You Better Not Be Her Prey 3

Chapter 2: Like a Tidal Wave

My knee bounced up and down impatiently in the car, my nervousness and fear accompanying the fast beat of my heart. 

'Your heart is racing,' Bucky remarked. 'I can hear it from here.'

'Please, just drive,' I begged desperately. 'Be as fast as you can.'

'I'm literally trying; there's so much traffic,' he replied. 

'Well, goddamnit, James! Speed the hell up!'

'I don't like road rage, okay?!' he shouted back. 

'Just drive! Please!' I exclaimed through tears. 

We pulled into the hospital and I opened the door, jumping out. 

'Go find a parking spot, James. I'll head in and try to find my Dad.'

'Okay.' I ran into the hospital and found a nurse, quickly saying my mother's name and soon being directed to a part of the hospital that made my heart sink once I walked in. The first thing I noticed was lots of crying people. And then the smell of ammonia and blood and body fluids mixing. All of a sudden, the lights were too bright, and it was too loud. I blinked, steeling myself and eventually found my mother's hospital room, stepping inside to see my dad sitting there next to my mom. The sight that I laid eyes on of my mother made my heart crumble into a million pieces. She was unresponsive, covered in wires and tubes, the only noise in the room being the beeping of the ventilator she had hooked up to her. He stood, and I let out a sharp sob, covering my hand with my mouth in shock. I numbly hugged him. 

'How is she?' I asked, just barely managing to keep it together through tears. 

'Just barely hanging on. I think she wanted to wait for you. Where's Bucky?'

'Parking the car,' I said. 'He'll be here in a minute.' I stepped away from my dad and came over to my mother's bedside, pulling up a chair and sitting there, taking her still warm hand in mine. I heard the door suddenly open a few moments later and barely registered James' voice in the background talking to my dad. Then I felt the familiar hand on my shoulder, and a tender kiss on the top of my head. 

'I'm so sorry, doll,' he said softly. 'I didn't know it had gotten worse.' In truth, I hadn't wanted Bucky to know. My mother was special to him, very close to his heart, and after he lost his mother and father before he got a chance to see them again, to tell them their son was alive, save for his younger sister Rebecca, my parents had much become like second parents to him. I touched my mother's head, smoothing her white hair down gently, my heart slowly sinking in my chest with each moment that the heart monitor beeped steadily. She was getting worse, and there was nothing I could do about it. She was only human, after all. Not unlike my father and I, but in so many ways... we were vastly different. My breath hiccupped sharply as I let out a soft sob, realising that this would be the last time I would see my mother. 

'Did you want to get the kids over here so they can say goodbye to their grandmother?' I vaguely heard my dad ask. 

'No,' I said quietly, and I felt both of their eyes on me, despite the fact that I was looking only at my mother. 'The two young ones are too young to understand death fully. Emily and Wolf... they know. Please - I want to spare them this. I don't want their last memory of their grandmother to be in a hospital bed. I want them to remember her as she was - a good, kind, loving grandmother.'

'Okay,' I heard Bucky say. 'Did you make final arrangements?' he asked. 

'Yeah,' my dad replied. 'Amelia had a will drafted up just before she ended up back in hospital. I know she's okay with having most of the stuff go to Adelaide.' 

'She's not dying. Not today,' I said, standing. 'I have to save her. Let me save her.' I tried to draw a resuscitation rune, but after a few failed attempts at all the runes that I knew that had to do with saving a life, I gave up, slumping back in the chair and sobbing. 

'You can't save her, Adelaide,' James said, trying to pull me close for a hug. 

'No, I can. I just need time.'

'Adelaide, look at me!' I tried to fight him, but he grasped my face, looking into my eyes with that piercing blue-eyed gaze that might as well have pierced daggers into my soul. 'Look at me.' I stopped fighting him long enough to meet his eyes. 'You can't save her. You just have to let nature take its course. She is only human. No one lives forever, not even us.'

'I can't live without her, James,' I said with a strangled sob. 'I can't do this without her. I need her.' He touched my cheek softly, and I leaned into the touch. 

'You can do this. Okay? You've got to do this. If not for me, if not for the kids, then do it for yourself. You've got a million reasons to keep going without her.' 

'I have to save her. I don't want to fail. I can't fail. Not like I failed with Wanda.'

'You didn't fail with your sister. You tried your hardest to be there for her, to keep in contact with her, to make sure she was okay, to keep checking in on her. You didn't fail. Wanda made her choices.'

'No! I won't let her go. It's not her time yet. It's not her time.' He pulled me in for another hug, and I wept on his shoulder. Just then the door opened, and two nurses and a doctor came in, passing a clipboard to my dad. When he finished scrawling down his signature, he came over and passed the clipboard to me. I looked over it, disengaging from Bucky to read it. It was a form for her emergency contacts, which were me and my dad, so that if this cancer thing ever was about to kill her and she was on life support, that we were going to pull the plug, no questions. It was a yes/no question. I swallowed back the bile in my throat and signed it numbly, passing it back to the doctor, who took it and perused it. 

Bucky and I stepped back as they began to remove a few things except for the heart monitor and then swiftly unplugged the life support, giving us a few precious moments with her before she finally passed. I sat back down when they finished and left the room, clutching her hand in mine. 'I'm really going to miss you, Mom,' I said, stroking her hand with my thumb tenderly. 'I tried so hard to save you, Mom. I really did. Thank you for saving my life once upon a time. I wish I could repay the favour. I know I wasn't the nicest to you when I was younger. I'm so sorry. I just - I can't do this life without you. I'm going to try, but I just can't do it without you.' I kissed her hand softly, and suddenly, I heard the heart monitor speeding up, and then, a long, loud beep. I looked up, seeing the flat line, and broke down in tears. Several doctors and nurses tried to come in, and subsequently attempted to revive my mother. I just registered one of them saying moments later, 

'Time of death, 10:06pm.' Several of them began to filter out of the room, while a few stayed behind to finish off the final arrangements for my mother's death. I tried to move towards her, and eventually ended up nearly getting there, but then I was sharply pulled back by a set of hands. I began to scream and thrash violently. 

'Adelaide! Adelaide! Come on, let's go. Adelaide!' All I saw was my mother, and I barely registered anything else. I screamed loudly, crying out for my mother. 

'Mommy!' I screamed. 'Mommy!'

'Let's go, Adelaide! Let them do their work.'

'No! Mom!' I screamed again. I reared back, throwing my head sharply against Bucky's face. I heard a grunt of pain from him and attempted to break away, but then suddenly I felt Bucky's same pair of hands grab me, and I felt a sharp pain in my neck. I just saw the shiny end of the needle, before I fell unconscious in the arms of my father, my world going completely black.