Naked Came the Vampire (Hypernaturals 1)

Ready to Leave the Hospital

Danny Hernandez came to see me at 9 AM, and from the look on his face, I could tell I scared him to death. The funny thing about being delirious or in a coma: You have no idea how you are affecting others around you left in this world. I felt guilty, because over 'there' in the warm, safe dreams I only thought about Jessica.

"Dude! You look... great! Wow! Amazing! I thought you were dead, man. Dead. Seriously: Towards the worst of it, your mom and dad were asking me if I knew if you had a will or anything. Dude, that is one sad conversation you never want to have with a parent. Anyone really, but a parent especially! Fuck, man! It was horrible."

I could only imagine. "I take it you are the one that let them know about me being sick?"

"Yeah: I called them. They were up in Montana. I told them what was up. They got here in record time. They'll be in shortly. I live a lot closer... they've been staying at the house, keeping Ralph and Princess fed, watered and petted." Ralph is my 12-pound orange tabby. Typical street brawler when it came to other cats, except that he loved people and his fellow feline roomie. Princess is a 16-pound Maine Coon, and she preferred to skip the fighting and get right to the having her ears and tummy rubbed.

I could see the two of them alone with my parents "I'll bet they are spoiled rotten."

Danny laughed at me. "Yeah: Like you never spoil them."

I changed the subject. "Montana huh? I wonder what they were doing up there."

Danny has known my parents for years. He is another son to them. "Usual saving the world stuff, I'm sure"

I looked over at my friend. He is of similar build to me: Bigger overall though not as tall, muscular, and with a firm layer of extra stuffing from beer and food. We are both fairly dark skinned, Danny from his Hispanic heritage, and mine from American Indian and African and who knows what all?

My family is mutts of the first order. No nationalities or ethnicities are unrepresented. The family tree is more of a family bush.

We both have longish hair, though his is black, and mine dark brown. His has more curl. He wears a mustache and soul patch, where I am currently clean-shaven. I used to have a beard, but I shaved it off this last summer just to see what my face looked like. They obviously shaved me while I was away in paradise with Jessica, as I do not have eight days of growth.

I paused to consider how far out of it I had been. Someone shaving my face, and me not knowing it in any way. It never even made it into my dreams. I rubbed my chin as I thought about that, and realized I was that far gone fairly recently. There was barely any stubble. They had not expected me back, and apparently, I had no plans for coming back before I did, but when I did, I surfaced fast.

The look of concern on Daniel's face touched me. We are closer than brothers most of the time. I did not mean to worry him like that.

"Keep up the workouts while I was down?" I asked. Working out is a pain in the ass, and so we kept at each other to make sure we both kept going to the gym.

"Yeah... not as much though. Spent a lot of time here and eating hospital food." He pointed vaguely away and down at where I could only assume the cafeteria is relative to us.

"Oh, man... sorry about that!" Hospital food is weirdly bad for you. Lots of fried foods, if nothing else.

"Actually, they have a few good things down there. I was surprised. Not sure why they have chicken fried steak in a hospital though."

"Increase the customers?" I guessed.

"Yeah: Probably." He paused, added casually "Some cute nurses down there too though, so there is that."