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Up For Some Breakfast?

Jeb was rolling some breakfast burritos up for Aundrea to take with her when she came into the kitchen. “Where’s Paul?”

“Still asleep.” He put three into a zipper bag and handed them to her.

“Really? That’s great.” She felt the warmth of it against her cheek.

Jeb smiled as he began washing up the frying pan and utensils. “I got him to open up a bit last night.”

“I hope it did him some good. See if you can’t keep him out here today. There’s some kind of drama with Sarah. I don’t know what it’s about, but I don’t think it’s something he should get wrapped up in.”

Jeb nodded and ran the water.

“Aren’t you forgetting something?”

He turned and she planted a kiss on him before heading out.

“Can’t forget something like that.” He smiled as he squeezed some soap into the water.

After the breakfast prep was cleaned up, Jeb went and turned on the stereo. He had some instrumental Christmas music cued up to listen to as he read his Advent devotional.

“Hi, Sarah. My name is Lisa.” The nurse stepped up to her bedside.

“Hi.”

“The doctor will be in to see you in a while.”

“Can I go home?”

“That’s not my decision. I came to see if you’d like some breakfast.”

“I guess, but I need to go to the bathroom first.”

“Sure, we can do that.” She held her hands out to help Sarah from the bed.

Sarah’s steps were slow and unsteady. “These pajamas are weird.”

“Sure. Just follow me. Okay?”

“Who’s the doctor?”

“There are a couple of them on rotation this morning. We’ll see who shows up.”

“Do you like me?”

“Sure, Sarah. You’re very nice.” She opened the bathroom for her.

Sarah looked at the nurse nervously. “Do you really think so?”

“There’s already a fan club outside waiting to see you.”

Sarah shuffled into the bathroom. “Fan club?”

“Mm-hmm, there are quite a few of them.”

“Meghan?”

“Is that the pastor’s wife? Yes, she got here first.”

“Carol?”

“I didn’t get all of their names, but I can check for you.”

“I just have to…”

“I know. Go ahead. I’m not allowed to leave.”

“That’s kind of weird.”

“It’s okay. I’m a nurse. It’s part of the job.”

“There he is.” Jeb pushed the footrest down. “Up for some breakfast?”

“How do I make it stop?” Paul leaned on the mantlepiece.

“Make what stop?”

“I can’t stop feeling guilty about what happened to those kids.”

“That’s not really my territory, Paul. I can listen, but you need to find a way to make peace with the fact that it happened and what came of it.”

“You’re a good listener. I appreciate your hospitality.” He headed for the kitchen.

“Sure, Paul. How about sausage and eggs?”

“Sounds great.” He took a seat at the table.

Jeb dug around the fridge a moment. “Look, Slipstream seems like he turned out okay.”

“Eric’s a credit to the team, but his super speed…”

“Side effects?”

“All of them, Jeb.”

“How about you?” He put a pan on the range and cracked the eggs.

“Phillipe called it chaos poisoning for a reason, Jeb.”

“I thought you said they got their powers from some kind of…”

“It was diabolical what happened to them.”

“What happened to us was no picnic.” Jeb whisked. “Those things were about as demonic as anything I’ve ever seen face to face.”

“That thing had a direct grip on you.”

Jeb fluffed the eggs and set the pan aside. “Oh, believe me. I remember. It burned and itched and stung even after you pulled me free of it. Thought I was going to go nuts.”

“Those things were awful and they popped up all over the place, grabbing people and causing all kinds of havoc.”

“What made them go away?”

“We finally figured out how to seal up the chaos rifts from their side. There was a faction who wanted to break through and try converting this dimension to pure chaos like theirs. The other guys who had come through and gone back a few times…”

Jeb sliced some sausage into a skillet with onions and colorful bell peppers.

“It’s pretty disturbing, actually. They helped in spite of themselves.”

“The enemy of my enemy is my friend?” Jeb stirred the sausage and peppers.

“No, just conflicting flavors of crazy. The other guys were actually worse, but they split into feuding factions and did most of the work for us.”

“So, what happened to the kids was concocted by one of these secondary factions?”

“Yeah, the guys who sealed things up on their side fell out with the guys who stayed behind. The guys who stayed were happy to be stuck and the guys who sealed it off were glad to be rid of them.”

“But, without the chaos rifts, how did they give people powers?” Jeb portioned out eggs and sausage for each of them.

“Badly. Really badly.”

“Which is why the kids have worse side effects than people who got chaos poisoning from a rift or an alien.”

“Sick jerks put that poison out over a parade just to see what it would do.”

“At least it only affected six kids.” Jeb put a plate down for Paul.

“No, a lot of people got sick from that stuff. The kids were right at ground zero.”

Jeb sat down across from Paul. “Weird that it didn’t affect you guys.”

“It did. I was coughing up glowing purple phlegm for days.”

Jeb studied him as he chewed his sausage.

“What?”

“Was that your fault, too? All those people getting sick?”

“No, but…”

“You got sick, too. How about anybody else on the team?”

“Meirhe was laid up, Matt had a headache and Kayla broke out in hives.”

“So, remind me how it’s your fault?” Jeb scooped up some eggs.

“Because it feels like it was.”

“Still?”

Paul closed his eyes. “They’re still right there on death’s door.”

“Eat your breakfast. We’ll go back through it later. Okay?”