Yesterwary

Bastian’s eyes shifted around the room as he handed a plate of cake to the last child in line. He nodded politely at the little girl’s “thank you,” and turned to Xander.

“Have you seen Demi, lately?”

Xander glanced over the expressionless faces that were enjoying cake, before responding with an uncertain shrug.

“I’m going to look for her,” Bastian said, messily wiping handfuls of frosting on the tablecloth. Xander nodded, and followed without asking permission.

“Demi! Oh, God… Demi,” Bastian called, rushing to the heap at the bottom of the stairs, where Demi lay unconscious, pale as a paper flower against the pool of dark red that had seeped out from the bottom of her dress. Without a heartbeat, there was no pulse to check, but her skin still felt warm against the back of Bastian’s hand. He scooped her up in his arms, treading carefully so as not to slip in the blood, and hurried toward the door.

Bastian called out to Xander behind him, “Tell Moira!”

Racing through the night with Demi in his arms, unsure of whether she was even still alive, hot tears blurred Bastian’s eyes. He blinked them clear at the sound of a whisper, and though his instinct was to stop in his tracks, he dared not slow their path to the doctor.

“What?” he asked, glancing down at Demi’s face, as her lashes fluttered weakly.

“I’m sorry,” she repeated, voice little more than a faint breeze.

“You have nothing to be sorry for, my love.” He smiled down at her through the tears.

The corners of Demi’s mouth twitched upward at the sound of the word, before she plummeted back into unconsciousness.

Stopping for a moment outside one of the least-dilapidated buildings in Yesterwary, Bastian was weary from the journey, but summoned the rest of his strength to kick in a door with a dull, red ‘closed’ sign dangling from the knob. He took it upon himself to make the decision that something as flimsy as a suggestive sign would not choose Demi’s fate.

“Dr. Mason!” he shouted, carrying Demi to the room in which she’d been the night she had passed out. “Doctor!”

A very boozy-smelling Dr. Mason waltzed into the room, glass of scotch in one hand, and cigar in the other. “We’re closed,” he mumbled through numb lips, stumbling back out into the hallway.

Bastian gawked at him for a moment, nearly deciding to perform the same action on the doctor as he had on the door just moments early. Fortunately, a woman in a nurse’s outfit and smeared lipstick scurried into the room, glaring harshly at the doctor as she passed him.

“What happened?” she asked frantically, prying Demi’s eyelids open and using the tiny mirror to reflect lantern-light into her pupils.

“I think she fell down the stairs,” Bastian said, grasping Demi’s hand as if letting go would tear him away from the world. “There was so much blood…”

The nurse moved her hands precisely on Demi’s stomach. “How far along is she?”

“About eight months, I think.”

“I’m going to have to ask you to wait outside,” the nurse said, forcing Bastian’s hand from Demi’s and pushing him toward the door.

“What? No, I want to stay with her!”

“I’m sorry,” she said, closing the door between them with the resounding click of a lock.

Bastian stared at the door, as if he could tear it down with his gaze. When his line of sight had little effect on the solid chunk of wood he retreated to a chair across the hall, the one in which he’d been sitting when he was told Demi was with child. He dropped his head into his red-stained palms, uneasily tapping his feet against the smudged floor.

“She should have terminated it as soon as she found out,” Dr. Mason muttered, swallowing the last gulp from his glass. As he turned to leave Bastian wallow in his worries, his face was met by a hard, forceful object, which turned out to be Xander’s fist.

Xander stepped over the doctor’s unconscious body and sat next to Bastian, resting a comforting hand on his shoulder, and acting as if knocking out physicians were a common pastime.

“Who’s in there with her?” he asked, looking up at the closed door.

“Some nurse,” Bastian shrugged.

“She’s going to be okay,” Xander assured, ignoring the trickles of red that were leaking down his left knuckles.

“I know,” Bastian whispered. But he didn’t know. He hoped and he wished, but both were things known to be lost in Yesterwary. And they were all he could offer.