A Talespin fanfic by Lizzy Spencer (KarmaCat) Page 10
By the time they got there, Sarabi had been found by the hospital staff and they were all busy fussing around her in a flurry of white lab coats.
"You idiots!" the bald-bird doctor hissed, grabbing a male nurse by the collar. "Do you have any idea what Mr. Khan is going to do to this hospital? It'll be the lawsuit of the century! We are all going to lose our jobs because of you!"
"She was DEAD, doctor! Look at the records!"
"So, let me get this straight," the doctor said to Sarabi. She raised an eyebrow at him. "You just got up and walked out of the morgue? All by yourself?"
"Anything we can get you, Miss Khan?" a nurse asked the tigress, who was sitting on a hospital bed looking quite irate.
Sarabi crossed her arms. "You've done quite enough already, thank you."
"Doctor!" the male nurse protested, "didn't you hear about the fireball?"
"What in blue blazes are you talking about? Don't you realize we're all going to be sued out of our pants? Malpractice, man, malpractice!"
"You've got that right," Sarabi sighed.
"No, the fireball, doctor! There was a huge ball of light that came through the hospital doors and went downstairs to, we think, the morgue...didn't you hear about it?"
The doctor shook his head at the nurse disdainfully. "I don't know what that has to do with anything. So a bunch of reporters saw a trick of light. Big deal. You don't realize the gravity of this situation, do you?"
Sarabi looked up, a spurt of anxiety rising in her chest. "Did you say ball of light?" she asked the nurse quietly.
"Yes,' he replied. "A big ball of glowing white light. It blew Nurse Ratchet right over."
She opened her mouth to reply, but then the tremendous force known as her father burst through the door, a little squirrel nurse following him in. "Sir! You can't come in here!"
Shere stopped dead in his tracks when he saw her. He felt his stomach drop into his feet. His mind reeled in oblivious shock. He had just seen Sarabi in a bloody body bag not six hours ago! And now here sat his white-haired daughter before him, good as new and as irate as ever! And she looked so beautiful. She was glowing.
He got that look on his face, that wide-eyed-stone-faced look he had gotten when she was seven and threw that plate....
Sarabi almost jumped. It had been twelve years and this was the first time she had recalled the incident. No, she thought, I must have picked up that plate and thrown it. There's no other explanation.
But there he was, with that look on his face. "Sarabi? But how?"
Orly looked about ready to pass out and die.
Sarabi got off the bed and approached her father. She was only halfway to him when he suddenly rushed forward, not caring who saw, and wrapped his arms around her, as if to test if she were really there.
"Sarabi," he uttered into her hair, "how did this happen? You were dead!"
She tried, embarrassed, to wrench her way out of her father's grasp."Father..." she said uneasily.
The staff who had been fussing over her stopped and regarded Shere Khan in fear, knowing that their jobs lay in his hands. "What do mean, I was dead? These inept hospital people put me in the morgue and I WASN'T dead! And you thought I was joking when I called you!" She looked to Orly, who was shaking. "Can YOU tell me what's going on here? The last thing I remember is crossing the street."
Orly swallowed, looking at her sister as if she were a ghost phantom. "You...you got hit by a car. You flew up and, and you were covered in all this blood," Orly stuttered, her voice like tiny bells in the silent room, "and I tried to help you, and Gabe started praying, but I told him not to - Gabe was praying but I told him you weren't dead yet - but you were, Sarabi. You were dead. I had your blood all over me, Sarabi."
For a moment, Sarabi's face softened towards her sister, who had seemingly reverted back into a five year old. "Is that really what happened?" she whispered back, incredulous.
"Mm-hmmm. Papa saw you in the morgue. You were dead then, too. Wasn't she, Papa?"
"Yes, she was. And now she isn't," he replied. His hand remained on her arm to make sure that she didn't just disappear into nothing. His eyes had glazed over in bewilderment.
A red-haired resident suddenly rushed in with a piece of brown paper, waving it madly in the air. It was a death certificate. "'Sarabi Genesis Khan, time of death ten-twenty-five A.M! Blunt force trauma!' It says it right there! She was dead!" The resident was furious. The doctor had been yelling at her earlier. She had an English accent like August's. "Heart rate zero, no visible brain waves, no respiration! Her body temperature was down seventy-two-point-eight! We gave her the paddles twenty two times, for crying out loud! She was dead!" She let the paper drop to the floor, exhausted. "Mr. Khan, I ask you with the utmost logical respect not to take us to court, because this hospital cannot account for miracles. And what happened to your daughter down in that morgue an hour ago was a miracle, by all definitions of miracles. A bloody modern-day Lazarus."
Shere stared at his daughter. "I know it," he breathed. "Someone brought you back to me, Sarabi." He ran his paw through her hair. "My girl."
Sarabi regarded her father for a moment, and then closed her eyes, shaking her head. "I don't understand any of this. Father, please take me home. I'm sick of this place. These people don't know what they're doing."
"Gladly," Shere said, walking out of the room but never letting Sarabi out of his sight, for he was just as much in shock as his daughter and the hospital staff. On the way out they were followed by a horde of white clad hospital workers apologizing profusely, trying their best not to be sued. Shere didn't even listen to them. He was too busy keeping an eye on his phantom daughter.
They finally got into the car, Orly in a state of mindlessness. As the began to drive away, she muttered, "Sarabi, do you remember anything? What is it like?"
A few things flashed by in her mind. That glittering whiteness, the hands, that voice....
"I don't know," she replied.
The first thing Sarabi did was go to her room and fall into a deep sleep, despite the fact that her father was checking her door every five minutes to make sure she was still there.
Orly was still in shock. He could barely comprehend the trauma he had been through that day, but the trauma of his youngest must have been far worse. He figured, in the back of his mind, that he should probably get her a psychiatrist, at least for a few weeks. It would be likely that all three of them would need one. Currently, Orly sat in the kitchen with a whole honeydew, making melon balls which she did not eat, only set into a glass bowl. She did things like that when she was nervous, things that had to do with food, but she had been making melon balls for an hour now. Shere usually ended up eating whatever she made. Or Gabriel did.
Shere fleetingly thought of Gabriel. He was a nice young man, so good to his daughter. He often wondered why she didn't take him as her boyfriend.
Finally, Shere managed to drag Orly away from her melon balling and convinced her to go to bed. She looked up at him, bewildered, her eyes glazed. "How can you sleep on a night like this?"
"Your sister is managing," he replied.
"She's dead. I mean, she was dead. Or something." She paused. "Maybe I SHOULD go to bed." She sighed and kissed her father on the nose. "Goodnight, Daddy."
"Goodnight."
She thought for a moment. "For a few hours there, it really was just you and me, wasn't it?"
He shook his great head. "I'm not sure."
"Neither am I, papa, neither am I."
She went down the hall to her bedroom. Shere watched her fade out of sight, knowing now that he must cherish each moment he had with his daughters, for each may be the last one.
Why, he wondered, hadn't he learned that when his wife died?
He smiled. This would seem like the kind of thing she would orchestrate. She had loved to watch him squirm. Some sick delight.
"August, if you had anything to do with this," he whispered into the empty kitchen air, "it was by far your most incredible magic trick."
And, smiling at her memory, he extracted a claw, speared one of Orly's melon balls, and popped it into his mouth.
"She isn't awake yet," Orly said. She sat with Gabriel, the cold honeydew balls between them, in the morning sunlight of the east balcony.
Gabriel had his arms around his knees. "I just don't believe this," he whispered, shaking his head.
"Weird, huh?"
"Yeah. I mean, she's always been so...so...sterile. She can't just die like that. And then come back to life like that. She just can't do that."
Orly nodded her head, trying to understand. "I don't think she had a choice, Gabe," she replied quietly. "I think I know what this might be about."
"The legends?"
Orly gave him a secretive glance and lowered her voice. "I read up on it. According to the legends, the white-haired tigress had to pass through two dimensions and have a, a something...a consort, I think, in order to come into her full power."
He chewed thoughtfully on a melon ball. "Yeah. So?"
"Well, she died...that's a dimension."
"I guess. Did she have an out of body or something?"
"She hasn't told ME anything. But she died and came back to life. And she was dead, Gabe, you were there. There's no other possibility. It feels weird just saying it, you know?"
"Weirder to experience it. There was so much blood," he shivered, "and then you call me and you're like, 'She's not dead! She was, but she's not now!'" That's bound to screw you up. Screws me up."
"I don't think anybody knows quite how to deal with this."
"How's your dad doing?"
She sighed. "He seems okay, but before we found out that Sara was still alive, I really thought he was going to crack, Gabe. And that scared me. A lot. His eyes just kind of glazed over and he drove a penknife into his desk, and then just kind of put it away. Scared me. I mean, we lost Mom, and he loved her so much...oh God, Gabe, if you could only see him when he talks about her!"
"I have. His whole face lights up."
"Yeah. He loved her a lot."
"You miss her?"
She shrugged. "Never really knew her."
Gabriel nodded. His mother was an uptight interior decorator who talked really loud and gesticulated like a hyperactive mime. She always wore big sunglasses and a scarf and was constantly trying to psychoanalyze her son, which was why he was always at Orly's house. Or building. The boy dreaded the times when she came to pick him up, because she always tried to seduce Mr. Khan.
"So she passed through two dimensions," Orly said. "I guess now she needs a consort."
'What's that?"
"I don't know. Like a mate or whatever, I think. A male partner."
Gabriel raised his eyebrows. "Yeah, THAT'LL happen. We all know how boy crazy Sarabi is." He sighed. "And when she comes into her power...what kind of power are we talking about?"
"Lord only knows, Gabe. I just hope she can handle it."
Sarabi's eyes half opened in the morning sun. It was a strange sensation; her eyes were open and she was still dreaming. She had no control over her body; she tried to lift her arm but could not.
Her eyes fell to the foot of the bed by their own volition, and there stood, clear as day, a white-haired tigress who looked much like her. She was clothed in a flowing white sundress-looking thing and the morning sun gleamed upon her, making her glow. She had a slight build, but her presence was terrifyingly real and powerful Her eyes were glowing and locked upon Sarabi.
Fear rushed through Sarabi's veins at this unexpected visitor, but she still could not move. She could not even flex her mouth so that she could ask who the intruder was and what she was doing there. The tigress stared upon her motionless body without expression, lifted her striped arm to Sarabi and breathed, "My sister."
Another creamy haired tigress appeared next to her, fading in out of thin air. Sarabi's white curtains blew as if in a breeze, but she knew the window was not open. The second tigress lifted her arm and said, "My sister."
Sarabi watched in horrific, paralyzed fascination as her bed was surrounded by white-haired tigresses, each telling her that she was a sister of theirs. She refused to believe what she was seeing. She tried to close her eyes but could not, and the sensation of motionlessness, of the inability to speak or scream, made her feel as if she were on the verge of some kind of eerie death.
Again.
The first tigress spoke as the eighteenth tigress faded into view by her pillow.
"The gleaming Almighty came upon you at your death at eighteen, as was planned by you before you incarnated on this plane. You will come into your power soon. You must seek your consort in quick time, sister, so that you may begin your work. We will impose the desire upon you, as you requested so long ago."
The eighteenth tigress rose her arm to Sarabi and said, "My sister."
Sarabi screamed forth from her mind, her voice sounding in her ears but not vibrating in her throat. "I am no sister of yours! Leave me be!"
All eighteen of the tigresses looked sadly to the floor, and for a spilt second Sarabi wondered if she hadn't offended them. They joined hands, and the last two on either end took Sarabi's hands. Their not-quite-flesh felt like an icy breeze on her skin.
And all she saw was an abrupt flurry of whiteness and eighteen voices chanting, "We are the Entity and you will join us soon. You belong to us, our sister Entity."
Sarabi was suddenly filled with a trance like feeling of physical peace. Her eyes closed....
And opened.
She was back in her spartan, blank room. No one was there. She could move again, and her eyes were heavy, as if she had just awoke from a comatose sleep. She stretched out peacefully, feeling an unusual kind of loveliness, and sat up in bed. She rubbed her eyes.
"What a strange dream," she mumbled. "So very visceral."
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