By Donna
Gideon slept till it was almost his
lunchtime, his head on Faith’s lap as she and their fairy friends sang him
soothing lullabies. A few minutes
before one, his eyes fluttered open and he sat up. “I have to go now. I eat
lunch at one,” he told the ladies gathered around him. “If I do not come,
they will try to find me.”
Faith agreed that he needed to go, and
asked him if he would to bring her a little bit to eat back with him. All the
fairies gave him tender kisses on the cheeks, which seemed to perplex him for a
moment as he pursed his own lips, copying what they had done.
“Goodbye,” he told everyone, and then
crawled through the little gate and back into the town of Edan. Standing up, he
struggled to breathe for a moment, the heat of the afternoon sun almost undoing
all the good that drinking from the fairy’s water and his short nap had done.
But his stomach rumbled, so he forced
himself to walk over to the hotel, only to find a fair size crowd there waiting
for him.
“Where have you been, Gideon?” Dr.
Shepherd asked. “We have been looking for you for the last couple of hours.
You didn’t show up to get your blood drawn, and we were worried.”
“I took a nap under a tree,” he told
them, as he sat down to eat the plate of food that Lupe had ready for him. “It
was cool in the shade.” He turned his attention to his food and started to
eat, ignoring any other comments from those standing around in his single
mindedness. After a few moments, the crowd got the hint and drifted off. Most of
the town’s residents were getting into the habit of taking a ‘siesta’
during the hottest part of the day.
Shepherd sat down beside him, studying
Gideon while waiting for him to finish eating. His color seemed good, and he
obviously had a good appetite. He
had been concerned when Con Madigan had told him that Gideon had not looked good
at all that morning. Apparently, his nap had done him some good.
After Gideon was done, Shepherd rolled up
his sleeve for him and took the blood sample, noting the vivid bruising from the
last several tests that had been taken. Gideon screwed up his face, closing his
eyes tight to avoid seeing the needle penetrate his flesh. He hated the needle.
Once the sample was taken, the Doctor
removed the needle from the vein and applied direct pressure until the bleeding
stopped, taking due note of how long it took. It was then he noticed a couple of
dark spots on Gideon’s shirt. “Gideon, how do you feel today?” he asked.
“I was tired, but I took a nap and I
feel better,” Gideon replied.
“Did you have another nosebleed
today?”
Gideon fidgeted and tried to stand up,
but Shepherd put a hand on his shoulder and held him in sitting position.
“I have to go. I told Lady Faith I would bring her a little lunch. She
is sewing under the tree where I was sleeping.” His hands closed tightly, and
he was becoming increasingly flustered at this line of questions.
“Gideon,” Shepherd said gently, “I
need to know. This is important.
Did blood come from your nose again?” He didn’t want Gideon to get upset,
but he still needed that information. He and the other doctors had gone through
this with him more than once. Gideon hated to be questioned about his illness by
anyone. It was as if he thought that if he didn’t talk about it, it would go
away. When they had tried to
explain to him last week that he would most likely need the bone marrow
transplant, he had gotten extremely agitated, and had ended up passing out with
another severe nosebleed. Luckily they had frozen a bag of the Highlander’s
blood, and once that was given him, he had improved enough to go home.
Since then, the doctors had been careful not to get him too upset again.
“A little one,” Gideon finally
admitted, avoided the doctor’s enquiring eyes. “But it stopped and I am fine
now. Please let me go. Lady Faith is hungry. I promised to bring her lunch.”
“I’ll let you go, Gideon, on one
condition,” Dr. Shepherd said firmly. “I want you to rest for a couple of
days, and I don’t want you to be alone. Stay with Miss MacDonald or anyone
else that you like. If you have
another one of your spells, they can run for help. And I want to know if you
have another nosebleed, ok?”
“Ok,” Gideon agreed. Shepherd let him
go. Lupe gave him a little sack
lunch for his friend and then he headed out the door towards the Mission church.
The Doctor watched him walk down the street, a slight frown on his face.
His gait was slower than usual, but still steady.
Sighing, Shepherd turned to go to the clinic so the results of the test
could be determined. Something was not adding up. All the signs were pointing at
him heading for another major relapse, but why this sudden turnaround?
He and the other doctors were pleasantly
surprised. His white blood cell count was actually down a little! But they were
still concerned. If it got any higher, they would do another blood transfusion
to stabilize him, then attempt the bone marrow transplant. There were no
patients in the heat of the afternoon, so the staff of the clinic gathered
together in the lounge and started to hash out the final details. It wasn’t
going to be easy. Normally the cancerous marrow of the patient was subjected to
radiation to kill it, and the healthy marrow then transplanted. But they had no
means of doing that. So as the afternoon wore on, they discussed treatment
options, trying to determine what the best way of going about it would be.
Faith and Gideon spent the rest of the
day in the Garden. She left to tell her sisters that she was going to help watch
over Gideon. When she got back, Gideon went to go get his supper, and then told
them he was going back to be with Lady Faith and the sisters. Everyone assumed
he would be staying over at the MacDonald house. He took a blanket and pillow
with him when he went.
When he crawled through the gate, the
fairy women greeted him joyously, hugging and kissing him while Faith chuckled
at the confused expression on his face as he pursed his lips. He still hadn’t
figured out how to kiss back. He
came over to Faith, and she shyly hugged him as well. “Looks like we will both
be gate keepers tonight,” she told him. “We don’t want our friends to try
to leave before they are ready.”
“We made you a bed of soft ferns,”
Endora told him, taking his hand and leading him to it. “You should lay down
now, you look tired again.” The fairies were glad that he was there with them.
They wanted to keep watch over him, and to make sure he would have no more
problems, at least for that night. Besides, it gave them something to do other
than worry about Fae and whether or not she had found Quinn yet.
Gideon curled up on his side, and Hydra
covered him up with the blanket. The three fairies and the human girl all
gathered around him, telling him silly stories to make him laugh, and then
soothing songs to relax him until his eyes finally closed in sleep.