Chapter 28 : Miraculous Recovery
Vicki was eating jello when I walked into her hospital room.
Not lying in a coma. Not hooked up to life support. Sitting up in bed, spooning red gelatin into her mouth, complaining to a nurse about the TV channels.
I stopped in the doorway, my brain refusing to process what I was seeing.
"Matty!" Vicki waved her spoon at me. "Finally. This place is so boring."
The bandage on her throat was small. Impossibly small for a wound that should have required emergency surgery. I'd seen her throat torn open less than twelve hours ago—exposed muscle, severed vessels, the kind of damage that killed people.
Now she was eating jello.
"The doctor said she can probably go home tomorrow." The nurse checked Vicki's IV with practiced efficiency. "We've never seen healing like this. The tissue regeneration is... remarkable."
It worked. My blood actually worked.
I found a chair and sat down heavily, legs suddenly unreliable. The relief hit like a physical blow—weeks of preparation, months of fear, and my sister was alive because I'd pressed a bloody palm against her wound.
"You look worse than I do," Vicki said. "Did you sleep at all?"
"Not really."
"Idiot." But she smiled when she said it.
The nurse left, and we sat in the particular silence of hospital rooms—machines beeping, distant voices in the hallway, the antiseptic smell that never quite covered the undertone of illness and fear.
"Vicki..." I wasn't sure how to ask. "Do you remember what happened?"
Her expression flickered. The confident front cracked for a moment, revealing something frightened underneath.
"Not really." She set down her spoon. "I remember the party. Jeremy was being annoying. Then I went to the woods because..." She frowned. "I don't know why I went to the woods."
"You don't remember being attacked?"
"I remember..." Her voice went distant. "Eyes. Red eyes. And fog, I think? Everything's jumbled up." She rubbed her arms like she was cold. "The doctors keep asking what the animal looked like. I can't tell them because I can't remember."
Compulsion. Damon compelled away her memories.
The realization was both relief and frustration. Relief because Vicki didn't remember the monster who'd tried to kill her. Frustration because she'd never be able to identify her attacker, never understand the danger she'd barely escaped.
"It's okay," I said. "You're alive. That's what matters."
"Something's wrong, Matty." Her voice dropped to a whisper. "I feel different. Like there's something missing in my head. And I keep... I keep having dreams about a man with blue eyes. He's smiling, but it's not a nice smile."
Damon.
I squeezed her hand. "Trauma does weird things to memory. Give it time."
She didn't look convinced, but she let it go.
A knock at the door interrupted us. Sheriff Forbes stepped in, notepad in hand, professional sympathy on her face.
"Vicki. I'm glad you're feeling better." She glanced at me. "Matt. Mind if I ask your sister some questions about the attack?"
"Go ahead." I didn't move from my chair.
The interview was painful to watch. Vicki tried to answer, but her memories were scrambled, contradictory. She described eyes that changed color. Fog that rolled in from nowhere. A feeling of heaviness, like someone had pressed a hand against her thoughts.
Sheriff Forbes wrote it all down with the patience of someone who'd dealt with confused victims before. But I saw the crease between her eyebrows, the way she kept circling back to details that didn't make sense.
She knows something's wrong. She's on the Council—she's seen vampire attacks before.
"We're classifying it as an animal attack for now," Forbes said finally. "Mountain lion, probably. They've been spotted in the county recently."
Vicki nodded, accepting the explanation she knew was false.
After the Sheriff left, I made an excuse about finding the gift shop. The hallway was quieter than the room, and I needed a moment to process.
My blood heals others. Confirmed.
The implications spiraled outward. If I could heal wounds this severe, what else could I do? Could I save people from vampire bites before they turned? Could I counter vampire blood with my own?
Don't get ahead of yourself. One success doesn't mean you understand the rules.
I bought Vicki's favorite candy—sour gummies, the kind that turned your tongue green—and brought them back to her room. She ate the entire bag while we watched terrible daytime television, and for a few hours, we were just siblings again. No vampires. No supernatural healing. Just Matt and Vicki Donovan, surviving like they always had.
Two days later, against all medical logic, they discharged her.
I drove her home through streets that looked exactly like they had before the bonfire. Same houses, same trees, same small-town normality. But everything had changed. Damon Salvatore had announced his presence in blood, and the war I'd spent three months preparing for had finally begun.
Vicki fell asleep on the couch within an hour of getting home, exhausted despite her miraculous recovery. I covered her with a blanket and sat in the kitchen, watching the sunset through the window.
I can heal wounds. But can I heal what Damon did to her mind?
The answer, I was afraid, was no.
Some damage couldn't be fixed with blood.
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