Lois stopped coming to visit him during the day.
He came to expect the sudden moments of awareness, of being awakened to her presence, warm and comforting. The visits were always in semi-darkness, the shadows cool and enveloping.
Often they just sat together, without words, taking comfort in each others presence. Clark had stopped asking questions; he suspected that the answers would be too painful. The nights were simply about being together.
Days passed. Days were different than nights, long, rarely interrupted periods of boredom and pain. He was healing, but it was glacially slow, painful. This was what it was like to feel human.
During the day, the silent, efficient members of the secret service were replaced with a heavyset security guard named Ed. Ed was friendly enough, but prone to wander off at times. Clark suspected that the free donuts in the staff room kept calling Ed’s name.
The nights were enchanted, dreamlike. The days were filled with peeling plaster, sagging ceiling tiles and heavyset nurses who refused to look him in the eye.
The doctors were pleased with his recovery at least. He’d died three times on the table.
When he’d been shot with a kryptonite bullet, he’d healed in less than a minute. He might have been healing well by human standards, but this was not normal for him. Clark began to become increasingly impatient, to hope to go back to his life.
He only had three channels on his television. Lois never knew because television was the last thing on their minds when they were together.
Being unconscious, he’d missed the initial reports about the meteor shower, and about the celebrations that had broken out all over the world in the aftermath. His ego would have hoped to see something about him, but the only shows on television were endless rounds of soap operas, Judge Judy and infomercials.
Questions burned in his mind. The presence of the secret service, and the indefinable aura of authority that had settled on Lois like a mantle told Clark that she was important and powerful. How she’d gotten into politics was still a mystery.
Clark began sleeping in the afternoons, so he’d be alert at night.
************
It was the shadow over his bed that woke him. He smiled, anticipating and opened his eyes, only to be confronted by an unexpected figure.
The afternoon sun still spilled through the window onto him. The figure beside his bed definitely wasn’t Lois or even Ed.
It was a short, blonde teenager with a big smile and a fanny pack. She had a cellular phone that she was pointing at him, and a book in the other hand. “You won’t believe who I’ve got on my rounds. I’m sending a picture now!”
Clark blinked, confused.
“It’s not every day that you get to meet a celebrity.” The girl smiled brightly. “Especially not a big hero like you! Saving all those people...it just gives me chills.”
Clark relaxed slightly. He’d dealt with fans, both as Superman and less frequently as Clark Kent. He smiled at her. “I didn’t know they were letting volunteers work this section of the hospital.”
She wasn’t a volunteer, of course. Liability laws had stopped candy striping back in the sixties. Clark would play along, however. Part of becoming Superman had been a commitment to communicating with people, to making sure that they weren’t afraid.
“Well, technically I’m working in the wing next to here, but when I heard that you were here, I just said to myself, wouldn’t it be great to meet the man himself?”
A headache was beginning to form in the center of Clark’s skull, but he didn’t stop smiling. The least he could do for someone was to give them the courtesy of listening. What else did he have to do?
“Mr. Kent. Will you sign my book for me?” The girl flipped her phone closed and slipped it into her pocket. “None of the gals back home will believe that I met the one and only Superman.”
Clark froze. Everyone knew? When had that happened?
Numbly he took the pen she was offering and quickly scrawled an autograph. He frowned a moment, then closed the book.
The face of Jason Trask was on the cover. The book was entitled “Invasion: An autobiography of an American hero.” The line at the foot of the page said “The life and death of the man who predicted the invasion. “
He felt nauseous, and it took a moment to realize it wasn’t just the book.
“It’s kind of ironic. That book is that last one you’ll ever see.” The girl stepped closer to him, and reached into her fanny pack. From inside it, she pulled a black piece of rock. “Did it feel good, killing Jason Trask? He knew the truth about your dirty little invasion.”
It didn’t hurt like Kryptonite had. It was a dull, debilitating, nauseous pain.
“I’ve got friends out in California. One of them had this in his back yard. “ The girl stared impassively down at the rock. “You know what one of these goes for on e-bay? What with the military trying to take it out of the hands of the people who need it?”
Clark grabbed for the call button, but the girl was quicker. “Now, don’t be a naughty boy. “ She slapped his hand away and grabbed the unit herself, dropping it to the floor. “We’ve got a little time here, and we don’t want it to be interrupted by a nasty old nurse.”
“Why are you doing this?” Clark asked. The nausea even worse than before. Now his stomach was cramping, and so were other parts of his body.
“It’s just sick, what you and that Lane woman are doing. I’d never let some filthy Kryp touch me. There’s a name for women like that...“ The girl hesitated, then scowled, a look of distaste on her face. “what if you get her pregnant?”
“Wha...?”
“You think it hasn’t happened before? It’s all over the internet! What your people did...you should be ashamed.”
Clark tried to pull back, but the raised rails on the bed stopped him.
The girl pushed several buttons on the monitor beside his bed. There was a small alarm that disappeared a moment later.
“You’ve got a lot of people fooled,” the girl said. “They think that just because you do a few good things here and there, you must be who you always said you were. Well, I know the truth.”
The girl smiled and took another picture with her phone. “It’s sort of appropriate that people get to see your last seconds on earth.”
“It’s a good thing you’ve already had your bath for the day.” The girl lifted his blanket and her small hand slipped under the cover. She dropped the rock into his lap, then patted him on the thigh. “Nobody will think to look for it here.”
The pain was overwhelming.
She took picture after picture.
***************
“I want him guarded.” Lois said, scowling. If it hadn’t been for the security guard coming back from his extended “bathroom” break and catching her in the act, Clark would be dead right now.
“That’s going to make things look...”
“I don’t care.” Lois’s voice was sharper than she’d intended. She took a deep breath, and said, “You know what he’s done for all of us. He deserves better than this. He deserves to be treated like a hero, not...”
Her hands were shaking. She put them behind her and leaned back in her chair.
The older man sighed. “I’ll pull the detail that watches over foreign dignitaries.”
“He’s an American citizen.” Lois said. Her lips tightened, and she fought to keep her temper. “He’s earned the right to be treated like one. Do anything different, and it gives credence to what the extremists are saying. Find a group that doesn’t have any...prejudices, and make it quick.”
Nodding, the older man made a note in his personal organizer.
“Do we have anything on the girl?” Lois was pleased at how even her voice sounded. Outbursts of anger could be tolerated in a reporter. To a president, they were a liability.
If Lex had shown her anything, it was how to hide her feelings.
“She belongs to a number of conspiracy web sites. There’s some evidence that she’s a member of an anti-Kryptonian extremist group. We’re tracking down the sites she sent the pictures to to see what we can find.”
“If they’ve so much as dropped a piece of litter, I want them hauled in,” Lois said. “If we can prove that they conspired with her...and somebody sent her that rock, I want them prosecuted to the full extent of the law.”
“Our lawyers say they might try to claim it’s not a homicide, as Kryptonians are by definition not human.”
Letting that get by in court would be a disaster. The nation had less than a generation to make up their mind about the status of Kryptonians and those with Kryptonian blood.
The conspiracy sites were filled with hysterical rumors about half-Kryptonian children being born. It was true. Lois had seen the files on the children of the occupation. Within ten years, a group of Americans would come into abilities that were more than human.
Lois had fought too long and hard for women’s rights to sit by while a new group was made into second class citizens. If need be, she’d turn Lex’s entire fortune to stopping this.
He’d spin in his grave, but it was nothing more than he deserved.
“He’s an American. When we granted him citizenship, we gave him all the rights and responsibilities that come with that.”
“That won’t be a popular stance.”
“Have you seen his poll numbers? They’re higher than mine.” Even after saving the world they weren’t up to pre-war levels, but neither of them had to say it. This was the world they lived in.
“That just makes the extremists more angry.”
“It always does.” Lois sighed and closed her eyes for a moment. Suddenly she was tired, more exhausted than she’d been since the night of the meteor strikes.
She’d chosen this, and there were miles still to go.
