{"id":175,"date":"2013-07-21T12:11:34","date_gmt":"2013-07-21T12:11:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dreamers-sanctuary.com\/undead\/?page_id=175"},"modified":"2013-07-22T15:29:25","modified_gmt":"2013-07-22T15:29:25","slug":"chapter-21","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"http:\/\/dreamers-sanctuary.com\/undead\/story\/chapter-21\/","title":{"rendered":"Chapter 21"},"content":{"rendered":"

PART II: \u00a0REAPER’S SABBATH<\/strong><\/p>\n

Chapter 21<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

My family was my life.<\/i><\/p>\n

Leighanne, Brooke and Bonnie\u2026 I loved them more than life itself.\u00a0 I mean that, with all the heart I have left.\u00a0 Even though I believed life was a gift, I would have given up my own to save them.\u00a0 Christ died for my sins; I would have died for my family.<\/i><\/p>\n

But I didn\u2019t.\u00a0 I\u2019m still alive.\u00a0 Technically speaking.\u00a0 Not that it matters.\u00a0 The line between life and death is fuzzy now.\u00a0 My heart\u2019s still beating, somehow.\u00a0 That\u2019s more than I can say for \u201cthem.\u201d\u00a0 But what truly separates the living from the dead, and even those in between, is the soul.\u00a0 And even if my broken heart still beats, my soul seems shattered beyond repair.<\/i><\/p>\n

How can I call myself alive?<\/i><\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t die, and even if I had, it wouldn\u2019t have saved them.<\/i><\/p>\n

My family is dead.<\/i><\/p>\n

My family was my life.<\/i><\/p>\n

My life is over.<\/i><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/i><\/p>\n

Saturday, April 14, 2012<\/b>
\n2:00 a.m.<\/b><\/p>\n

Brian awoke with a start, his head jerking up from the mattress.\u00a0 He looked around, confused by his surroundings, and remembered he was in the twins\u2019 room.\u00a0 Exhaustion must have interfered with his night\u2019s vigil.\u00a0 He\u2019d fallen asleep there, slumped across the foot of Bonnie\u2019s bed, his cheek pressed against the Disney princess comforter.<\/p>\n

Upon realizing this, he was instantly alert, and he crept to the head of the bed to check on his daughter.\u00a0 Even in the dim, blue glow of the Cinderella lamp burning on the nightstand next to her, he could see the flush of fever in her cheeks, and when he put his hand to her forehead, he could feel the heat radiating from it, as it had all night.\u00a0 He smoothed her sweat-soaked hair, tenderly, and though she gave a faint moan at his touch, she did not awaken.<\/p>\n

A ripple of fear coursed through him, as he took in other details of her appearance:\u00a0 the sores dotting her face like leopard spots, the dried beads of foam at the corners of her cracked lips from her earlier seizures.\u00a0 Maybe she was beyond waking.<\/p>\n

Despair twisted his heart until he was in agony.\u00a0 How had this gotten so bad, so fast?\u00a0 It had started out like a simple stomach flu, with the twins\u2019 complaints of not feeling well and Brooke throwing up her dinner.\u00a0 But it had escalated quickly, until both girls were vomiting and burning with fever.\u00a0 Brian had called the emergency room at the hospital.\u00a0 He would never forget the receptionist\u2019s words:<\/p>\n

\u201cSir, we\u2019re already packed with patients with the same complaints.\u00a0 I don\u2019t know what\u2019s going on, and to be quite honest, it doesn\u2019t look like the doctors do either.\u00a0 They don\u2019t know what it is or how to treat it; all they can do is make people comfortable.\u00a0 Not very comfortable, at this point, since we\u2019re out of beds.\u00a0 You\u2019re better off keeping your family at home and doing what you can for them there.\u00a0 Give them plenty of fluids, and use cold compresses to bring down their fevers.\u00a0 That\u2019s all I can tell you at this stage.\u00a0 Good luck.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n

He\u2019d hung up the phone with a cold, hollow feeling in his gut, but he\u2019d followed the woman\u2019s instructions, treating the girls as if they just had a bad case of the flu, though he knew it was something more than that.\u00a0 But when Bonnie had started convulsing, sometime before midnight, he\u2019d panicked and dialed 911.\u00a0 Nobody had answered.\u00a0 Nobody had come.<\/p>\n

Brian had known then that he was on his own.<\/p>\n

Bonnie hadn\u2019t woken up since the seizures, and neither had Brooke.\u00a0 Brian sat with them in their darkened room, watching them sleep, maintaining his vigil.\u00a0 He left only to check on Leighanne.\u00a0 It was easy, though, to nod off himself, with no one to talk to and nothing to do but sit and watch and wait.\u00a0 The fog of sleep rolled in again, and oddly enough, it was sudden silence, not sound, that lifted him out of it.<\/p>\n

His chin snapped up, his breath catching in his chest.\u00a0 Though nothing appeared to have changed, the room seemed too still, too silent.\u00a0 The silence was heavy and noticeable, the way it seems after the air conditioner shuts off, and the white noise you didn\u2019t even notice while it was humming away in the background suddenly stops.<\/p>\n

What had stopped this time?<\/p>\n

He leaned forward and realized he no longer heard the rasping sounds of air rattling in Bonnie\u2019s lungs.\u00a0 Beneath her polka-dot pajamas, her skinny frame was still.\u00a0 Fighting panic, he tried to keep control of himself, to think rationally.\u00a0 Maybe she had just drifted into a deeper phase of her sleep cycle.\u00a0 He pressed his palm to her chest and closed his eyes in concentration.<\/p>\n

He felt nothing.<\/p>\n

The panic got stronger.\u00a0 He tore open the front of her pajama top, sending smooth, round buttons flying like BBs, and lowered his ear to her still-warm skin.<\/p>\n

He heard nothing.<\/p>\n

The panic took over.\u00a0 \u201cNo, Bonnie\u2026 no, baby,\u201d he howled, as he scrambled into desperate action.\u00a0 He had taken a CPR class with Leighanne the year before, shortly before having open-heart surgery.\u00a0 She had wanted to be prepared, in case something should happen after she brought him home.\u00a0 Neither of them had ever had to use their training.\u00a0 But Brian used it now, hoping he was not too late.<\/p>\n

He cupped his hands over his daughter\u2019s chest and began to pump it up and down, stopping only to listen for the precious sounds of her heart.\u00a0 He tried a few breaths, forcing his own air into her lungs, and watched her chest inflate, then expel the stale air and lie flat and still.\u00a0 Refusing to give up, he went back to the chest compressions, pushing more forcefully, trying to jolt her heart into beating on its own.<\/p>\n

He tried to block out the sight of his seven-year-old daughter\u2019s flaccid body twitching, as his hands thrust her down into the mattress, again and again, refusing to give up.\u00a0 It took the muffled sound of a crack and the feel of ribs splintering beneath his palm for Brian to stop, horrified.\u00a0 He fell back, gasping, and dissolved into sobs, as the strength went out of him.<\/p>\n

Gathering her broken body in his arms, Brian hugged Bonnie to his chest, wishing his own thudding heart could pulse life into hers, knowing it could not.\u00a0 She was beyond saving.\u00a0 Her small frame drooped like a rag doll, limp in his arms.\u00a0 Her lungs were empty.\u00a0 Her heart was still.\u00a0 Her soul was in Heaven.<\/p>\n

Her twin was in bed on the other side of the room.<\/p>\n

Remembering Brooke, Brian\u2019s breath hitched in his chest again, as panic and fear muted his grief once more.\u00a0 He gently lay Bonnie down against her pillows and ran to Brooke, determined to save at least one of them.\u00a0 But when he reached her bed, he found that he was already too late.\u00a0 Her body was as lifeless as Bonnie\u2019s, her chest just as silent.\u00a0 Her skin was still warm from the fever, but when he lifted one of her eyelids, the wispy blonde lashes tickling his fingertip, he found the blue eye cold and staring, not a sparkle of life left in it.\u00a0 He smoothed the lid down again, and a tear fell from his own eye to wet her cheek.\u00a0 He lowered his trembling lips to kiss it away, tasting the salt of his tears and the remnants of her sweat.<\/p>\n

This time, he didn\u2019t try any heroics.\u00a0 He couldn\u2019t bear to damage her body more.<\/p>\n

Brooke was gone.<\/p>\n

Bonnie was gone.<\/p>\n

And then his thoughts turned to Leighanne.<\/p>\n

He left his twin daughters lying in their beds, deep in eternal sleep, and rushed into the room he shared with his wife.\u00a0 In their bed, her body lay, just as silent, just as still, but he clung to the last ounces of his faith as he climbed onto the bed beside her.\u00a0 \u201cLeigh,\u201d he croaked, his throat congested with grief.\u00a0 \u201cLeighanne?\u201d\u00a0 What would he say if she awoke? he wondered.\u00a0 How would he tell her their daughters were\u2026<\/p>\n

The word was in the back of his mind, but he refused to bring it to the surface.\u00a0 He couldn\u2019t yet think it, though he pictured their bodies, identical in death.\u00a0 There it was:\u00a0 that word he\u2019d been trying to avoid.\u00a0 He squeezed his eyes shut, trying to force both the word and the image out of his mind.\u00a0 But when he opened them again, there was Leighanne, lifeless in the bed.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo\u2026 no\u2026\u201d\u00a0 He shook his head, refusing to believe that she, too, could be gone.\u00a0 He held his fingers beneath her nose, over her lips, feeling for the faint, warm puff of her breath.\u00a0 He peeled back the covers and watched for her chest to rise.\u00a0 Nothing.\u00a0 Again, nothing.<\/p>\n

\u201cLeigh\u2026 please\u2026\u00a0 Lord, please\u2026\u201d\u00a0 Begging, crying, he hovered over her.\u00a0 Tears streamed from his eyes and trickled into her blonde hair as he bowed his head and kissed her forehead.\u00a0 \u201cPlease\u2026\u201d\u00a0 His lips moved against her skin, touching the rough patches of sores that had erupted there.\u00a0 He could still feel the heat from her body, and the warmth on his lips sparked renewed hope.<\/p>\n

With one last rush of frantic determination, he scrambled up.\u00a0 He straddled her hips, tugged her camisole down off her shoulders, and thrust his hands between her breasts.\u00a0 The skin there was clammy, and his own sweating palms slipped around as he pressed down on her chest, forcing her heart to constrict, to pump blood and warmth and life to the rest of her body.\u00a0 He couldn\u2019t let the warmth leave her.\u00a0 He couldn\u2019t sit back and let his wife die, too.<\/p>\n

He pumped and pumped, pausing only to feel for the rhythm of her heart beating on its own, and when he felt nothing, he pumped some more.\u00a0 His breath came in heavy pants, as his arms began to tire; the mattress squeaked on its springs with his effort.\u00a0 The cadence of desperation began to slow.<\/p>\n

Finally, his arms gave out, and he collapsed in exhaustion, slumping over her body, resting his head on her bosom.\u00a0 Her chest was as silent as the room around him.\u00a0 Her soft skin, kept warm only by his touch, cooled quickly beneath his cheek.\u00a0 Leighanne was beyond saving, not by man, medicine, or miracle.\u00a0 As the truth of this realization finally sank in, Brian began to weep, helpless, hopeless in his grief.<\/p>\n

After some time, he finally found the strength to roll away from her, in essence, letting go.\u00a0 Lying on his side of the bed, he clasped his hands together and whispered a few words of prayer.\u00a0 He prayed for the souls of his wife and daughters.\u00a0 He prayed for the strength to get up, the strength to go on without them.\u00a0 Even his faint voice sounded unnaturally loud in the eerie quiet, and he wondered how he would ever be able to live in this silent house alone.<\/p>\n

Wiping his eyes, he sat up slowly, feeling shaky and weak.\u00a0 His heart fluttered in his chest, and he fought the fleeting urge to vomit.\u00a0 Were these the symptoms of the virus that had killed his family, finally staking its claim on him, too?\u00a0 Or was it just grief making him feel this way?\u00a0 He realized he didn\u2019t care either way.<\/p>\n

He clung to the banister as he staggered downstairs.\u00a0 In the kitchen, he leaned against the counter, the phone in his hand.\u00a0 He squinted at the magnet stuck next to the memo board, the one with the emergency numbers:\u00a0 fire, police, poison control.\u00a0 The numbers blurred before his eyes.\u00a0 His fingers were trembling so badly that he had to dial twice.\u00a0 Finally, the phone rang.\u00a0 And rang.\u00a0 And rang.<\/p>\n

No one ever picked up.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

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PART II: \u00a0REAPER’S SABBATH Chapter 21 My family was my life. Leighanne, Brooke and Bonnie\u2026 I loved them more than life itself.\u00a0 I mean that, with all the heart I have left.\u00a0 Even though I believed life was a gift, … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":8,"menu_order":21,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"onecolumn-page.php","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/dreamers-sanctuary.com\/undead\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/175"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/dreamers-sanctuary.com\/undead\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/dreamers-sanctuary.com\/undead\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/dreamers-sanctuary.com\/undead\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/dreamers-sanctuary.com\/undead\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=175"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/dreamers-sanctuary.com\/undead\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/175\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":376,"href":"http:\/\/dreamers-sanctuary.com\/undead\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/175\/revisions\/376"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/dreamers-sanctuary.com\/undead\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/8"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/dreamers-sanctuary.com\/undead\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=175"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}