The Lost Child (Morganville Vampires)

Chapter 28

I woke up to a steady beeping coming from the right of me.

Opening my eyes, I found myself in a white room with the machine that had been doing all the beeping.

I had tubes attached to my arms and a bag of liquid hanging to the left of me. I sat up and pulled them out and took off the circle sticker that was on my chest.

The machine changed from beeps to one long sound and two doctors came rushing in but stopped when they saw me.

"Goodness, you recover quickly." The first female doctor said.

"What are you talking about?" I asked.

"The Founder brought you in and we thought you weren't going to last the night. You had lost a lot of blood. Even if you lived, we didn't think you would be awake for another few days yet." The second male doctor said.

"How long was I out?" I asked.

"Just over 24 hours."

I shrugged. "Cool. I need to find my mom." I got out of bed but the male doctor stopped me.

"You can't leave yet, you haven't been discharged. Also we need to give you a check-up to make sure everything's fine."

"Everything is fine."

"You may feel like that but we need to keep you in, just in case."

I took a deep breath. Chill, you can't lose focus. "I'm sure the Founder would like to know I'm awake. She knows me most of all, so I'm sure she'll want to see me discharged."

"You don't need a parent to sign you out. Our tests indicate you are nineteen years old, so you don't need parental permission anymore." The female doctor said.

"Well, you can't exactly keep me here..."

"We can-"

"Knowing what I can do."

"You can't threaten us." The male doctor said.

"I'm not. Just stating facts. I'm not a vampire or human, so you should just err on the side of caution and let me go."

The doctors gave each other a look and so I held up my hand, red electricity sparking around.

"What are you?" The male doctor asked.

"You don't want to know... if you want to live." I said in my best icy voice.

"Go... but you're not getting away this."

I smiled. "I believe I am." I left and collected my clothes that were in a locker outside my room and headed down the hall.

In the Reception area, Amelie was just coming in when she noticed me. "Sarah Jane."

"Hey... Founder." I said, noticing the looks the other people were giving me in the waiting room.

"I didn't expect you to be up and about so quickly."

"The doctors said I recover quickly. Speaking of the doctors," I walked closer to her and lowered my voice so no-one else could hear. "You might want to go and talk to them... They wanted to keep me locked up so they could run tests on me."

"Really? And these tests weren't to make sure you wouldn't collapse in the next few minutes?"

"They said even though I don't need your permission anymore, they still wouldn't let me go."

"I guess they were just worried."

"They were trying to kidnap me."

"Let's go, now." Amelie grabbed my arm and led me out of the hospital. Her guard outside opened the car door and Amelie pushed me inside.

"I thought you liked me. Why are you pushing me?"

"Not everyone knows I adopted you. I can't be seen talking to the doctors because you made up a story about them trying to kidnap you."

"It isn't made up! I had to zap them so they would get out of my way."

"I really hope you didn't."

"Well, no I only showed them. But I feel fine and they wanted to keep me there." Amelie sighed, almost imperceptibly. Then she reached over and pulled my jaw down gently. "What?"

"You need to go to the dentist."

"Is there even a dentist in this town?"

"Of course." Then car turned and in a few minutes brought us up outside a white building.

"This isn't another hospital is it?"

"No. Go inside and say you've come for a checkup."

"Why don't you want to be seen with me?"

"I thought you knew by now. Go."

I sighed and got out and closed the door. The guard drove off probably to hide somewhere.

Walking in through the doors, I went up to the Reception desk. "Hello, can I help you?" The red haired pale woman asked.

"Yeah, I've come in for a checkup."

"Great. If you'll just sign this then I can get a dentist to come and see you."

I took the clipboard and pen off her and went to sit down. The boxes I had to fill in were all about my name, age and address, etc. When it came to next of kin, I paused.

Tapping the pen on the clipboard, I thought of who I could use as my parent. I didn't want to put Amelie and she already said she doesn't want anyone to know she adopted me. Myrnin didn't seem like parent material and the Glass House gang were all too young to have a kid, so that left one person who I didn't care about embarrassing.

Handing the clipboard back the woman looked between me and the clipboard. "Oliver? He's your dad?" I nodded. "He's a vampire."

"And?"

"Your human. How can you still be so young when-"

"I'm special." I shrugged, cutting her off. I didn't want to answer any other questions and just get this over and done with.

"Right... Well since your under 18-"

"I'm 19 actually... well that's what the doctors said."

"Do you have any identification?"

"Nope."

"Then I need your... parents... permission." It looked like she was having a hard time getting her head around Oliver being a dad.

I sighed. "Okay, I will be back with him."

I went out and back to the car where Amelie was patiently waiting.

"How was it?" She asked.

"I need parents permission because I'm under 18." Amelie gave me a long look then went to open the car door but I grabbed her arm. "But you can't give it, cos you're not my parent, remember?"

"I will handle it."

"No! I mean I put someone else as my parent, we need to get him."

"Who? Please say it's not Myrnin."

"Oliver."

Amelie stared at me for a short while. Then she said, "This will be interesting."