Who: Sam (narrative)
What: Sam calls Jude's parents.
Where: P5
When: After this.
Warnings: ...depressingness?



Sam had talked to the person on the forums and soon after resolved to contact Jude's family. Too afraid to confront her directly, hoping that her family would get in contact with her and maybe all would be well, he called them.

He used a payphone so that it couldn't be traced back to him, like something out of a movie. It wasn't hard to get their number--her family ran in some of the same circles as his uncle, after all, so it was a simple thing to get it from him.

The conversation was brief. Jude's father answered, and almost hung up when Sam started the conversation by telling him his daughter was alive (sort of) and possibly unwell in an apartment building in New York. He gave them her address, her penthouse number, and hung up the phone with the man still shouting in his ear, demanding to know how he'd gotten the number, how he dared to toy with their grief.

He'd come, though, he knew he would. Maybe then someone could get Jude help, if indeed she needed it. He wished he knew what was wrong, knew how to help her himself.

Coward. He sank down in the phone booth. Too afraid to talk to her, too afraid to take responsibility for bringing her back, and too afraid now to do anything more than intervene indirectly. Pathetic. Still, he clung to his small, fast-fading hope that she would be just fine if her parents got to her. He knew perhaps better than anyone what she faced. Maybe they would just take her home, not to a doctor who would meddle. Or maybe she would end up being fine and all his worrying would be for nothing. He hadn't seen her in person after all--he only had Cole's word on her confusion, possible evidence of a creeping plaque that would destroy her. Maybe it was simply trauma? She had been dead, hadn't she?

That last thought, though, even he wasn't cowardly enough to really hide behind. There was something wrong with Jude--how could there not be? She'd been dead in his lab for two weeks before he'd brought her back. She was lucky she'd lasted this long, and if decay was only just catching up to her that was a small miracle. A small, cruel miracle, putting life in her grasp and taking it back.

It was one of those moments that made him wish he had faith in something greater, something to appeal to. So he crossed himself like he'd seen a woman do on the street once, and sat at the bottom of the phone booth, resting his head on his arms. What happened now was up to the mercy of death, the science of decomposition, and cruel fate. It was out of his hands, but that lack of control gave him no sense of relief. None at all.