The Ascent

Chapter 47

"Daddy," a groggy voice said as Ariyana slowly stirred up. "Where is Daddy? I want my Daddy!"

Jasmine understood the feeling better than she wanted to admit, even to herself. When she was young, she also wanted her father to be there for all the doctor's and dentist's visits. For a while, he was.

Until he wasn't anymore.

She still remembered how scared and vulnerable she felt the first time she had to go alone, as her mother claimed to be too sensitive to the pains of others, especially her child, to stand by her side. It made Jasmine feel like the earth under her feet had vanished, and she was freefalling into an endless abyss.

"It's okay. Your father will be here soon," Jasmine said, hurrying to the girl's side, gently clasping her hand. "He just needed to check on your brother and Isaac."

She was unsure how long she could keep the storm at bay, but she did her best to sound soothing and reassuring. She needed to sound like a trustworthy adult even though she suddenly felt like a small child - lost and unsure of what to do.

"You don't want the two of them to cause some trouble, do you?" Jasmine asked, trying a more playful but, at the same time, serious approach.

Ariyana shook her head from side to side, but even the fact that she seemed to understand couldn't stop the tears from filling her big, fearful eyes.

"Ari," Asher exclaimed with relief, unceremoniously barging into the room, closely followed by Plague. "You're awake."

"Daddy!" Ari exclaimed tearfully, throwing her tiny arms around his neck and sobbing uncontrollably. "I had a bad dream! There was something in my head! It told me to leave, but I said no!"

"That's my girl!" Asher said, pride swelling in his eyes. "You did the right thing. You need to always fight for yourself no matter what. Never let anyone tell you to be someone other than the wonderful person that you are now."

As he said that, he gently stroked Ariyana's hair to calm them both down.

"You should take her to Arman and Isaac. I'm sure they'll be able to take her mind off of what happened."

"What about you?" Asher asked, looking around the room and people in it suspiciously. "Aren't you coming with us?"

"I'll be with you soon," Jasmine said, looking above Asher's head, not daring to look into his eyes. "It's just that with everything that has happened with Ariyana, they didn't have the chance to finish my examination."

"Is that true?" Asher asked, addressing Melissa, his tone terse and on guard.

"Yes, usually we have to do both blood tests and the physical examination to determine parasite presence, but since your daughter started seizing, we had to act quickly and do the procedure before it was too late," Melissa said without missing a beat.

"How come they told me Arman had it too, but no procedure was necessary?" Asher asked, picking Ariyana up in his arms.

"Everyone is different," Melissa said thoughtfully. "Sometimes the person's immune system can kill the parasite with little to no consequences to the host. That must have happened with your son."

"How is it possible that my children are infected and the rest of us aren't?" Asher continued his angry interrogation. "We have been together all this time. It seems impossible."

"Asher, there will be time for questions later," Jasmine said, feeling the parasite in her stirring, trying to stop her from doing what had to be done. "Let her do her job for the time being and we'll try to get more information later."

Asher, gently cradling his daughter in his arms, looked around quickly, assessing the situation. Fire in his eyes indicated he wasn't happy. Yet, the reasonable side of who he was won over, and he slowly nodded his head.

"See you soon," he said, looking at Plaque provocatively, daring someone to contradict him.

No one did, so he quietly left the room.

Immediately upon his exit, Jasmine sank onto the bed with beads of sweat covering her forehead.

"You need to do it quickly," Jasmine told Melissa urgently. "Something seems off. I can feel it squirming around. I could never feel that before."

Melissa hurried to prepare the syringe, the process always going more smoothly when the host was heavily sedated, probably because of the intricate connection the host shared with the parasite.

"Wait!" Jasmine exclaimed as Melissa was about to inject her. "Does it hurt? How does it work?"

Ever since she was young, Jasmine needed to understand things. If she could know what to expect, it made it all somehow easier. Even if there was a lot of pain involved, she could bear it if she knew how and when it was coming.

"It shouldn't hurt at all," Melissa said calmly in the reassuring voice of a doctor that you couldn't help but trust. "What we do is basically put you to sleep as it makes the parasite less active too. I guess you could say it slows its reflexes. Then we use the special mixture of medications we came up with that they seem to dislike the most."

"And that makes them come out like what I saw with Ariyana?" Jasmine asked, disgusted by the very notion of something like that being in her body and needing to come out.

She could imagine it so clearly, which somehow made it even worse. It made it real and not just an abstract process that other people would have seen without their imagination forcing them to visualize it like Jasmine's was making her do.

"Usually, yes," Melissa said hastily. "It basically starts looking for a new host, one that is more comfortable to live in, I guess you could say."

"And what are the possible complications?" Jasmine asked, shifting uneasily on the uncomfortable bed.

"All the symptoms I mentioned before: migraines, nose bleeds, dizziness, and psychological issues," Melissa started listing them off. "But also, brain damage and, in some rare cases, death caused by the host body being overflooded with alien toxins that are usually released by the parasite if it's damaged during the procedure."

"Okay, good to know," Jasmine said, swallowing hard. "Then please don't damage the parasite."

"I'll do my best not to," Melissa said quietly.

She had been clearly doing her job for far too long to make any promises she wasn't sure she could keep. So, Jasmine was happy with her trying, and all she could do was pray for everything to go smoothly.

"And if something goes wrong after all, tell Asher thanks for me, will you?" Jasmine said, realizing she needed to leave at least some last words behind just in case.

Even though thinking about her death as a possibility was terrifying, Jasmine still didn't want Asher to be left behind without a word of goodbye. It would have been too cruel, and Jasmine knew better than anyone how that felt. After all, she had been suddenly left behind in the past without a word of explanation or comfort. For that reason, she felt like she owed Asher more than that, as he and the children had helped keep her going when Jasmine wasn't sure she had the strength needed to keep fighting.

"For what?" Melissa asked, injecting the sedative in the arm Jasmine offered.

"For being there... for... Well, he'll know. Just tell him thanks," Jasmine said as her eyes fluttered and she drifted off to sleep.

It was not the comfortable type of sleep people usually go to bed with, that has the faith of waking up in the morning and going on with one's day, but the uncomfortable sleep of the sick, knowing too well that they might never wake up again. On the other hand, after everything Jasmine had seen until then, dying in her sleep didn't sound like such a bad idea. At least she wouldn't suffer like Raven did. It would be peaceful.

Still, the last thing she felt before falling asleep was hope.

She was hopeful to wake up once again.