . .
. . . seeing him.
Elena’s entire face lit up, blood rushing to her cheeks. Her eyes widened and her pupils sprang open. She made a small sound liked a choked sob of pure joy and a motion as if to get off the bed.
All the doctors, in chorus, told her sternly to lie back down. Elena gave them a rebellious sideways glance. Damon was still riveted to the spot where Elena had made eye-contact with him. He wished he could go back in time and have that moment again. He wished that he could live in it forever.
Elena, he thought. My Elena . . .
Up on the hospital roof, arguing with Stefan, he had somehow forgotten what they were arguing about. But now he remembered. It was about this girl, this ordinary human girl, who could somehow stop his heart. And it wasn’t just her outward loveliness, although Damon had to admit that her beauty and her aura were what had first drawn him in. But if poor Jacob-with-the-broken-foot did find that shy girl with a galaxy inside her, he still wouldn’t know what he was missing. Inside Elena Gilbert there were galaxies like grains of sand.
And right now Elena was smiling right at him, just for him, with a look of utter adoration which he had only ever seen directed at Stefan before. But . . . Stefan was gone now. And either Elena was incredibly fast on the rebound, or there was something . . . something he couldn’t quite put his finger on. . . .
“Now, then,” one of the doctors was saying to this radiant newly-blooming rose on the bed. “We already have a record here, but it would help if you could add to it. You were in your room, waiting for your boyfriend to visit, is that right? And then something must have happened, because when your boyfriend arrived, he found you collapsed on the floor. Do you remember if you had any symptoms before you fell down? Do you even remember falling?”
“No, I don’t,” Elena said in the tones of someone tired of answering the same question. “All I remember is waiting and then . . .” She made an unconsciously graceful gesture. “Then there were bits of a strange dream and nothing else until I woke up here, just a minute ago.”
“What sort of strange dream?” demanded a roundish middle-aged doctor with a ponytail. He looked like a hail-fellow-well-met sort, but he was far too nosy for Damon’s taste.
“Why,” Damon said, stepping closer to Elena, “should you have the right to ask about her dreams?”
“Because it might give us a clue, of course!” The round little man began to talk very fast. “You may not realize it, but this girl represents a medical conundrum. She somehow manages to lose more than two and a half liters of blood—and there’s not a scratch on her! What’s more, she has no signs of miscarriage or internal bleeding—although we really should check on that again—” He reached for the blanket that covered Elena only to find Damon abruptly in his way.
“I don’t think,” Damon said coldly, with just a hint of teeth, “that Elena wants to be examined at this particular time.”
“All right, all right!” A tall graying doctor spoke up. “Can we just confirm how she got to the hospital, then? Nobody called nine-one-one.” She looked at Elena. “How did you arrive?”
“She’s told you just now,” Damon said softly. “She does not remember.”
“No, but—well, that is the one thing I do remember,” Elena said, sounding apologetic. With everyone focusing on her she finished, with a look of pride, “I don’t know how, but I know. My boyfriend brought me here.”
“Your boyfriend who swears he found you lying on the floor of your room, clearly very ill,” a fussy-looking doctor put in, running her finger along some sort of form.
“Yes, and if he says something is so, it’s the truth. He wouldn’t lie.” Elena looked up at Damon, devotion in her eyes. She took his hand in her cool fingers. “And here he is, still watching over me. My boyfriend of almost a year, Damon Salvatore.”
* * *
An Easter Egg, Damon thought dizzily. Or at least part of his mind thought it: the other part was concentrating on the extremely pleasurable electrical connection that Elena’s fingers twined with his seemed to have set off. That may have contributed to his dizziness, he had to admit.
An Easter Egg in a neurological virus. How odd. But that’s Stefan all over.
All that acting Stefan had done on the roof, had been just that—acting—Damon realized now, feeling warm with resentment. Although Elena’s thumb stroking the side of his hand may have contributed to the warmth. He couldn’t deny it.