Previously, on Clark's Heart:
Clark removed his glasses and set them aside on the coffee table. He pinched the bridge of his nose as he thought. The whole way back to the Planet, and then back home, he'd tried to find the words he'd need to say, and failed.
"Remember last year?" he finally asked. "Remember how I had to...give up...some of my life-force to save Jimmy?"
"Of course. I was terrified, seeing that machine suck away...whatever it was...years of your life, your life-force, however you want to word it."
"And then, about a month later?"
"Deathstroke," she immediately replied.
He nodded in affirmation. "Deathstroke."
"What does...?"
He cut her off before she could ask the question. "Dr. Klein has a theory. He thinks that those two events, especially so close together, put a strain on my body. Well, more of a strain than he suspected at the time. That strain, he believes, weakened my heart."
"And that caused the heart attack?"
"Yes. Again, as far as we can tell."
"When you say 'weakened,' what, exactly, does that mean?" she asked, panic now dripping from her words.
Clark took a breath, steeling himself before he could deliver the news.
"It means," he finally said, "that my heart has been...compromised."
"You mean, damaged," she clarified, reading between the lines.
"Yes," he said, dropping his chin to his chest for a moment.
"How bad?"
"Unless I receive a heart transplant, I'll die."
***
"Die?" Lois asked, swallowing hard. "Die? What do you mean, die? How is that possible? Doesn't your body repair itself?"
"Normally, yes," Clark conceded. "But, Dr. Klein thinks the damage to my heart hasn't been able to repair itself for a few reasons. Chief among them...my super-activity. Every race to get to a rescue. Every bus I've lifted. Every fire I've blown out with nothing more than a burst of superbreath. Everything has put wear on the areas that the youth machine and Deathstroke destroyed, not giving the muscle a chance to heal. As it is, the heart attack I had this afternoon should have killed me, if I were a normal person."
"What about if you...took a vacation from being Superman? Would the rest allow you to heal up?" She reached for him, scooting a little closer and grabbing his hand, to both take and offer strength.
Clark ran his thumb over the back of her hand and shook his head. "I asked the same question. He said I could try, but that it was highly unlikely to make a difference. I need a transplant, and soon."
"How long...? I mean, you'll probably be bumped to the top of the list, right? With how many untold millions you've saved, I'm sure you'll get top preference, right? If it hadn't been for you, Nightfall would have knocked this planet into extinction. I know, I'll write to...whoever it is that handles these things." She started to rise, as if to make good on her promises right then and there.
"Lois...no," Clark said gently, stopping her in her tracks, not releasing her hand.
"Why? What's wrong?"
"Writing to...even calling...anyone who handles the national transplant lists isn't going to help me. I'm different than everyone else, remember?"
"Yeah..." she said in a guarded manner.
"I'm not compatible with human donors."
"Dr. Klein has been wrong before," she said, a little defensively in her fear. She used her free hand to rub her growing belly to emphasize the point.
"This isn't the same," Clark said, biting back his own terror. "My blood isn't like yours, or anyone else's. The levels of iron are wrong, for example. My organs aren't the same either. Even if my body didn't outright reject a human heart, the first time I tried to fly, or use my super speed, or use my strength, the heart would explode. No human heart can withstand the stress that mine does on any given, normal day, to say nothing of the days when Superman is busy from sunup to sundown."
"He's..." She gulped. "He's certain about this?"
Clark nodded regretfully. "Yes."
"So..." A tear finally spilled from her eyes. "There's...what? No hope?"
Clark gently wiped away a tear with his finger. "Unless I can somehow get a Kryptonian heart..." He couldn't finish the statement.
What'd he'd managed to say hung in the air like blanket of invisible smoke, choking them both with its implications.
"Can't you try to...?"
She didn't need to finish. Clark shook his head.
"Contact someone? I've thought of that. I know that Kryptonians share a telepathic link. But across billions of miles of space?" He shook his head a second time. "It's not possible."
"You can't know that!"
"I do. When I was with Zara and Ching last year, heading back toward New Krypton, I asked them about it. I couldn't understand how or why they'd chosen not to try to contact me before they landed and concocted all those tests. They said they'd tried, but the distance had been too great."
"What do we do?" Lois asked, her voice small and lost sounding.
"I don't know," Clark said, letting her hand go. He sent the hand raking through his hair as he stood. "I've spent the afternoon wondering the same thing. I don't know if there's anything we can do." He started to pace the living room, looking at everything but seeing nothing.
"How long?" Lois asked after several minutes of watching him pace. "How long do we have to figure out a solution to this problem?"
Clark stopped his pacing to smile at his wife's determined face. How was it that she could be so strong, even when he knew that she, like him, was failing apart inside? And he know, without a doubt, that her question hadn't been a false, but brave, show. She really meant every word, and would never give up until after Clark was dead and buried. He didn't doubt that either, that he would die before a solution could be found. His only chance at life lay billions of miles away, in the stars, completely beyond his reach. He had no space ship, and would only last twenty or so minutes in space if he tried to make it on his own. Even if he took a tank of oxygen with him, it would never last long enough for him to reach New Krypton, even if he had known the way to get there.
"What?" Lois asked, seeing his smile.
"Just...you. Your determination. Your fire. It never ceases to amaze me, even after all these years of knowing you." He stepped toward her, dropped to his knees, and cupped her cheek in his hand. "Thank you."
Lois' hand came up to cover his, and he took comfort and strength from that simple gesture. He turned his head and kissed her other hand as it came up to cup his own cheek.
"I'm not giving up without a fight," she vowed in a near-whisper.
"I know. And I'm glad. Because I cannot do this on my own."
"Every step of the way," she promised him again. "We will find a way to fix this."
"I wish I could share in that certainty," he admitted. "I'm trying though."
"So...how long did Dr. Klein say?"
Clark let his hand drop from Lois' soft cheek as he stood and resumed his spot on the couch. This time, however, he sat nearer to the middle. Encouraged by his body posture, Lois scooted closer to him, snuggling into his side. He put his arm around her waist and rested his hand against the side of her stomach.
"He's not sure. Months, weeks, days...he can't really tell. His guess is weeks, and that's if I stop most, if not all, of my super activity."
"And if you don't?" He could almost taste the dread in those words.
"Probably days, if I'm lucky," he said, dropping his eyes to the carpet while he spoke.
"Oh, God," Lois said, turning white.
"That's why I didn't fly back to the Planet," he said. "I'm going to do whatever it takes to stop using my powers, as difficult as that is going to be. I don't want to die, Lois." He couldn't stop the fear from tainting his words.
"You won't," Lois said with sudden decisiveness. "Just look at how much we've gone through, Clark. We always find a way to make it through the bad and come out the other side."
"This is different."
"Different, yes. But not impossible. There has to be something we can do. Can Dr. Klein repair the damage your heart has already suffered?"
Clark couldn't bring himself to say so, but to his ears, Lois sounded more like she was trying to convince herself that there was hope than she was him.
"No," he said, hanging his head a bit. "He said he'd try to figure out an alternative to a transplant, but he's not hopeful. There's hope, in the medical community, about growing organs one day from stem cells, but we are a long, long way from that."
"What..." Lois said, thinking. "What about my father?"
"What about him?" Clark asked warily.
"Maybe we should talk to him about this. He's always been an out-of-the-box thinker. Remember how he saved your life when you had that Kryptonian virus? That wasn't exactly a normal, accepted treatment that he used. Besides, he's an accomplished doctor."
"I don't know, Lois," Clark said haltingly.
"Why not?"
"Well, for one, he'd have to be let back in on our secret," he said, standing and pacing to the windows, feeling the primal need to move, as though it could distance him from his problems.
"He knew it once, last year, when we wanted his expertise on our fertility concerns," she reminded him.
Clark leaned against the windowsill, half standing and half sitting. "Yeah, and when that memory gizmo...that Bummer-Be-Gone, I think it was called...took that memory from him, he was a much happier man. Do we really want to do that to him again? It's enough that Dr. Klein is going to have to be let in on things."
"You're going to tell him?" she asked looking slightly shocked.
He shrugged helplessly. "I don't see a choice. At some point, I'm probably going to be in the hospital. I can't go as Clark. And if I go as Superman, I can't have Clark Kent's distraught wife at my bedside. He needs to know, so that we can work something out."
"Good point," she agreed, though Clark could tell from her facial expression that she wasn't thrilled with the idea. "I'll go with you, whenever you decide to tell him. But I still don't think it would be the worst thing in the world if we had my father collaborate with Dr. Klein."
Clark took a deep breath and let it out slowly as he considered. "I don't know..."
"He's a surgeon, Clark. If somehow he or Dr. Klein can figure out some...I don't know...some kind of machine or something to put inside of you to help your heart, isn't it better if the person who does the surgery is someone that you can trust, one hundred percent?"
Clark opened his mouth to argue, but found no argument on his tongue. "I guess it could have its benefits," he admitted. He threw his head back to stare at the ceiling. "God, this morning, all I wanted to know was that my baby is healthy. And now...I'm not even sure I'll get to see him take his first breath."
"Clark," Lois said, rising from the couch to stand by his side, but he shrugged away from her touch.
"I'm sorry, Lois," was all he could say. "I just...I think I need some time, to process this. As it is, Dr. Klein would prefer if I was under hospital supervision starting now, just to be certain that help is at hand, should I need it."
"So, what did you tell him?"
"That I needed to take care of some things first, before I could commit myself to any kind of hospital stay."
She nodded understandingly. "I guess there are quite a bit of things to get in order before we can even think about a hospital stay."
"If I go," Clark added.
"Clark!" she said in a warning tone.
"Lois, I don't want my last days spent in a hospital room," he replied, crossing the room again to gaze into her fish tank. A bright pink tetra swam by, oblivious to man standing less than a foot away. "I want to spend them here, with you."
"But, Clark, if something..."
"Were to happen?" he asked, cutting her off. "What can they do for me at the hospital?"
"They can keep you alive!" she argued, getting slightly heated.
"To what end? I need a transplant, Lois. But unless a miracle happens, there is no way that I can get one."
"We'll see about that," she replied, her tone indicating that she was done arguing the point. She crossed back to the small end table by the couch and picked up the phone.
"What are you doing?" Clark asked, straightening up from where he'd been bent over, leaning on the tank with a forearm.
"Calling my father," Lois answered.
"Lo-is!"
"No, Clark," she said stubbornly, shaking her head at the same time. "I'm calling him and he's going to help us, just like he did the last time you were sick. I can't lose you, Clark." She started to stab the numbers on the dial pad with her finger. "I may not be able to donate an organ or blood to you, but I can, at the very least, get you the very best care out that. And that includes my father, as well as Dr. Klein." Tears had since begun to leak out from the corners of her eyes. "Hi, Daddy?"
Clark felt miserable. He'd always done his best to shield Lois from all the hurts of the world. He'd sworn an oath to himself that, at the very least, he would never make her cry, unless they were tears of happiness. But now she stood there, just across the living room, speaking on the phone, wiping tears from her eyes as her voice cracked while she asked Sam Lane to come to Metropolis as soon as possible.
Heart aching with hurt for Lois, Clark went to her. He drew her into his arms and gently pulled her to the couch while she evaded the specifics of whatever Sam's questions were. Clark wasn't even trying to hear what Sam was saying. He didn't want to use any of his powers. But more importantly, Lois' phone call was bringing up some very important things for him to consider.
What would he tell Sam? How could he, for the second time, prove to his father-in-law that Superman was nothing more than average Joe Clark Kent in a Spandex unitard and a cape? He didn't doubt Sam's ability to keep a secret. If he had, he never would have turned to the man back when he and Lois had thought themselves to be infertile.
What would he tell his own parents? How could he break their hearts by telling them that the son who'd fallen from the skies to mend their broken hearts so long ago was now dying? How could he rip apart the lives and hearts of two of the gentlest, most loving people on the planet? What words could he use, knowing none would lessen the blow?
And Dr. Klein? He'd been leading the man on for years that Clark Kent and Superman, two men the doctor had worked extraordinarily close with, were two separate people. Of course, Clark had deceived the entire world into believing the exact same thing, but he's always felt badly about withholding the full truth from the man who was responsible for helping Clark maintain his health.
Then there was Jimmy and Perry, two of his closest friends in the world. What would he tell them? Sure, he could give them vague information about his condition, but they would want to visit him in the hospital, if it came down to that, and he didn't just die in the shower or something. How could he politely, but firmly, tell them that they could not come to visit? That he didn't want them to see him like that.
Clark's head was swimming and he felt sick to his stomach. He'd met a fellow traveler once, when he was in Nepal, whose view on life was that from the moment a person was born, they began to die, and that all of life was nothing more than borrowed time. Clark had been appalled at the man's pessimism. But now the phrase "borrowed time" kept ringing in his head like a death toll. He could feel precious seconds slipping away from him, could feel Death peering over his shoulder, waiting to take him.
No! he thought violently. I can't give up. I can't think this way. For Lois' sake, I can't think this way. I can't leave her last memories of and with me with me brooding over the inevitable. I know we've always lived our lives knowing that at any moment, my life could end - some criminal with a piece of Kryptonite or a rescue gone wrong that I can't get out of. But to wither away and die? I never thought it would come to this. I have to keep a brave face for Lois. She has enough to deal with right now, growing our son in her womb. I want her to have only happy memories of the two of us together, especially in our final days together. I want to believe her when she says that we'll find a way to save me, but even I, the one who can usually find the sunny side, can't even begin to imagine how that might come to pass.
"Clark? Hunny?"
"Huh?" Clark asked, snapping out of his thoughts.
"My father said he can get here in two days."
"Two days..." Clark mused.
"He broke a tooth and has to get it fixed tomorrow." She shrugged. "That's my family for you."
"It's okay, Lois," he said, trying to ease her annoyance with her father's priorities. "He doesn't know the reason why we're asking him to come. I can wait. Trust me."
She nuzzled herself into his chest even closer. "I'm scared, Clark."
He gently wrapped his arms around her even tighter than before. "I know. I am too."
"What are we going to do?" After her earlier bravado, it was almost comforting, in an odd way, that she was allowing herself to show her vulnerability.
"Whatever we can," he answered simply, because he had no other words to offer. "Whatever we can."
To Be Continued...
