Chapter 3: The Hospital

Fox felt dizzy and a strange sensation of movement. When he opened his eyes, he was blinded by brilliant light and everything was blurry. There was a sharp pain in his right arm, but when he tried to feel it, he couldn't move. Groggy and disoriented, he closed his eyes.

When Fox awakened again, he sat up suddenly. He was in a bed with white sheets and surrounded by curtains.

"Wha- Krystal? Um... hello?" Fox cautiously called out.

There was a shuffle on the other side of the curtain. They suddenly parted, startling Fox.

"Well, you picked a fine time for a nap," Falco smirked.

Fox looked at Falco quizzingly. He then noticed the pain in his arm again. It wasn't as bad as before, just a slow, throbbing pain. He reached to comfort it and found it bandaged. Fox looked at it, then at Falco.

"And that would be where you cut your arm when you fell," said Falco in reply.

"Fell?" Asked Fox.

"Yeah, after me and you put Krysta-" Falco was cut off by Fox.

"Is she alright? Where is she?!" Cried Fox.

"Easy man, one question at a time. She isn't good, but no worse than when she got put in the stasis pod," responded Falco.

Fox raised his ears as Falco continued, "Remember? 100 stasis? Freezes the entire body? Well, they haven't turned it off yet. So anyway, like I was saying, after we put her in the pod, you were sitting on the floor, but then you stood up quickly, I can only assume to get us here, you know, a hospital, but apparently there was some high blood pressure or shock or something. Slippy tried to explain it to me and so you fell and I-"

Fox cut him off again. "Wait, what do you mean turn it off?" Asked Fox.

Falco hesitated. "I think you'd better talk to the doc about that," said Falco.

He disappeared for a moment and reappeared with a grey badger in tow.

"Oh ah, you're awake Captain McCloud. Good to see you're alright. I'm Dr. Sharp. I've been tasked with handling your crew's needs," said the badger to Fox.

"Dr. Sharp?" Asked Fox.

"Hmm yes?" He responded.

"Why are you going to turn off the stasis pod?" Fox asked in a deadly serious tone.

"Oh! I see. Yes, well, Krystal's condition is critical. To be honest, she's a strange case. We haven't had many victims of explosive decompression. Those that aren't killed immediately always fall into two groups: those who recover quickly and those who expire quickly. The length of vacuum exposure is usually the key factor in separating the two groups. Krystal was in space for about one minute, right in between the survivable and the deadly time-spans. You did get her into a stasis pod quickly, but she also tried to hold her breath which was the worst thing she could have done. Her internal organs were..." Dr. Sharp droned on and on.

Fox spoke up, beginning to be agitated, "Just tell me why you want to shut off the stasis pod."

Dr. Sharp stopped his diagnosis and looked directly at Fox, "Ah, well, long story short: even with the 100 stasis, she is slowly dying. The nerves in her brain are starting to fall apart, to say nothing about the rest of her body. I'm afraid there's nothing we can do for her. However, I thought I should leave the decision to shut off the stasis pod to you, her being part of your crew."

Fox's ears drooped and he looked at the floor.

"How could this happen?" He thought, "Why couldn't I save her? It's not fair!"

"May I see her?" Fox asked the sympathetic looking doctor.

"Of course," replied Dr. Sharp.

Fox was silent in the wheelchair as Falco wheeled him down the hall. There were patients, doctors, and nurses busily walking here and there, pushing things, talking, attending to their own business. The scene of organized chaos was parted down the middle with a sagging orange fox being rolled towards the intensive care unit.

Many stopped and whispered to each other, "Hey, isn't that Fox McCloud?"

"Yeah, I heard Krystal got injured really bad, he must be going to see her. Poor guy, she was so young too."

Fox heard none of it. He was again in his own world, cursing himself for not being able to help her.

"I wasn't fast enough," he thought, "now she's going to die."

The sharp turn into the observation room jolted Fox from his trance. He looked up to see several technicians and Slippy monitoring Krystal's pod on several monitors.

Slippy noticed Fox and walked to greet him, "Hey Fox, I've been thinking, the exercise room is no-where near any ship system that's even possibly explosive. We had shields up and there was no warning alarm about an incoming attack. How could the wall have exploded?"

Fox sighed wearily and spoke, "I don't know Slippy, why don't you go and check the ship? It's really not my main concern right now."

Slippy laughed sheepishly, "Ha ha, sorry Fox, I guess I just got carried away on the details. I guess I'll go check the ship then, I'm no help around here."

Slippy briskly left the room and Falco wheeled Fox to the monitoring station.

Fox got out of the wheelchair and began walking slowly towards the front of the pod as Dr. Sharp spoke to him further about the diagnosis, "As you can see here on these screens, she has no life signs. She's medically dead, but there's still traces of brain cell activity."

Fox continued his shuffle towards the pod.

Dr. Sharp continued, "There's nothing we can do for her, even if we could restart her brain, her internal organs are beyond repair."

Fox put his hand on the glass door, as close as he could be to her. He shed a tear, she looked so much like when he first saw her, trapped in that crystal. That time, he saved her. This time...

"So, you see, we need to shut off the stasis pod soon. There's no point in drawing out the inevitable. Let her soul rest," finished Dr. Sharp.

Fox removed his hand, looking down at the floor.

"Give me ten minutes to think it over," he said as he shuffled out of the room.

"I need some fresh air," thought Fox.

He found a balcony off a side hall and stood looking over the huge industrial capital of Macbeth.

"I don't know if I could stand her not being here. I've already lost my family," desperate thoughts echoed in his head. "Maybe, I could slip... No! No, I couldn't do that. It's not right and that's not what she would want for me," Fox dismissed the horrible idea.

But he still had a decision to make, a decision that had only one logical choice. It was a choice he didn't want to make.

"I wish he was here," said Fox to himself.

"I'm so terribly sorry," said a deep, slow voice to Fox's left.

Fox turned sharply to look, his eyes suddenly wide.

"I'm so... very sorry, my son."

Note To Readers:
Don't you just love cliff-hangers?
Lot of talking this time. Chapters 4 and 5 will likely be the same, but action shall soon return.
I'm terribly sorry for the somewhat graphic nature of these first few parts. I'm not trying to make it that way, it's just what seems realistic to me. I guess it doesn't seem so bad to me because I know what happens.
8/15/06 Edit - Added additional spaces around changes in speech.
11/10/06 Edit - Removed some footnotes that were "spoiling the story."