33. All For Love.

I was furious. I had tried to kill this one, and this one caught me and tied my hands, carried me or dragged me out and threw me in a cage, at least freed my hands. I tried to find a way to escape.

 I was desperately trying to get out of the cage. I was wrenching and thrashing, trying to twist the bars, climbing up and down the cage. I cursed and cried out long and persistently. Something about this captor had made me hesitate; the smell of it had calmed me, but only for a second as the drug-induced panic hit me, and all reason went out of my head.

There was a mattress and blankets at the bottom of the cage. It was almost softer than the bed I had been tied to all this time. I did not know the time, how long I had even been a prisoner; I didn't even know my own name. I was so deep in this drug-induced panic.

My rage was enough for a long time; it kept my body going, and I kept fighting and fighting, desperately thrashing around as long as I could. But I was skinny, less than 30 kilos clearly, with wounds and bleeding, and although my rage was strong and powerful, sometimes only biology wins, and then even my supernatural rage doesn't help matters at all.

I felt the cold creep in, my eyes blurred, and I continued my rampage, not even realizing what I was doing until suddenly, as if by pressing a button, my powers disappeared again somewhere. I collapsed to the bottom of the cage, unconscious. My body couldn't take it anymore, my rage dripped down the well, and my condition collapsed as blue sleep, pharmaceuticals, tranquilizers, and bullet wounds hit me.

The men drove through Illinois. They had left Princeton, and it was about a two-hour drive to Chicago. Mimi raged, cursed, screamed, and climbed inside the cage, and Damon tried to talk calmly, but it was no use, so he finally fell silent.

The journey continued, and Magnum concentrated on driving, not listening to the wild beast in the cage. He didn't even know how Damon would get that wild beast out of that cage. Even Magnum could smell Mimi's blood, this sweat, this strange smell that must have been the drugs. 

When Damon noticed Magnum was sniffing the air more carefully as if to smell something, Damon said, " There's nothing wrong with the car; nothing is burning; it's Mimi's bloodlust, that burning candle smell."

Magnum calmed down and thought to himself that, yes, vampires are strange creatures for smelling something burning when they have bloodlust. They were approaching Chicago, and it was only half an hour's drive away. Damon listened as Mimi struggled with her cage, screamed, and cursed, and then suddenly, there was silence.

He had just been thinking of the best way to get Mimi out of the cage, and now there was this silence. He glanced at the rearview mirror and didn't see Mimi. He turned in his seat and saw Mimi slumping at the cage's bottom. He saw the blood spatter on the cage padding and knew that Mimi had reached her limit. Magnum sensed the change in Damon and tried to calm him as he began to smell burning wood.

Magnum said. "We're almost there, twenty minutes to go."

Damon wondered what he could do if Mimi had twenty minutes. He looked at Mimi, watching him, and tried to think if there was anything he could do already.

Magnum called Samuel and said, "Magnum here, we're on our way, 20 minutes. Mimi just collapsed, unconscious in a cage and unresponsive, smelling of drugs, and was in terrible shape, a killing machine but probably weighing less than thirty kilos."

Samuel said, "OK, I'll get things in order. I'm ready."

Magnum hit the gas and tried to drive as fast as he could, but they were already in the city, and there were traffic lights and traffic jams, and you just had to wait. Samuel would be waiting, and then they would get on with it.

The minutes felt like hours in Damon's mind, and he was already wondering what he would have done to Mimi if he'd gone straight to the cage to help, but then again, his teeth weren't responding at all anymore, and he had very few tools at his disposal. 

After 20 minutes, they turned at the gate of the Chicago house, and Damon knew he had to take Mimi straight downstairs. Samuel came out to meet him. Magnum stopped the car, and Damon rushed to the back door and opened it. Mimi lay unconscious, pale, and silent at the bottom of the cage. Mimi looked tiny, and he had to watch for a moment to see if she was breathing.

Damon cursed in his mind.

He opened the cage door, touched Mimi, shook her a little, and spoke softly to her, "Baby, come on, baby, can you hear me? Try to move a little," but nothing.

Mimi was ice cold. Damon took the cleanest blankets and wrapped the unconscious woman in them. Mimi lay limp in his arms as he carried the non-existent weight of the scroll in his arms. Adam was also at the door, his expression stern.

Damon said little anything; he whispered encouragingly, mostly to Mimi, and then he told Magnum to bring the enzyme tanks. Damon didn't know if this was a shock or what had happened to Mimi. She was white as a sheet, pulse and breathing non-existent and ice cold, lips blue. Mimi was tough, unkillable, but the thought didn't cross Damon's mind at all now. He wouldn't let Samuel look at Mimi yet. He was protecting her.

He hurried down the stairs and walked down the white corridor through the double doors. Samuel walked ahead, Magnum carrying the enzyme containers.

Magnum briefly explained the enzyme business to Samuel, who furrowed his brows and said, "I can put the enzymes back into her bloodstream once I find out what the hell they wanted them for. And what their function is with Mimi."

Magnum said nothing.

Damon said: "Mimi was screaming, shrieking, climbing up in the cage for almost the whole two hours of the drive, and now she has been quiet for the last half hour, and I found her like this. Is it shock or drugs or what? This girl doesn't weigh anything."

Samuel cursed. Damon followed suit as Samuel lowered the side of one of the beds down. He carried Mimi to one of the hospital beds and removed the blankets. Samuel came to help, and he put Mimi in restraints just in case.

Damon watched momentarily, pointed to the shackles, and said: "Really? She's pretty harmless, though."

Samuel nodded. Safety first.

"You take her temperature and blood sugar. She was very dangerous, and even though she's unconscious now, I can't guarantee she won't wake up. So we'll take it very carefully. I'm trying to get an intravenous connection," Samuel pointed out.

Damon didn't argue. He took off his jacket and went to pull on his scrubs, then came over to Mimi. He took the infrared thermometer and pointed it at Mimi. The reading was really low, 34 degrees Celsius. That partially explained the collapse, but why had the temperature plummeted so quickly? 

Damon said: "Core temperature 34 Celsius."

Samuel furrowed his brow and concentrated on getting the cannula into the central vein, which was no easy task, as Mimi was very dehydrated and in a weak condition. 

Damon went to the cabinet, grabbed a blood glucose meter and strips, set up the meter, took the lancet, and started working. He pressed the lancet against Mimi's ice-cold fingertip and hoped he was getting enough blood. He got a drop of blood from Mimi's fingertip and pressed the strip against the drop of blood. The machine read LOW. The machine's lowest reading was 0.8, so Mimi's blood sugar was at the bottom. Damon cursed in his mind.

Damon said to Samuel, who had just gotten the cannula in place and had it growing into Mimi's skin, in a tight voice: "Blood sugar is low, no result."

Meanwhile, Samuel had managed to cover the cannula and ensure it wouldn't come loose. Now, they were just stabilizing Mimi, not doing anything else yet. Mimi should be allowed to recover, and then they could do more once her body could withstand surgery, for example.

Samuel told Damon, "Get the incubator as high as possible."

Damon again did as he was told. Samuel had already padded one incubator ready, and Damon turned it on at 45 degrees. He checked that the oxygen tanks were working and everything was in place, not because he didn't trust Samuel, but because he was a control freak. He had to be in charge.

The incubator would warm up in half an hour. Damon covered Mimi with several blankets while Samuel put some saline solution in the microwave to warm up. Damon was already hanging three liters of strong sugar solution and opened the drip to full.

He began to look Mimi over carefully, undressing her and wiping and washing what he could, trying not to cool her too much. He felt so many bullets in her non-existent skinny body and tried to pour his blood into the open wounds. The bullets would stay inside Mimi would do nothing as long as she didn't move.

Damon stroked Mimi, holding her hand. Samuel had taken several tubes of blood so they could get some idea of what was in Mimi's blood. Samuel called his team, and soon, a couple of guys came out an hour later to pick up all those sports bags full of meds.

Something inside Damon was very happy about it, as if he was deep down very happy about it, but then again, the evil seemed to spill over, and he was not happy about the removal of all the new drugs. Damon quickly shrugged off that feeling and was just happy to have the drugs and the temptation to use them out of his reach.

Once the incubator was warm, they dripped three-liter bags of sugar and two bags of warm liquid into Mimi. Damon gently lifted Mimi into the incubator. Mimi weighed 28 kilos... Mimi's blood sugar had not risen until just shy of the magic 0.8. so they got the result. They continued to drip the sugar. And he waited for the blood test results.

Damon sat next to the incubator for a while, holding Mimi's hand and waiting, hoping she wouldn't lie in a coma for six months and cursing when his teeth wouldn't do anything, no matter how much he smelled her blood.

They covered the incubator so it would be dim, safe, and familiar if Mimi happened to wake up. Damon didn't go anywhere for the first day, and it was only when Adam threatened to have Samuel sedate Damon if he didn't come to eat and rest that Damon reluctantly agreed to go upstairs.

To eat and sleep, he slept in their bedroom, smelling Mimi's pillow and just trying to hang on. It seemed absolutely awful that Mimi was in that condition because of him, and he couldn't blame her if she was still cranky with him when she finally woke up.

Damon slept for twelve hours, and then Adam ordered lots of meat and groceries, making Damon make food for Mimi. This also made a big batch of visceral suspension ready so that when Mimi's body was ready, he could feed it directly into her stomach with a feeding tube.

It took three days before they were able to stabilize Mimi enough to withstand surgery, and they were able to dig the bullets out of Mimi. There were 25 of them. Then they put Mimi back in the incubator to recover. And get herself in a bit of shape. Damon's next concern was Mimi's vampire side, as he could still smell her thirst for blood and wondered the best way to stop it. One option would be to put his blood, or human blood, in the puree once Mimi got the feeding button on, but Damon wasn't sure if that would work.