Sunday, October 15, 2000 (2 PM)

       Joe clutched tightly to Andrea when she announced that Vanessa was in a coma and he checked the tears that were about to spill down his cheek as he looked over Andrea’s head to his sister who stood to the other side, holding onto Andrea’s arm.  Joe felt the blood flow out of his face and the world spun for a moment but he forced himself to breathe.  He wasn’t about to pass out.  Vanessa was the one in danger right now, not him.  Vanessa was the one who fought for her life, the one who needed all of the support that he could give to her.  He vowed to give her all of it that he could.

       “Sit down, Andrea,” Mandy told the older woman.  “Before you fall down.  Connor, pull that chair over here, please?  Thank you.”

       Connor sat a chair just behind Andrea and Joe helped her to sit.  Andrea’s face was much more pale than it should be and Joe knew that the situation was worse than Andrea let on about.  He sighed and stood beside her while she took several deep breaths and a drink from a glass of water that Samantha had poured out of a pitcher that sat on the table.

       “It’s to be expected,” Andrea said softly.  “She’s so badly injured and with the head injury, the doctor said he was surprised when this didn’t happen earlier.  He wants to call in some more specialists, a neurosurgeon of some sort to look at her head.  I told him to do what he has to do.  My insurance will cover most of it, thank God but I’d have him do it even it wouldn’t.”

       She took another drink of her water and sat the glass down at an angle on the table.  Mandy grabbed it before it fell and sat it upright.  Joe shivered and jammed his hands down into the pockets of his trousers while he looked up at Andrea.  Andrea returned his gaze and for a moment neither said anything.

       “I’ve got to go back,” Andrea said a minute later.

       “Stay and eat something first,” Mandy said to her and she filled up a plate with a sandwich, some potato and macaroni salad and a small green salad with a side of dressing.  Mandy sat the plate in front of Andrea.  “You look tired, Andrea and you really should eat something.  We have plenty, we always get enough to feed a small army.  You need it more than the hungry bears back at the dorm.”

       Joe nodded to her and sat down in a chair beside her.  He poured her a cup of coffee from another mug and mixed in a package of sugar, which he knew she liked from when he spent so much time at her house during his senior year of high school.  He wanted to get back to Vanessa but he wanted to make sure Andrea took care of herself.  He felt exhausted himself and if he was, she had to be twice as exhausted as he.

       “I suppose,” Andrea’s voice trailed off but she took a bite of the grilled chicken sandwich that Mandy gave her.  “Thank you.”

       They were quiet while Andrea ate some of her food and Joe took a few more bites of his own still mostly full plate of food.  He idly pushed some of the macaroni salad around with his fork but took very few bites of the food himself, out of weariness, out of sheer tiredness.  He sighed and shook his head, then leaned back.

       Andrea ate a few more bites of her food and sat back.  Mandy watched her, then sighed and dug into the hamper provided by the restaurant.  She came out with a plastic plate cover and put it over the food, after she piled more food onto the plate.  She wrapped all of that within plastic wrap and handed it back to Andrea.

“I’m sorry,” Andrea said.  “I just wanted to explain to you what happened.  The doctor said it would be a good idea to limit visitors for a while, just for a day or two and I really think you should go home and get some more sleep Joe.  You’re completely washed out too.”

       “I won’t be able to sleep,” Joe said darkly.  “I didn’t last night because I kept seeing her.  I’m better off staying here…”

       “No, Joe,” Andrea said sternly and Joe met her gaze.  “The doctor won’t even let you into her room to see her right now.  You all need to go home for a while. I promise I’ll let you know the minute there’s any change in her condition but you can’t see her again until tomorrow.  He said it’s for her own safety, so please, please, Joe…”

       “I won’t go in her room, then,” Joe said.  “But I’m staying here, Andrea.  If I leave… what happens?  What if she… and I’m not here?”

       “She won’t!” Andrea exclaimed.  “I promise you she won’t, Joe.  But you need to take care of yourself.  One of us has to be strong, to have all of our energy and that’s going to be you.  Go home, Joe and get some rest.  Promise me!”

       Joe sighed.  He didn’t want to be dragged away from her, not for anything.  He wanted to sit by Vanessa until she woke up again, until she told them all that she was all right, that she would live and nothing would stop them from living the life they talked about so often. 

       “Alright,” he said finally.  “I’ll go home and take a nap and another shower, but…”

       “Don’t come back until tomorrow,” Andrea said more sternly, in her ‘mom’ voice that sounded a bit too much like Joe’s mother’s own ‘mom’ voice.  Did all mothers have that voice?  The one that warned an errant child that they were about to step over the line? “Go relax if you can’t do anything else.  I know those friends of yours are in town, go see them.  You know Vanessa would want you to.  She’ll want a whole big report on the party, who wore what, who came, what people said about Dana’s wedding, all of that and you’re just the one to give it to her.”

       That sounded more like Mandy’s department but Joe knew what Andrea tried to do and he finally agreed.  Mandy looked vaguely strangled and started to stand.

       “What’s wrong?” Joe asked his twin.

       “Dana’s wedding, but…” Mandy started.  “I…”

       “Go ahead and go to it,” Andrea ordered.  “You really should, there’s nothing you can do for Vanessa by not going to it and you know she’ll feel guilty when she wakes up because you didn’t go!  Do it for her.”

       Mandy frowned but finally she nodded.

       “And you,” Andrea said again to Joe.  “Go!”

       “Alright, alright,” Joe said.  “I’ll do it.”

       He didn’t have to like it, but he’d do it.  He looked at his half eaten plate of food, food from the best take-out restaurant in town and asked Mandy to package it up for him, he was going to go home and finish eating it there.

       “I want to be alone for a while,” he said to her, pointedly.  “I need some time and space to think about things.  I’ll get stuff ready for the barbecue tonight, all right?”

       They all looked at him, his twin with concern, his brother with more concern, his friends with equal parts concern and worry.  Frank looked frazzled and partly angry, his eyes were hidden by the sunglasses but Joe knew him well enough, by the thin line of his lips and the way he stood, that he was thinking about something that upset him.  Vanessa?  Or something else?  Joe wasn’t sure which it was.  Whatever it was had Frank on edge; he stood stiffly, his thoughts obviously not where the rest of them were.  Sam looked distanced too, but she kept glancing up at the fourth floor of the hospital, so Joe knew she was thinking only about Vanessa right then.

       “Go ahead,” Mandy said to him.  “You go ahead and go home, Joe.  Take a breather and relax for a while.  Swim laps in the swimming pool if you can’t sit still.  I’ll pick up the hamburgers, hotdogs and buns on the way, after the wedding.  But go home.”

       Joe finally nodded as Mandy stepped up to him and put a box in his hands; the remainder of his lunch.  She kissed his cheek and took his hand as she turned to the others.

       “Come on,” Mandy encouraged Joe.  “I’ll walk you to your Camaro.  Just promise me you won’t wreck it on the way home?”

       “Haven’t managed to wreck it yet,” Joe managed a tease.  “It’s my baby, I don’t have any plans at all to wreck it.”

       “It’s all purely miracle, of course,” Mandy tweaked back and began to lead him away from the others.  “In fact, I’m sure you have marveled both mom and dad with the fact that you haven’t wrecked it in the year and a half you’ve had it.  Let’s try for another year and a half all right?”

       Joe knew what Mandy was doing, of course.  She was trying to help him forget about Vanessa and he knew that she knew that he knew.  He didn’t mind, though, coming from Mandy he rarely minded.  He cast one more look up at the room that was Vanessa’s, then allowed Mandy to lead him to his car in the parking garage.

       Joe couldn’t shake the feeling that leaving was a mistake that, if he did leave, that if he went home like they wanted him to do, he would never see Vanessa alive again.  Yet he also knew that if Vanessa was in that much danger, that if there was a possibility she would die tonight, that Andrea wouldn’t be forcing him to go home.  That she sent him home was meant to comfort Joe, to tell him that Vanessa held on and that she would be there in the morning.

       Joe shook his head and forced back the ill feeling.  He didn’t need that to worry about on top of everything else. 

       “What’s wrong?” Mandy zeroed in, as usual, right into his emotions and her grip on his upper arm tightened to force him to stop. 

       “Nothing, really,” Joe said.  “I think I’m jumping at ghosts.  I just keep thinking that if I leave, I won’t see her again.  That’s all.”

       Mandy smiled and they stood for a minute and looked at each other.  Joe, when he was younger, had sometimes wished his twin was another boy but as they grew older, Joe’s opinion changed.  He was very glad his twin was a girl, especially a girl who wasn’t at all afraid to discuss such mushy subjects as ‘feelings’ and ‘emotions’ and who was more fearless than either Joe or Frank.

       “Andrea wouldn’t have sent you away if there was any danger of that,” Mandy told him.  “She knows what that would do to you, if… if the worst happened and you weren’t hear.”

       If she died, Joe heard quite clearly in her unspoken thoughts.

       “I know,” Joe said.  “I guess I’m just suffering from that lack of control syndrome again.  You know, the one you say that gets me into the most trouble?”

       Mandy batted him playfully on the arm and they continued their walk back to the car.  Joe chuckled at her and the rest of their walk was silent, at least to anyone near them.  In the way of twins, however, Joe communicated with his twin in other ways and no real words were needed.

 

       On their way back out to Connor’s Blazer, Frank pursed his lips together several times in anxious thought, a habit that went back to his earliest childhood when he solved a perplexing puzzle in school or when he solved a perplexing puzzle at home.  He saw quite clearly things in his head, still, a habit that his ‘blind coach’ told him that few formerly sighted people outgrew, at least so long as their visual memory supplied them with the images, sights and colors needed to form such visualizations.  His particular coach, though Frank knew that many coaches advocated just the opposite, told him to work with his visual memory as often as he was able, he would lose images much slower if he did that and if an image became cloudy, he could sometimes clear it by just trying to focus on it.

       Frank focused on it now, a rather simple task but one that for some reason was important to him.  Even he wasn’t sure why it was but as Samantha led him back through the hospital and Connor hummed an off-key tune half under his breath, Frank tried to remember just what Joe’s Camaro looked like.  For some reason, when Andrea had been convincing Joe to go home, to rest up and to come back the next day, Frank’s mind latched onto a visual image of Joe’s Camaro.  Dark blue in color, a 1999 model from the year they graduated high school, it was Joe’s pride and joy, at least so far as inanimate objects were concerned.  The interior, and Frank’s memory of that was even more foggy for the few times he actually rode in Joe’s Camaro, was, Frank thought, gray.  Joe had a key chain attached to another metal chain draped around the mirror.  On one side of the key chain was a picture of the family and on the other was a picture of their friends.  The key chain that Joe used for his eyes had, on both sides of the small picture-holder, pictures of Vanessa.

       Frank shook his head, not sure why the memory had been so important.  He pursed his lips together a few more times as he thought about it, then shrugged and stored it away for later; there must be something about Joe’s Camaro that caused Frank some sense of consternation.  He just wished he knew what or why.  Perhaps because the Camaro was such a part of Joe – Joe’s ‘baby.’ 

       “Something wrong?” Samantha asked.

       “Huh?” Frank asked and then he grinned and shrugged.  “No, nothing’s wrong, actually.  I was just thinking about Joe’s Camaro for some reason.”

       “Oh,” Samantha sounded confused.  “Should I ask why?”

       “You could ask why but I wouldn’t be able to give you an answer,” Frank shrugged again and lowered his sunglasses slightly to give Samantha a ‘pretend look.’  He couldn’t, of course.  The same uniform darkness was all he saw anytime but he was able to cock an eyebrow at her and she could see that quite well.  Samantha laughed and relaxed and Frank grinned.

       “Are you two coming or should I leave you behind?” Connor called out from down the hall.  “I swear, I can’t bring you two anywhere.”

       “That’s pot calling kettle,” Samantha tweaked back at him.  “You and Mandy are worse!”

       “Oh, no,” Frank moaned.  “We’re getting into a who’s worse debate.  I think I’ll see if I can get Chet to come get me.”

       “Now, now,” Connor said.  “No dissing the chauffeur.  Let’s go, before Mandy sends out the search dogs.”

       Connor had a good point there, Frank grinned again.  Mandy, while being the best little sister anyone could ask for, was also one of the most impatient people Frank knew, except, of course, for her twin brother.  Now Joe, Joe was the most impatient person on the entire planet.

       Samantha laughed and they picked up their pace, out the front doors of the hospital and wound through the parking lot until they arrived back at Connor’s car.  Samantha started laughing and Frank flashed her a curious look.

       “Mandy beat us here,” Samantha said to her boyfriend.

       “You guys are slower than a whole fleet of turtles,” Mandy retorted and Frank heard the sound of car doors opening.  “Climb in the front here, Frank.”

       Frank found the door’s armrest and the seat and he climbed into the Blazer carefully.  They drove back to the campus and dropped Mandy and Samantha off at their dorm and then drove back to Tauhausen Hall.  Connor helped Frank back to the back door of the dorm, then Frank found the rest of his way with his cane and his memory.

       “Closer this time,” Connor said a minute later when Frank thought he stood in front of his own door.  “You’d only be invading Torres’ domain if you went in that door.”

       Frank frowned and went down one more door to their room.  Connor already had the door opened and Frank went to his laptop.

       Blue-green Audis, Frank decided, were the top of the agenda.   Frank sighed for a minute as he leaned back against the wall at the head of his bed and rubbed at his eyes; they itched again.  He frowned and sat his sunglasses down on the bed beside him.  He heard Connor root about in the closet and finally open and close the door that led into their bathroom.  Frank turned on his laptop and felt around until he found his earphones.  He put those on and as soon as the computer was ready, he dialed onto the Internet and began his Search.  He heard, vaguely, Connor washing up and changing and a few minutes later, his roommate said he was going to get Mandy and they were heading to the wedding.  They’d e back in about three hours to change and head to the Hardy’s house for the picnic.

       Frank, absorbed with his search, waved them on and went back to what he was doing.

      

       “Excuse me, Sherlock?” Frank looked up in surprise when he heard Connor’s voice and Frank looked blindly about, then pulled off his headphones and hit the clock that sat on the bed stand beside his bed.  Three hours has passed since he got home.  “Mandy and Sam are on their way over here.  We need to go to the grocery store and get the food we need for the party.”

       “Oh yeah,” Frank said as he reached down to shut down his laptop and he stood.  “I’ll be ready in a couple of minutes.  I guess I lost track of time, huh?”

       “Yeah,” Connor agreed.  “The wedding was OK.  Mandy looked incredible, so did everyone else, I suppose.  I’m not sure I noticed much else…”

       Frank chuckled at that.  “If it was Sam, I’d probably be the same.”

       “So you were totally out of it when I came in,” Connor suggested.

       “Yeah,” Frank agreed.  “Sorry, I was completely lost in thought there.”

       “Me too,” Connor grinned.  “Did you figure anything out, though?”

       “No,” Frank sighed.  “I just don’t have the right resources here.  I’m going to hook up at home and have Mandy help me with it.  She’s got a better head for computers than Joe does anyway and she knows the programs I want to use better than Sam or you do.”

       Frank rooted about in his own closet until he came out with a pair jeans and a t-shirt. 

        “Which shirt is this?” Frank asked Connor.

       “It’s the Magilla Gorilla Go Nuts one,” Connor said. 

       “Not the right one, then,” Frank growled and he tossed the shirt in Connor’s direction to try again.  “How about this one?”

       “Neutral polo type, gray,” Connor answered.

       Frank whistled as he took his jeans and his polo shirt into the bathroom.  He washed his face and changed clothes, and then went out to dig out his tennis shoes from the closet.

       “Speaking of doing laundry, old boy,” Connor suggested.  “You may want to beg indulgence of your girlfriend before the stench overwhelms the room.”

       Frank responded to that by throwing yet another item of clothing – a dirty sock – in the direction of his roommate’s voice again.

       “Ooh, cruel and unusual punishment!” Connor called out.  “Foul play and I do mean foul!”

       Frank threw another sock at him and then sat down on the edge of his bed to put his tennis shoes on.  He finished just as there was a knock at their door and he walked carefully to the door and opened it, then flourished inward.

       “Ladies,” he said.

       “What have you two been doing?” Mandy asked.  “Clothes fight?”

       “Dirty sock fight,” Connor corrected.  “And they were all Frank’s.”

       “Poor baby,” Mandy laughed.  “Did my evil brother hurt my poor little baby?”

       Connor growled at Mandy and she laughed again.  Sam chuckled as Frank felt her slide her hand into his and he kissed the back of it.

       “Let’s go, children,” Samantha called out.  “Or we’re going to be late.”

       They walked out to the car together and drove to a favorite grocery store between the University grounds and their home.  Frank opted to stay out in the car and listen to the radio so as not to slow down the shoppers and he leaned back as he waited.  He sighed as he considered the case again, the case that was boggling him.  It all seemed to be disconnected; the attack on Vanessa had to be related to the attack on him and Samantha but the attack at the church – that didn’t seem to be related at all.  Frank sighed and shook his head to block out the conflicting memories and forced himself to focus on the music that played on the radio.  He sang along to it lightly enough to hear himself but also light enough that no one else would hear it; he really sang no better than Connor did and that was not good at all. 

       Frank was alerted to their arrival back at the car to Mandy telling Connor that he was a lout and an idiot and nobody paid 3 dollars a pound for ground sirloin when they could pay 2 dollars a pound for ground chuck that was just as good.  Connor replied back by saying that anyone who was anyone bought ground sirloin for cookouts and, besides, didn’t they want to spoil her friends?  Frank chuckled and Samantha told them, in exasperation, to stop arguing already.

       “I didn’t tell you about the potatoes though!” Mandy protested.  “Or the coleslaw.   It’s the same thing that happens every time!”

       “But you love me, don’t you?” Connor protested back.

       “Sometimes,” Mandy sighed.  “Let’s get these loaded, lout.”

       Frank chuckled again as the back hatch opened and the groceries were put in behind the seat he sat in.  A few minutes later they were on their way again and now Mandy and Connor were discussing something other than food; in fact, they were talking about Biff and Tony.

       “I just can’t see Tony with really short hair!” Mandy said.  “I mean, Biff always wore his hair rather short.  He was into those war game things for a while but I can’t see Tony with short hair.  He always liked having ‘long, thick, Italian hair.  Hair of full-bodied men.’”

       Mandy attempted that last in a very bad version of Tony’s voice.

       Samantha burst out laughing and Frank couldn’t help joining her.

       “It’s true!” Mandy protested.  “And you know it!”

       Frank agreed that he did know it.

       “I can’t wait to meet these two,” Connor admitted.  “I have a feeling that the stories just can’t compare to the real thing.”

       “They can’t,” Mandy agreed.

       Connor slowed down when he turned onto the street that Frank and Joe lived on and let out a protest a moment later.

       “Is that Joe’s idea of a joke?” he demanded.

       “What?” Frank asked.

       “He blocked off the whole drive-way with his Camaro,” Connor said.  “Now I have to park on the street.”

       “Park across the street,” Frank suggested.  “We can carry the groceries across and that way we’ll have room for everyone.  I have a feeling Joe invited more people over for the party.  He probably wanted to save the parking in the driveway for them.”

       “Oh, all right,” Connor groused good-naturedly.  “But if anyone sideswipes my Blazer someone’s going to pay!”

       They all laughed again and started to climb out of the Blazer.

      

       They were only halfway across the street when a noise louder than all of the thunder Frank heard in his life put together sent him flying backward and he landed, hard, on the ground, the wind knocked out of him for a minute as he felt hot, hot debris fly past him and more non burning debris littered down on his head.  He curled into a ball and covered his head until it stopped flying and he stood shakily back to his feet and felt out in front of him.

       “What happened?” he demanded.  “Mandy? Sam? Connor?  What happened?”

       “The… the house…” Mandy said in a shaky voice.  “The house just… just b-blew u-up… the house…”

       The house?

       Frank struggled to his feet and winced as his arm throbbed.  He felt completely dead inside, his senses refused to register everything he saw and he began to shut down, to go into a shock as profound and real as the explosion had been.  Frank winced when he moved his arm the wrong way and took a staggered step toward the house.  He took another, then another and stopped only when a large hand grabbed him and pulled him back.

      

       “You can’t go in there, Frank,” a harsh voice whispered into his ear.  “Stay back!”

       Frank stammered for a minute, and protested that he had to go put the fire out before they lost everything.  The voice told him that if he took a single step toward the house, Frank would be tied to a car to keep him out.  He couldn’t go any closer.

       Frank struggled against his roommate’s arms, struggled to make it those last few feet to his house.  He already felt the heat, so intense he felt sunburned already.  He stopped finally, stopped when he was unable, even remotely, to break the stance and hold of Connor MacKenzie. 

       “Frank? Where’s Joe?” Frank turned to his younger sister who stood beside them, her face an ash-gray color as she looked at the burning house before them.  “His car is there, where is Joe?”

       Frank turned back to the house as he felt whatever color remained his face drain away.  He began to struggle in earnest then as tears began to stream down his cheeks and he kicked at Connor, trying to break the grip that Connor had on his arm.  Just as he would have broke free, Mandy stepped forward and screamed, in a voice that made Frank chill inside.

       “JOE!”

       And a moment later another explosion sent Frank flying once again and when he landed this time, the world went black.

The Hardy Boys belong to Simon and Schuster and the Stratemeyer Foundation. I've only borrowed them to play with for a while but I promise to return them whenever I've finished with them.  (I make no promises as to condition, that's entirely up to them).  I promise, I'm only writing for fun and I'm not making a single dime off of this (unless you count personal fulfillment).