Little

Chapter 22

It was a little odd, but what else could they do?

Stephen, still dressed in robes, was pushing the Ancient One in a stretcher through the hospital, Peter running behind him. He knew one person that would understand all the mess.

"Christine!" he shouted through the hospital.

Up ahead, he could see her close her eyes, muttering probably a curse, and then she turned to look at him. Her face immediately changed into a shocked expression. "What happened?" she asked, running towards them.

"It's not fibrillation," Stephen said. "She has a stunned myocardium."

"Neurogenic?" Christine said.

"Yes," Stephen said, rushing the stretcher into an operating room. 

Inside, he quickly dressed up in scrubs, though he wasn't sure why. Was he going to operate on her?

One look at his hands told him no.

He decided to stay away from any medical tools and just help with anything else. There was a flurry of people running around the room, dragging tools and carts everywhere. On the EKG, the heart beat started to get slower.

"She's dropping," Christine said. 

"We're losing her!" another doctor said.

"You need to increase her oxygen!" Stephen advised. He pushed a cart over to one of the doctors. 

There were a few nurses standing over her. "Her pupils are dilated! No reflexes," they were reporting. "I'm not reading any brain activity."

Stephen started to lose hope. But something caught his eye. When he looked at the monitors, they flickered. That wasn't supposed to happen.

Could it be...?

He felt a wrenching sensation and was launched into his astral form. He could see the Ancient One's astral form floating out of the operating room. He followed her.

"What are you doing?" he said, trying to keep up with her. She floated through walls and hallways. " You're dying!" he said. Finally, she stopped out on a balcony outside the hospital. 

From what Stephen could see, the world was frozen in time. Or, barely moving at least. Cars moved an inch a minute, snowflakes hung in the air, and lighting creeped out along the sky. Tricks of the Ancient One, no doubt.

He stood next to her. "You have to return to your body now," he pleaded. "You don't have time."

"Time is relative," the Ancient One said. "Your body hasn't even hit the floor yet."

She looked out over the city. "I've spent so many years peering through time, looking at this exact moment," she said. "But I can't see past it. I've prevented countless terrible futures. And after each one, there's always another. And they all lead here, but never further."

"You think this is where you die," Stephen with a grim understanding.

The Ancient One chose to ignore that comment. "Do you wonder what I see in your future?" she asked.

"No," Stephen said. Then he changed his answer.  "Yes," he amended.

"I never saw your future, only its possibilities," she explained. "You have such a capacity for goodness. You always excelled, but not because you crave success, but because of your fear of failure."

"It's what made me a great doctor," Stephen said, defending himself.

"It's precisely what kept you from greatness," the Ancient One said. "Arrogance and fear still keep you from learning the simplest and most significant lesson of all."

"Which is?" Stephen questioned.

The Ancient One turned to look at him. "It's not about you," she said. 

That was the one lesson Stephen had never learned. He was always so self-centered and uncaring. He never thought about anyone else or what they wanted. That's why he and Christine had broke up. He hadn't meant to, but he'd pushed everyone away from him.

When Peter had came into his life, a couple months ago, he had been the same way towards him. He didn't care about him. But as time progressed, he found Peter to be enjoyable and fun. Maybe even lovable.

"When you first came to me," the Ancient One said, shaking him from his thoughts. "You asked me how I was able to heal Jonathan Pangborn. I didn't. He channels dimensional energy directly into his own body."

"He uses magic to walk?" Stephen said.

"He had a choice," the Ancient One said. "To return to to his own life, or to serve something greater than himself."

"So, I could have my hands back again?" Stephen said, with a whole new realization. "My old life?" He'd long ago thought he could never operate on people again, but this opened up a whole a new pathway.

"You could," the Ancient One, but her tone sounded disapproving. "But the world would be all the lesser for it."

That statement hung in the, until the Ancient One spoke again. "I've hated drawing power from the Dark Dimension," she said. "But as you well know, sometimes one must break the rules in order to serve the greater good."

"Mordo won't see it that way," Stephen said. He'd seen the amount of disbelief on Mordo's face after he'd figured out that the Ancient One used the Dark Dimension. He'd refuse to understand that.

"Mordo's soul is rigid and unmovable, forged by the fires of his youth," the Ancient One explained. "He needs your flexibility, just as you need his strength. Only together do you stand a chance of stopping Dormammu."

"I'm not ready," Stephen said. He'd barely mastered any sorcery skills. What hope did he and Mordo have against stopping an interdimensional being?

The Ancient One sighed sadly. "No one ever is," she said. "We don't get to choose our time. Death is what gives life meaning. To know your days are numbered, your time is short."

She gazed out across the city, looking at the slow-mo lighting. "You'd think after all this time I'd be ready," she said. "But look at me, stretching one moment out into a thousand, just so I can watch the snow."

Stephen turned to look at the city. Indeed, it was oddly beautiful, seeing the snow fall so slowly and lighting flash so slowly.

He sensed something had happened. And something had  happened. He turned to his right.

She was gone.