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Placing an IV was the struggle of a lifetime. By the time they brought in the third nurse to try, Apollo had rolled over on his side and was trying to hide his arm from her. A fourth nurse finally managed it, but Apollo promptly ripped it out. Since they couldn’t give him anything through the IV, they settled for injecting a massive amount of what I think is Tylenol.
Which did nothing.
Same for the cooling blanket. Same for the ice packs they tucked around him in the bed. Same for a bathtub filled with ice.
It’s awful, because everyone here is being so kind. Even when the nurses speak to me in English, I have trouble understanding what they’re saying, but they’re gentle, and they’re careful with Apollo, and it just feels like it should be working. When people are that good, their efforts should make a difference.
I know life doesn’t work that way. If it did, nothing bad would ever have happened to Apollo in his entire life. And more bad things would have happened to me, because I am objectively less good than Apollo.
And we’ve been here so long.
We’re in the hospital so long that my family arrives. Our family arrives. They had enough time to fly from the United States and land in Germany and get themselves to the hospital.
I’m still awake, and Apollo is still dying, and it’s chaos.
Castor and Pollux burst into the hospital room and fling themselves at Apollo for glancing hugs, followed by Calliope and Orion. Calliope kisses Apollo’s cheek and retreats with tears in her eyes. Orion pats Apollo’s arm and follows Calliope. Daisy and Hercules come to me first while my parents bend over Apollo’s bed, telling him they love him.
“I don’t want to go to Vegas, Dad,” Apollo says, and for a minute I think I’m going to watch my father lose his mind in front of everyone. The last time he looked this scared was when Daisy’s killer nightmare thing was happening.
But he covers it.
“You don’t have to go to Vegas,” he says, smoothing his hand over Apollo’s hair. “Of course you don’t have to go.”
“I’m not joining the Navy,” answers Apollo, so I don’t know if it matters to him that everyone is here at all, because he can’t tell what they’re saying.
And then Ares bursts into the room, and it’s all I can do not to freak out with heartbreak for him. He is beside himself. It’s a funhouse mirror of how he was at Calliope and Orion’s party, when he was flustered because he was late.
Ares isn’t flustered now. He’s enraged, and obviously terrified. He stomps through the hospital room with his fists balled at his side and when he sees Apollo in the hospital bed, he makes this sound like?—
I don’t know what it’s like. I’ve never heard anything like it. And then he completely loses it, shouting at the nurses to do something, shouting at three different doctors to do something to save his brother with tears leaking out of his eyes, and it takes my dad and Poseidon to talk him down. If they weren’t here, I think Ares might tear the hospital apart. I think he’d be strong enough to do it. For a long time, I thought Hercules was the angry one. He was angry when he first came to my parents’ house, and angry when he left for the military, and angry when he came home after he was wounded. He was angry until he and Daisy got together. Maybe she was what he needed to calm down.
I used to be what Apollo needed, and now the only real tool I had—my presence—is worthless.
Poseidon finally lets go of Ares, who comes back to the side of Apollo’s bed, drops down into a chair, and reaches for his hands.
Apollo looks at his brother.
Everybody else has melted away. I should—I should give them some space, too, since nothing I’m doing is helping.
Holding Apollo’s hand isn’t a cure.
“I won’t leave this time,” Ares says to Apollo as I cross behind him. “I know I left you before, but I’ll kill anybody who tries.”
Tries what?
I don’t know, and I don’t ask.
I go out into the hall.
Uncle Poseidon is several paces away with my dad, my mom, my aunt Brigit, and Uncle Hades. Poseidon’s talking to three doctors in rapid German. He listens to what they say, closes his eyes, then repeats it to my dad in English.
Hades detaches himself from the circle and comes to me.
The second he’s close enough, he opens his arms and folds me into a huge hug.
And I’m, like, fine. I’m not the one who’s hallucinating and dying. I’m not the one that nobody can save. I’m great.
I have about half a second to realize that I’m going to freak out before it happens.
