Twenty-Four.

Chapter Three

Hospitals always had the same smell, no matter how much they changed over the years, no matter their condition or how much money they had coming into them it didn't matter to Leo as underneath it all there was still that same smell. He wasn't sure how to describe it, he wasn't even sure that he could. It was the smell of fear, of fragile hope that would only need a feather light push in order to shatter it, it was the smell of life and it was the smell of death.

And his son was right in the middle of it and that sent a shiver down his spine, he had always hated the thought of Chris going into hospital. He hadn't died in the hospital before, he had died in the manor but knowing that Chris was here, that whatever was wrong with him was so bad that he needed to be brought here had sent him right back there to the Manor where his son had died and Leo hadn't been able to save him, where he had failed him.

And now he had done it again, his son would be laying in a bed by now and he could be dying all over again and Leo was still powerless to do anything about it, to do anything to save him. He hadn't been exagerating when he told Piper that if Chris died then he wouldn't be able to survive it. No parent should ever have to lose a child, but losing the same child twice?

Leo didn't care how strong a person could be, no one could survive that. He would not want to.

The woman behind the front desk had told them that Chris was still being seen by the medical team in the ICU, and when they had learned that Leo was certain that the ground had opened up beneath his feet was going to swallow him whole as it meant that Phoebe hadn't been overreacting which, despite how much he loved her, she had been known to do. It meant that something was seriously wrong with his son.

They arrived outside the ICU where the rest of the family, well most of them, had gathered outside. Phoebe was sitting on the sofa nearest to the double doors with red eyes and tear tracks were running down her cheeks, Coop was sitting next to her while rubbing her back and while he did not look as bad as his wife but that really was not saying much at all.

"Pheebs." Piper said as they moved closer to them and Phoebe rose from the chair as soon as she heard her sister's voice and hurried over to her, pulling her into an embrace as tight as Leo had ever seen, and he had seen the both of them hug a great deal of times over the years. "What is it? What happened?"

"I don't know Piper, just like I said." Phoebe sniffed, a fresh set of tears rolling down her cheeks and when she tried to take in a breath a sob escaped from her throat. "I'm sorry, we were just in my kitchen and we were talking and then he just fell to the ground and he was screaming and he started to throw up blood, and it came out of his ears and his nose and he was thrown into a fit."

It sounded terrifying, it sounded like something straight out of Leo's worst nightmares and he wanted to be ill. Piper had gone even more pale than she had been before, Leo glanced back at their children to find that Wyatt, his golden boy who even in his darkest moments tried to be strong for the rest of his family looked lost and Melinda looked like she was moments away from bursting into tears.

Oh god, Chris.

"What have the Doctors said?" Piper asked, her voice in that moment sounded so much like the way it did in that awful peroid just after Prue had died and Paige had come into their lives, a base of anger in order to hold back the despair and the pain because if she started then she surely would never be able to stop.

Leo had seen it first hand, it had taken her hours to stop crying when she had let it all out at Prue's grave and if Chris died, she would never stop crying and neither would he. There wouldn't be enough tears in all of the world to properly express all of their grief, an ocean's worth would not be enough.

"Aside from asking us a couple of questions when we first got here, they haven't been out to tell us anything yet." Phoebe spoke, her voice barely more than a whisper as Coop rubbed her back and Paige walked over to them. Paige had never stopped dying her hair and right now she had gone back to a light blond which made her already pale skin look even paler.

"Well, that might be a good thing, right?" Paige asked with a shrug of her shoulders, but from the tone of her voice and the look in her eyes it was clear that she was trying to convince herself of that more than she was trying to convince the rest of them. "I mean, if they haven't come out to tell us something by now then they are probably still looking after him, so he probably hasn't gotten any worse."

That was far too many probablys for Leo's comfort, but there was nothing that he could do but hope that Paige was right. There was nothing he could do, helpless all over again.

He needed to sit down.

Thankfully, it seemed that the rest of their family agreed with that as all of the rest of them were spread out across chairs in the waiting room. Leo sat down next to Piper with Paige's daughters on either side of them, Tam had kept her hair short and dark red while her sister Kat kept hers long enough to brush her shoulders and dyed to a light gold. They's both been crying as well.

Chris had always been closer to the twins than anyone else in the family, he had once called them his favourite cousins but Leo knew that the truth of it was that they were his favourites out of the entire family. Even when his son had stopped hanging around with his aunt Paige and started spending more of his time with his Aunt Phoebe, the twins always seemed to be with him.

Kat seemed to be making a point of not looking at them, even when Piper spoke to her all his wife managed to get from her niece was one word answers, her older sister was more willing to look at them if not speak to them and her looks seemed to be very heated indeed, Tamora hadn't just inherited one of Piper's powers she had inherited as she had also inherited her temper as well, and her fierce drive to protect those that she saw as her own.

Which right now, in her mind, seemed to make them the enemy which Leo would not deny was just another bit of pain to add on to the pile.

After what seemed like years, the doors to the ICU opened and an asian woman dressed in scrubs walked out into the waiting room and if Leo wasn't so worried for his son then he would feel sorry for the poor woman who now had over a dozen people in her face, all of them asking her questions at once.

"Everyone, please calm down." The doctor said while at the same time putting her hand up, sadly that did not seem to do whatever she hoped that it would as the family, and Leo wasn't much better he was not proud to admit, continued to ask a thousand different questions. The doctor sighed and brought her fingers to her lips, the whistle that followed was loud enough that it cut all of them off.

"Now, I don't doubt that all of you are worried but you need to stay calm because if you want to help Chris then I need you to answer my questions because I've been doing this job for a long time and I've seen some weird things but this is honestly something I've never seen before. I am not going to mince my words here, Chris was moments ago on death's door and then moments later it was like there wasn't anything wrong with him at all."

Leo felt his legs threatning to buckle as the doctor's words threw him back to that day, when his son that had come back from the future to save us all was laying in the middle of the bed with a stab wound in his gut and such pain in his eyes and there had been nothing he could do to save him, his son had died and not moments ago he had apprently been on death's door.

When he felt his wife's hand slide into his own Leo said nothing but he did squeeze back, wanting her to take as much comfort in him as he was taking from her which to tell the truth was probably the only reason that Leo was still standing right now.

"But, he's all right now, right?" Coop asked and Leo knew that it was childish and unfair but it did not stop him a pang of anger and envy in his gut when he heard the concern in his brother-in-law's voice, and that made him feel guilty. Coop was the boy's uncle, it was only natural that he would be worried for him but Leo knew that what the other man was feeling was not the concern of an uncle for his nephew.

It was the concern for a Father to a son and it made Leo wanted to punch Coop right in the middle of his friendly face and break his nose, he didn't of course because even if he wasn't a Whitelighter anymore he was still a pacfist and it probably wouldn't be a good idea to assualt his brother-in-law in the middle of a hospital.

He needed to make sure that Chris was all right, getting himself thrown out was not going to help that or his son.

"He's better than he was, the bleeding seems to have stopped and his vitals are completely back to normal but that is what worries me. Chris just...got better, he was crashing and loosing so much blood and then he was just...he was just fine. His vitals were normal and it was as if he hadn't lost any blood at all. So, I'm going to need to ask you all some questions-"

The doctor did not get a chance to finish as Piper flung out her hands and froze her, and when Leo glanced around the room it looked like she had frozen the rest of the hospital as well considering that no one else was moving. "Okay, so whatever this is it has to be magic right? I mean I've never heard of a disease that acts like that, it has to be magic which means that we can deal with it with magic, right?"

"I mean, I guess." Wyatt said with a shrug of his shoulders, his hands were shoved deeply in his coat pockets. "When we head home tonight I think I know a spell we can use on Chris to see if he's been affected by any sort of hostile magic, if he has then we should be able to track the magic to where it was cast from, then we find them and we vanquish them."

"That's all great, but there's no way we are going to be able to take Chris out of here tonight. That doctor is not going to let Chris out of her sight, maybe not for a week." Phoebe said with a sigh, shaking her head. "Have I mentioned that I really, really hate being an empath lately?"

In fairness, it had actually been a while since Phoebe had compained about her power, years in fact if Leo's memory wasn't failling him. She had actually grown comfortable with her power, seemed to take pride in it ever since Chris had gained the power as well and she had helped him to control it when he was just a kid and later on helped her own daughters when they gained the power.

"I know Pheebs." Piper said with a smile and reached over to take Phoebe's hand as she smiled at her, all the stress seemed to have left her face like there suddenly wasn't a problem anymore and Leo didn't know how he felt about that. "But this is all good news, Chris is going to be fine. Magic caused this, which means we can use magic to fix it."

"You're assuming that it's magic." Phoebe spoke with a frown, crossing her arms over her chest and biting her bottom lip. "We can't be sure about that, it could be magic yes but what if it is something mortal, we have to be prepared for that, okay?"

"Phoebe come on, what illness acts this way? It makes you vomit up blood and collapse and then moments later you're fine with no sign that anything was wrong with you to start with? That's not some random illness, that's an attack and we are going to deal with it. Chris is going to be fine, he basically is fine. Once this demon or warlock or whatever is good and vanquished."

It was hard to argue with her, Piper always had this amazing way of sounding like she was always in control of everything and when she laid out what she thought was going to happen it almost left no doubt that was just the way that it was going to work and there was nothing to worry about. Maybe it was the pain of losing Prue that had haderned her, forced her to step up but whatever the reason it was increadable to see.

So, why did right now Leo feel like there was something wrong with what she was saying?

Paige certainly seemed more convinced than he felt in that moment, so did Wyatt and Melinda but Phoebe and Coop looked about as unsure as he felt, maybe even more so. "Piper," Leo began in his best 'whitelighter' voice as he stepped closer to his wife. "I'm not saying I disagree with you, none of us are saying that, it's more than likely that you are right and that this is magical, but we aren't going to do any Chris any favours if we don't accept even the slighest chance that this is not magical, that it could be mortal."

"If it's mortal then there is nothing we can do about it." Suddenly, all the control that had been in Piper's voice moments ago had all drained away and for a moment Leo was in their bedroom, years and years back just after Prue had died and Paige had come into their lives and Piper didn't need to be strong for anyone else anymore and she left herself feel the grief. "If this is a normal illness and the doctors haven't seen anything like it before then that means that Chris could be in danger, he could die and there's nothing I can do to stop it, nothing I can do at all."

Piper Halliwell didn't sob, Piper Halliwell didn't scream. In all of the years that Leo Wyatt had known his wife the only time he had seen her break down and fully lose control was when she had screamed at Prue's memorial plaque begging her to come back. But just because his wife did not break down like that, didn't mean that she did not cry.

So when she bent her head and covered her face with her hands and her shoulders shook Leo knew that his wife had reached a hard limit, crying in public even if it was frozen and in front of their kids was almost unheard of. Leo took a step forward to pull her into his arms but Phoebe and Paige beat him to it, the three sisters standing together with their arms around one another and tears shinning on their cheaks.

"I know Piper." Phoebe muttered, so quietly that Leo could barely hear her as she rubbed at her older sister's back. "I know, you have no idea what it was like to stand there and watch it all happen in front of me while there is nothing I could do was the worst thing I've ever seen, and the thought that there is nothing I can do to stop it kills me."

"But Piper, we need to be ready if it's not the case because if it isn't then Chris is going to need us to be there for him cause that means that this is something that Chris can't fight with magic and you know what he's like, your his Mother." Phoebe's voice broke on those words, but only a little bit, as she reached out to move some of her hair behind his ear.

"He's kinda a control freak and if he can't fight this his way then he's going to be really pissed off and that anger's going to be a way for him to hide from the fear and he's going to want to act like he's fine, like he's immortal and that means he's going to probably try to do some real stupid stuff and that means we're going to have to be there for him, to stop him and to help him heal."

Piper stared at her little sister for a long moment before bending her head and letting out a laugh. "You know, going to be honest here I never really read your column that much but if you are actually this good at giving advice then maybe I should start."

"Yeah, well. I'll send you some copies, now unfreeze the Doctor and let's see if we can see him."

The doctor started to speak again as though nothing had happened and as she asked her questions Leo couldn't help but smile when he saw that Phoebe and Piper were still clutching hands as they hadn't done in a very long time.

No matter what, they would all face it together. Like Halliwells and Mitchells always did.

As a Family.

End of Chapter Three

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With much love and warmest regards,

DiscordantSymphony